10 minutes

Writing the agreement with your team

A team learning agreement turns four conditions — questions, mistakes, feedback and disagreement — into routines anyone can see, use, point at and change.

What you’ll be able to do

Draft or rework a team learning agreement with your team that states observable routines for questions, mistakes, feedback, disagreement and access, with a named holder and a review point.
Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: Where do you start the rework?
Draft a team learning agreement for your work, including how a meeting opens and how materials arrive, what happens when someone raises a concern, what happens after a mistake.

From a poster to a working agreement

Most teams have something. Values on a wall, four rules from an off-site, or an unwritten understanding that everyone learned by watching. The written ones usually share a weakness: they describe attitudes rather than behaviors. “Be respectful,” “assume good intent,” “step up and step back” are impossible to check, impossible to point at without accusing a colleague of a bad character, and comfortable mainly for the people the meeting already suits.

A working agreement describes routines. It says what happens in the first ten minutes, how materials arrive and by when, what happens to a concern raised late, what gets written after a mistake, how feedback reaches the supervisor and what comes back, and who can reopen a decision. A new colleague can read it and know what to do. Anybody can say “we agreed the agenda goes out two days ahead” without implying that a colleague is careless.

How it is written matters as much as what it says. If you arrive with a finished agreement, you have written a policy and the team will treat it as one. Bring a draft, say plainly that it is a draft, and let the team rewrite it in their own words. Expect the first version to be too long; a short agreement that people follow beats a thorough one nobody remembers. Go first on the line that applies to you, and name what you are hardest to hold to.

Keep two things out of it permanently. It never requires anyone to disclose a diagnosis, a belief, a background or a private experience — what someone needs to take part is asked for openly and provided without an explanation. And it is never a record about a person. It is a description of how the team works, which the team can change whenever the work changes.

From a feeling to something you can see

Instead of “assume good intent”: when something lands badly we say so in the moment, and the person who said it listens first and answers without defending.
Instead of “be respectful”: we argue with the decision, the evidence and the process, and we do not characterize each other's motives.
Instead of “step up and step back”: the first ten minutes go around the table in order, and the person who owns the item speaks last.
Instead of “be present”: the agenda and materials arrive two working days ahead as real text, and we do not read slides aloud in the meeting.
Instead of “there are no bad ideas”: every question gets one line in the notes with an owner and a date before the topic closes.
Instead of “we learn from our mistakes”: when something goes wrong we write four lines — what happened, what made it reasonable, what changes, who checks and when — and the person closest to it reads them first.

A team learning agreement

Seven lines a team can draft together in about thirty minutes, keep where everyone can edit them, and review on a date that is already on the calendar.

How a meeting opens and how materials arrive Agenda and materials two working days ahead as real text rather than images of text. Captions on by default. The first ten minutes go around the table in order, and the item owner speaks last.

What happens when someone raises a concern The concern stays in the room. Before the topic closes it gets one line in the notes, a named owner and a date. If there is no time, it opens the next agenda rather than becoming the asker's homework.

What happens after a mistake Four lines: what happened, what made it reasonable at the time, what changes, who checks and when. The person closest to it reads the account first. Names appear as owners of fixes, not as causes.

How feedback reaches the supervisor, and what comes back One route that does not run through the supervisor — a rotating note-taker, a peer, or a short written round — used at a set point. Within two weeks the team hears what changed, what did not and why.

How a decision is recorded and reopened The notes carry the decision, the disagreement and the open question. Anyone may ask once for a decision to be reopened, with what is new.

Access, and what nobody has to ask for What a person needs in order to take part is asked for openly and provided without explanation. Nobody describes a diagnosis, a belief, a background or a private experience to be covered by anything here.

Who wrote this, who holds it, and when it is reviewed Drafted by the whole team, held by a named person, open for anyone to edit, and reviewed at the agreed point and whenever the team changes size, membership or the kind of work it does.

Copy the seven lines into a shared document, bring them to a team meeting as a draft rather than a decision, rewrite them in the team's own words, name who holds the copy, and put the review point on the calendar before anyone leaves.

