Natuurlijk is er geen standaard lijstje van de beste vragen en is ieder team en ieder vraagstuk in een team uniek. Vanuit Loes van Luijk haar teamcoachervaring en opleidingen heeft ze wel krachtige vragen ontdekt die zij als teamcoach vaker inzet.
Wanneer hebben we een goed overleg gehad?
Wat gebeurt hier eigenlijk?
Wat heb je nodig van ons?
Wie of wat heeft er last van als we dit oplossen?
Stel jullie belangrijkste opdrachtgever komt nu binnenlopen, wat zou die dan zien?
Zou iemand de ondertiteling aan kunnen zetten?
Wat hebben we allemaal al in huis om dit op te lossen?
Wat wordt er vergeten?
Als er een vannacht een wonder gebeurt, hoe zouden jullie dan morgen samenwerken?
Randy Keyers wrote a nice article about why it is worth considering to de-silo and work with teams that can have a shared responsibility for the end-to-end solution to foster the ability of working truly Agile.
Every time a new team is formed, it takes time to grow from a group of people to a well-functioning team. In their journey to become a high-performing team, they need a shared understanding of the principles and values of each individual and the team. The most important principles and values can be summarized in a team manifesto, a social contract among the team members. A team manifesto is always built by the team itself. It contains a set of norms, values and behaviors that forms a solid ground for collaboration within the team.
Building the Team Manifesto
With every team I coach, one of the first things we do is building a team manifesto. Recently, I did this by using the Retrospective format ‘That guy, this guy’. The results were great! Therefore, I would like to share this workshop format with you.
Plan a timebox of 60 minutes with the entire team
Bring flip charts, sticky notes and markers with you
Create two flip charts with: ‘Don’t be that guy…’ and ‘This guy rocks!’
Explain to the team what the goal of this session and a team manifesto is
Ask the team members to write down characteristics associated with ‘that guy’ (the person that you don’t want in your team) and ‘this guy’ (the person that is a perfect team member) on sticky notes, individually and in silence
Let the team members explain what they wrote down and collect the sticky notes on the flip charts
Consider to cluster the characteristics, if there is a lot of overlap
Ask the team members to prioritize the characteristics, by dot voting on the ones they value the most for the team (every team member gets five dots to divide among the items)
Select the five to seven most important characteristics
Divide the team in three groups and give each group a set of characteristics
Ask the groups to describe what each characteristic means for the team
Let each group explain what they wrote down and adjust this with the feedback from the other groups
Summarize all parts of the team manifesto on one flip chart and invite each team member to commit to it, for example by writing down their signatures
Make sure the team manifesto is visible at all times
A team manifesto ensures that the team coherence improves. It is a common understanding about the desired behavior within the team, and what it means for them to be a team. Since the team has ownership over the team manifesto, team members will behave according to it and encourage others to do the same.
Since it’s such a tried-and-true format, there are plenty of articles on the Team Radar, with advice and emphasis added based on the author’s position and involvement with teams. Christiaan Verwijs of The Liberators approaches the subject from a facilitation perspective with a Scrum Master-y stance in 2017’s Retrospective: Do the Team Radar, while Petra Wille’s 2019 article The Secret Weapon of Retrospectives – the Team Radar over on Mind the Product is clearly written from a product managerial perspective. Use the best of both for your team’s next (radar) retrospective.
