I'm in the office, standing in front of a wall full of stickies. I notice one that says:
My favorite way to treat myself is seafood, Netflix and strong piña colada
My eyes land on another one:
When I'm stuck on a task for too long I get grumpy. Please let me know or help :)
The last stickie I contemplate is mine:
I'd love to have a two-hour long lunch break to go to the gym
I'm afraid this time I went too far. This is an outrageous request. But I asked everybody to dream big, and I like to lead by example.
Working as a team is a journey
A shared one made of challenges, setbacks and celebrations. It's like going from A to B, where A is blurry, B is moving, and there are several (or no) connections between the two. So how you get there, counts.
What can be done to support the best work of everybody in our team? What are the aspirations and goals of each of us? What's the preferred way to share feedback? Or to celebrate a victory? What practices and values do we believe in? What makes people grumpy?
If we cannot give answers to those questions, we cannot expect to do great work together. People need to know how to be the best players in their team and contribute their practices, values and needs.
It's not enough to hand off a computer, a Kanban board and a git repository to make somebody a teammate. Luckily, the solution is simple.
Different people conjure a different alchemy. There is no right or wrong, only different journeys. It's by embracing the friction, being curious and supporting each other's uniqueness that we consolidate a team.
Because, let's be honest, the other option is to focus inwards on our personal productivity and make the team just the sum of their parts.
Create a playbook. Together as a team.
Reserve some space for stickies, and let everybody share their practices, values and needs.
Personally, I give the exercise as little structure as possible. I want people to decide what they want to share, not the exercise.
But adding a couple of questions works too. Here are some ideas:
- What makes you grumpy? How will we know you are grumpy? How can we help you when you are grumpy?
- In what medium do you prefer to receive feedback? When do you prefer to receive feedback? How do you prefer to receive recognition?
- What makes feedback the most valuable for you? What are your goals for the next 3 months/year? What do you need from your teammates?
- What's your favorite way to treat yourself?
- Are there any behaviors that you know you don't like?
- Do you have any clear career goals that we should know about, so we can help you achieve them?
Give people a few days to contribute with their stickies, get together and give everybody a chance to elaborate.
This would be a good time to compromise in case any stickies were conflicting. But, surprisingly enough, it doesn't happen often.
The best part of the team playbook exercise is that most outrageous things really are not. Strangely enough, when you support others, others will support you—including my two-hour long lunch breaks at the gym!