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Group norms — how we communicate with each other, what we consider civil and appropriate, and so forth — are generally implicit. We only notice them when they’re not working — for example, when someone does something that feels unproductive or disrespectful to another. Unfortunately, what may seem like a breach of protocol to one might feel perfectly acceptable to another.

Many breakdowns in groups can be attributed to this lack of alignment around norms. This can be straightforward to address, but groups often fail to make the time to do so.

A simple and powerful solution is to come up with a shared set of explicit working agreements. This toolkit helps groups develop and refine working agreements on a regular basis by helping teams have productive conversations that matter.

Team Handbook

There is no One Right Answer for what your “final” working agreements should look like. You can use the the Team Handbook template as a starting point. To use, you’ll need to make a copy of the template by clicking on this link, then selecting File > Make a copy… in the menu.

I would encourage leaders to fill this template out for themselves, even if you are planning on a collective approach for developing working agreements. After filling out the template, I would encourage you to customize the handbook so that it embodies your team’s culture and brand. Make sure these documents live somewhere where everybody will see them constantly.

The Team Handbook consists of five sections:

  • Working Agreements. These high-level agreements tell the Story you want to tell about your team and serve as a Compass for how well your team is working together. You should aim for five or fewer Working Agreements. (Examples)
  • Communication and Conflict. How do you want everyone on your team to communicate with each other? What do you want conflict to look like? You don’t need this as a separate session if your Working Agreements already cover these.
  • Roles and Decision-Making. What are the different roles on the team? Who owns the meetings? Who makes decisions for the team as a whole, and how are these decisions made and documented? Who is responsible for organizing the team’s information (i.e. information hygiene)? Who takes notes?
  • Rhythm and Flow. Overall processes for your team or group. What are your team’s working hours? When and how often do you have meetings, including team retreats? When and how often do you do individual checkins (e.g. 1-on-1s)? When do you align as a team around goals and success? When do you align as a team around these Working Agreements? When do you do retrospectives?
  • Tools. What tools are you using as a team? What are the protocols around these tools? If you’ve covered these in the Rhythm and Flow section, you don’t need this as a separate section.

See Eugene Eric Kim’s Team Handbook for an example of what a filled-out template looks like.

A Collective Approach to Developing Working Agreements

You can develop Working Agreements for your team in a top-down or bottoms-up way. The top-down approach is to simply fill out the Team Handbook template, then to share it with your group, integrating feedback afterward if you’d like. (Managers who would like to go through a guided process for developing their Working Agreements should apply for Power and Love for Managers, our 10-week cohort training.)

The bottoms-up approach is to give everyone in the group a chance to do their own thinking about what they’d like the Working Agreements to be based on their experiences, then synthesize that thinking into a collective set of Working Agreements. For a bottoms-up approach, it is critical for the group to understand in advance how the final decision will be made and who will be making it.

The working agreements themselves should be considered a living document, meant to be revisited and refined on a regular basis. Repeat this process at least twice a year.

Step 1. Pair Conversations

Rather than do this process as a full-group conversation, we like to start by having everyone have a 30-90 minute conversation with at least one other person in the group.

  • For a small group (five people or less), ideally everybody should talk to everyone. In other words, for a group of five, each person will have four one-on-one conversations.
  • For larger groups, people should have between 2-4 conversations with the people they work with closest.
  • The length of these conversations depends on the healthiness of the group. If it has a healthy culture, 30-minutes should be enough. If there are problems, you may need 90-minutes. The first time groups use the toolkit, they should allocate at least an hour.

Before each pair conversation, create a feedback template for each person to fill out for their partners. You can use this Google Doc template by opening it, then selecting File > Make a copy… in the menu. These should only be accessible by the pairs.

Each person should fill out the templates before they meet with their partners.

Also create a meeting notes template for each pair.

  • If your group does NOT already have Working Agreements, use this template.
  • If your group DOES already have Working Agreements, use this template.

When the pairs meet, they should share their feedback forms with each other and answer any clarifying questions that may come up. They will then use their meeting notes templates to capture key takeaways from their conversation. These templates will be accessible to the entire group.

Repeat this process for each round of pair conversations.

Step 2. Synthesize Pair Conversation Notes

Once these conversations are complete, a designated person or group of people should read all of the notes and synthesize them into a draft set of Working Agreements. This could be the leader of the group, a consultant, or — for large groups, departments, or organizations — a “design team” consisting of a representative group of stakeholders.

The draft should then be sent to the entire group for review.

Step 3. Discuss, Revise, and Commit

Once everyone has had a chance to review the draft, there should be a full-group meeting where people can share their thoughts and work through disagreements.

Afterward, the designated synthesizer(s) would revise the draft and send it out again for review. The group would then go through its agreed-upon process to decide what the final Working Agreements should be.

Related Blog Posts

For more on the design philosophy of these tools, read, “Balance Bikes for Changemakers” (January 16, 2018).

About

Eugene Eric Kim created the original version of this toolkit with contributions from Anya Kandel. He has revised it repeatedly over the years based on feedback from his clients.

Unless otherwise stated and to the extent possible under law, we dedicate this toolkit to the public domain.

History

June 9, 2026

  • New and updated templates, including the Team Handbook template
  • Updated examples
  • Slide deck explainer

September 8, 2017

  • v1.0 released