Establishing a working agreement — pre project kick off
Three weeks ago my cohort class and the senior cohort class attended a workshop with a Facilitator and Organizational Development specialist who has worked with companies like Riot Games, Apple and Pandora. We were kicking off the semester and aiming to learn and refresh our skills to establish a working agreement for our semester’s group project.
We all nervously jumped into the Zoom meeting, figuring out how things were going to go. Things actually went really well.
The 3 hour workshop was broken down into segments which allow us to digest some of the awkward self aware questions we had to work through.
1st breakout room session
We entered the Zoom breakout room with 5 fellow classmates that would be working with each other on the project management design challenge. Immediately we had to assign a scribe (note taker) to jot down our groups answers and share with the Zoom main room.
The questions were:
- What are the behaviors that can derail a team or project?
- Which of these behaviors am I apt to do?
- What are some ways to deal with these behaviors/interruptions of the group’s flow/derailments?
It had been about 8 weeks since we’d all seen each other through the little Zoom squares, so starting the conversation took some time but after 10 minutes we really got to answering some of these tough questions. We opened and showed vulnerability and honesty in our answers. The overall themes in our answers were :
- Not getting assigned tasks done when they are due
- Lack of communication
- Feel confident to speak in an open environment
- Somebody falls off the grid-no communication
- Somebody assumes authority and starts leading
- Shutting down an idea and without giving it time
- Criticizing work without offering solutions
After 45 minutes we were released back into the main room to share the overarching themes we found.
2nd breakout room session
The second segment of the workshop we were given additional prompts to answer. This time we work together at building our agreement from our first session.
The prompts were:
- What I need from others when collaborating?
- (Scribe) Brainstorm list of your working agreements (maximum 7)
Dealing With Challenges
- What can others say/do if your behavior is “triggering” them?
- (Scribe) What can you agree to do when the working agreements need to be enforced?
Our team bounced around with the questions and we got off topic for a bit and started cracking jokes. It was fun but we were on a time limit so we had to navigate back on the topic consistently.
For the first set of questions the consensus was :
Needed for collaboration
- Safe space for questions
- Short meet up in the beginning of the week to set up tasks
- Agendas in the meeting
- Preferred ways to communicate
- Working Sessions and Individual work sessions
Brainstorm of Working Agreements
- Safe space for questions
- Short meetups w/ an agenda in the beginning of the week to set up tasks
- Working Sessions and Individual work sessions
- If somebody falls off and doesn’t get their tasks done we can do it collaboratively.
- If you are not a meeting then you’re not in meeting
- Pick a team lead in a discussion
- 10 min discussion and miro board on an idea (timed)
The second set of questions:
Managing Challenges
- Send a private message to the team member and talk it out
Working Agreement Enforcement
- Referring back to the working agreement
After roughly putting it together we joined the Zoom main room and again had to share with the cohorts what the team was working towards.
Those conversations often can be a bit awkward but definitely setting these types of intentions in the beginning, before any type of work gets started will definitely help the team manage any rough waters that might arise. Because to be honest, they will rise so alignment and communication is key.
Here’s the final working agreement put together, slightly polished but it will get us through putting an annual report from the future for a fictional island in the South Pacific. Stay tuned for that ambiguous challenge.
