Just as we have life rules to shorten the time and energy of making certain decisions, our professional relationships and in general, any relationship in our life is governed by a set of rules that are usually tacit.
However, it is useful to go from the tacit to the explicit by writing the agreements we reach in our work team through some minimal rules of relationship that only strengthen the context created by the purpose and values.
Here are some of the most common ones for a work environment:
– Be punctual and notify when there are inconveniences to be so
– Listen carefully to others
– Act with honesty, ethics and integrity
– Communicate promptly any inconvenience to fulfill a work commitment
– Close any communication with an agreement, person responsible and date
– Help a colleague when he or she needs it, encouraging them to learn
– Learn something new every week
– Maintain order and adequate voice volume in shared spaces
Then a question comes up: what is the difference between team agreements and organizational values?
Organizational culture is defined in terms of its purpose (what are we here for?) and values (how do we do it?). The purpose and values create the organizational context and our set of rules, no matter how many: four, six or even ten rules to make a decalogue, is intended to detail the habits or behaviors that people must have to live in the values.
This set of rules makes all team members live in greater harmony, managing to focus each interaction with others on common productive tasks, rather than on fixing situations that could arise from individualistic conduct not negotiated with the team.
Abiding by a set of team agreements at work, gives us the satisfaction of sharing in physical and virtual spaces of a predictable nature and confidence in our expectations about others behaviours.