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Four conversations to have while you draft it

Who writes it, and who can change it

Say at the start that the draft is disposable and the team's version is the real one. Then prove it by keeping a line you would not have written. An agreement only one person can amend is a policy with friendlier wording.

What we do when we disagree with a decision that is already made

Most teams have no answer, so disagreement goes into corridors. Write one: the decision stands, the disagreement goes in the notes, and anyone may ask once for it to be reopened if something new appears. That single line prevents a great deal of quiet resistance.

What access is built in, and what nobody has to ask for

Decide what arrives by default for everyone — materials ahead of time as real text, captions on, a pace that allows processing, a room people can reach — so that access does not depend on somebody being willing to request it in front of colleagues.

What happens when the agreement is broken, including by me

Name what anyone may say when a line is missed, in words that do not accuse: “we agreed the agenda goes out two days ahead.” Then say what you will do when it is aimed at you, and do that the first time it happens, because the first time sets the value of the whole document.

Draft it with them, and go first

What you can change

You control whether the agreement arrives finished or unfinished, and whether the first line anyone tests is one that applies to you.

What to watch for

Do not hand out a polished agreement and ask for comments. A team reads a finished document as a decision, and you will get agreement rather than the version they would actually follow.

Your next step

Bring a draft with at least two lines you are unsure about, say which line you personally find hardest to hold to, and keep whatever the team rewrites.

Which line in a team learning agreement can actually be used six months from now?

We value curiosity and we assume the best of one another.

When a concern is raised and there is no time for it, it goes into the notes with an owner and a date, and it opens the next agenda.

Everyone is encouraged to speak up, and there are no bad questions.

A private reflection, for you alone

Nothing here is collected, scored or seen by anyone else. Take whichever question is useful and leave the rest.

How might my role, authority and language change what people are willing to say in a meeting I run? Who on my team is most likely to be helped by the way we work now, and who is most likely to be burdened by it? Whose expertise is missing from the way this team makes decisions, and what would it take to have it here earlier? If something on my team went wrong and somebody was harmed or excluded, what would accountability and repair actually require of me rather than of them?

One more, if it is useful: what did it cost the last person who disagreed with me in public, and how would I know?

Try a situation

Your team's ground rules were written at an off-site three sessions ago and are pinned to the wall: assume good intent, be present, step up and step back, there are no bad ideas. In the last two months, two decisions were settled in side conversations before the meeting, one experienced staff member has stopped raising concerns, and a new colleague who uses a screen reader received the agenda as scanned images twice.

Where do you start the rework?

Re-read the rules at the next meeting and ask everyone to recommit to them.

Ask the team to rewrite each rule as something a person can observe, add how materials arrive and by when, and set a review point.

Drop the agreement, which clearly is not working, and handle expectations in individual supervision instead.

Carry this forward

An agreement one person writes and announces is a policy. An agreement the team drafts, edits and can reopen is a tool they will actually use.
Unenforceable rules quietly favor whoever is already comfortable. “Assume good intent” cannot be checked; “when something lands badly we say so in the moment, and the person who said it answers without defending” can be.
Put access inside the agreement rather than beside it: materials ahead of time as real text, captions on by default, a pace that allows processing, and one open line about what a person needs to take part.
Nobody has to disclose a diagnosis, a belief, a background or a private experience to be covered. An agreement that depends on disclosure has already excluded someone.
An agreement with no review point becomes a poster. Put the review on the calendar in the same meeting that produces the draft.

A scenario about ground rules that no longer match how a team works, a team learning agreement you can copy into your own team's routine, and a knowledge check on what makes a line usable six months later.

Take thirty minutes of one team meeting to draft or rework the agreement together, name who holds the copy, and set the review point before anyone leaves the room.

Your next step

What does your team currently have in place of an agreement?

Write down the three rules your team actually follows, including the unwritten ones

Pick the one that costs someone the most, and bring it to the team as a question rather than as a change

Name the date the draft will be reviewed, and put it on the calendar in the same meeting

Decide which line you will hold yourself to first, and say so when you hand out the draft

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Mark this lesson complete

Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.