When you’re looking to develop your team’s principles & ways of working, I’ve been learning what I’ve done previously to refresh the principles of teams post-pandemic and what I’ve done with teams at the height of the pandemic, exploring how you use online collaboration tools.
1. Start with your organisation’s values
Take 5 minutes to read through your organisation’s values
2. Review the Manual of Me’s
When I started where I work, I shared my Manual of Me. In fact, I made my original manual more visual as the previous one was very text-heavy! I shared it and encouraged everyone in my team to produce their own as I wanted each of us to get under the skin of each other and understand their personal needs, hopes and fears.
Manual of Mes are as pivotal to developing team principles as the values of your organisation. They bring to the surface the lived experience of each person on the team and are essential insights into practical ways you can embody those values as a team.
Get into pairs and for 10 minutes review the relevant section of everyone’s Manual of Me (split into two which Manuals of Me you each review)
Team socials: Things I love & birthdays
How could we learn from the things people love to create team social activities?
Team rhythms: How I like to work
How could we learn from how people like and don’t like working to create ways of working for the team?
Team opportunities: What gives me energy
How could we learn from what gives people energy to create team activities or work that energizes people?
Team challenges: What drains me
How could we learn from what drains people to create team activities or work that don’t drain people?
Team communications: How to communicate with me
How can we create team rhythms when we meet and how we communicate that work for the team?
3. How might we
To develop principles & ways of working as a team, it would be too self-centred to develop them myself as a manager and there would be too many if all of us tried to turn all the insights into a set of ways of working. So I got people into pairs so they could shape the principles and then take the lead together in putting into practice the actions we agree on.
Brainstorm for 15 minutes with your pair of practical ways you can tackle your how might we build on what you’ve reviewed from people’s Manuals of Me and that embody Newham’s values
4. Review together
Once the pairs in your team have used the insights to turn them into principles and practical actions, get all the team to do a “peer review” for 10 minutes what others have put on the other how might we challenge and add your own ideas.
5. Turn the principles into action
Agree on a set of actions and leads to take them forward so very soon you can get practical outputs that bring to life the principles.
