Several years ago I had a client who said they had been told by management that they needed to start working as a team.  Their members had never worked on a successful team before and so not only did they not have good experiences to draw on, but no one on the team had ever had any team training.  They started to look around for some team training to help them out when management came back and vetoed them spending any money on team training.  Sound familiar?  I think this situation happens more than we think.  So what can you do if you are starting a new team and you want to get it off the ground and performing as soon as possible?

This is where creating a team charter can be really valuable.  A team charter clearly identifies why the team exists and what it has been charged with accomplishing.  Some organizations have management create the team charter and present it to the team as their operating orders.  I actually believe the team charter should be a combined effort of management and the team.  Often organizations make the mistake of providing either too much direction or not enough.  If the team is not given the direction, authority, and the support it needs often it will flounder.  On the other hand, if the team is provided too much direction or is overly managed it will never learn to develop into a fully functioning team.

Management’s role is to provide the reason for forming the team or the purpose as well as the desired outcomes from the team and any boundaries or constraints it operates within such as budget or access to resources.  It also may either determine or have input into team members and especially the team lead and who the team reports to.  However in order for a team to develop and become self sufficient and fully functioning it needs some ability to manage itself.  It needs to have time to work though many of the important pieces of a successful team ideally with a skilled team leader or facilitator.  So what are the 5 most important discussions the team needs to have?

1. Clearly understanding about its purpose, expected deliverables, length of time is has been sanctioned for, boundaries, and constraints.
2. Determining roles and responsibilities and how team members will be held accountable.
3. Building consensus around the team ground rules, communication protocols, and decision processes.
4. Creating the team vision, goals and action plans.
5. Determining  how often the team needs to meet and how, face-to-face or virtual meetings. Additional questions include who will facilitate meetings, will this role get rotated, who will do the documentation, what other meetings roles are important?

Also don’t forget to build into your team opportunities to discuss and evaluate how these 5 areas are working.  Continuous improvements are critical for a team to move from forming to a fully performing, successful team.

What am I missing in launching a successful team?  Have you used a team charter and how did it help or not?