A Team Charter can be a vehicle for promoting common behaviours, building trust, encouraging honest debate and gaining shared understanding within the team.  A well crafted Team Charter will help answer the question How do I know what’s expected of me and my team?  The internet is full of suggested definitions and templates, so it’s important to consider your context when thinking about what you need from your team charter.

One of the central tenets of anAgileMind is The People Belief which states that when teams are given an environment of safety, respect, diversity, inclusion and a motivating purpose, it is possible for trust and self-organisation to arise.  For this to happen, it is necessary to treat everyone with unconditional positive regard. 

A Team Charter is a tool a team can use to express their purpose and the environment they require and provide a point of reference to commit to creating this together.  In his book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni highlights the importance of establishing trust as a foundation for team performance.

It all starts with Trust…

Trust is the basis for all constructive relationships. Where trust is low the relationship will be cautious and we will seek a safety net in the shape of contracts and formal agreements.  Working through contracts is inevitably slow and inflexible. When our relationships are built on trust, we can be honest with each other and we will feel safe to share problems and ideas. This is more than being trusted to do what we said we would do; this is knowing your team has your back, and you have theirs.  When trust is high, we feel safe to speak up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes without fear of being punished or humiliated.

In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Lencioni describes the many pitfalls that teams face as they seek to "grow together". Using a pyramid to illustrate this, the bottom tier and basis for a dysfunctional team is an absence of trust.  This leads to a fear of conflict and a lack of commitment to the team and the team goals. This results in avoidance of accountability and inattention to results.  The antidote and route to creating high-performing teams begins with building trust that enables honest debate. Giving everyone a voice in the team fosters commitment which opens the way for appropriate accountability.  When we accept accountability for our work we will focus on the results of our efforts.

The Team Charter

A Team Charter is negotiated and agreed by the whole Team. It provides a visual outline of the team’s purpose, the products and services they own, who their customers are, and a set of values and principles that they aspire to live by. A strong team will be explicit about what behaviours are acceptable and unacceptable.  Simply put, a Team Charter describes why the team was formed, what the team is responsible for and how they will work together.

A facilitated workshop where the whole team creates its Charter together can be a place where team members learn about each other and their common values. They can also start to build empathy and trust. This is the first step towards preventing dysfunction from growing in the team. The negotiation of their Team Charter is important - one that is developed, agreed and owned by the team, can become a framework by which they may hold each other accountable to how they work together. As Lencioni points out, if there is no commitment, there will be no accountability; and if there is no debate, there will be no commitment.

In his book “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”, Dan Pink identifies 3 elements that provide intrinsic motivation for people at work: mastery, autonomy and purpose.  Will Sambrook’s article looks at how mastery, autonomy and purpose can provide a map to help leaders to motivate teams. A meaningful Team Charter will include explicit reference to:

• a commitment to continuous inspection and adaptation of their skills and capabilities, and their products and services (pursuit of mastery)

• demonstrable rigour and discipline to their ways of working, pursuit of mastery and alignment to their purpose (autonomy)

• why they exist and the value they add to their customers and their organisation (meaningful purpose)

In 1965, Bruce Tuckman said that teams will go through an inevitable series of stages as they come together: this is well known as the forming-storming-norming-performing model for group development.  To some extent, this is a journey of learning to trust each other. The team will go through these stages again whenever the team changes; even adding one person to the team will change the dynamics.  

Developing a Team Charter and making it visible for the whole team, can help the team navigate these stages, using it to reflect on their performance and behaviours as a team.  Over time, their lived experience of working together may prompt the Team to refine their Team Charter to provide greater clarity on how they will act.

A foundation of trust cannot be assumed, it has to be built.  The effort spent by the team on building trust and developing a meaningful Team Charter together will enable them to pursue high levels of performance and results as a team.  I believe all teams need a Team Charter if they are committed to work with growing mastery, increased autonomy and a clear purpose.