Team Agreements Framework and Examples of Team Norms

This workbook is a high level guide for teams who want to create and document team agreements. Team agreements (sometimes called “team norms” or “team operating manuals”) are a set of guidelines that establish expectations for how all members of the team work with one another. The goal is to unlock performance of teams by creating clarity and building trust through explicit conversations and description of how the team operates. As all teams have different goals and constraints, what works for one team may not for another. And because circumstances change, team norms need to be discussed, tested, and adjusted over time.

The components and examples are meant to be flexible; please modify the template or add sections to meet your needs. An important starting point is to collect from the team some of their own working norms, and to start with teams in an organization who have already established documented norms that can be used to build internal champions.