Team Resources
Templates & Toolkits
Team Essentials
Compelling Purpose: Customers
What should our Client Experience be? Every strong team is galvanized by a shared understanding and focus on serving their customers and stakeholders.
Compelling Vision
An elevator pitch is a 30-second answer to the question, "What does your team do?" You need an elevator pitch because in answering these questions, you're aligning with your teammates, stakeholders, leaders and even customers on the compelling goals and purpose for your team's work.
A vision, at its simplest, is a picture of where the organization, group or individual needs to be, or where it is going. Really compelling visions, set out what the organization will be able to do, and what opportunities it will be able to take advantage of, after the changes or actions have been achieved.
As Jonathan Swift said: “Vision is the art of seeing the invisible.” Getting people to line up behind a vision is the first order of business for your team. But it’s not always easy for a leader or team to imagine it. Why? Because “vision” is an imagined future state, it is indeed invisible.
Simply put, a roadmap is a strategic planning technique that places a project's goals and major deliverables (tasks, milestones) on a timeline, all grouped in a single visual representation or graphic.
The essence of OKRs is simple: to break down ambitious objectives into clear, manageable, and measurable results. OKRs lay out a path to success that boosts employee engagement.
Team Values
Values help guide actions, behaviors, and create team norms. They can act as a north star and help your team move in the same direction. This list helps teams scan and reflect on values that inspire them.
Start with your company’s values (or your teams if you have a list like that) and hold a discussion on how those collective values resonate? Where are some more aspirational? What are individual values that might complement shared values?
While your team objectives give your employees a destination, your team values will help them forge the path to get there. Getting your team involved in establishing common values early on and deciding what they should look like in practice is the best way to create values that have a lasting impact. each team member to choose their five values and write them down. Give people time to reflect and even put them in order.
Team Roles & Skills
Digging into Team roles & Skills is critical to the team's strong foundation by proving an opportunity for alignment upfront on roles, responsibilities, & skills.
This exercise taps into what your teammates want to learn and how that does or doesn’t fit with the goals of the team. First, of course, you need to identify objectives. Then you need to work with your team to identify what the needed competencies are and to strategize on how to fulfill these needs successfully.
Does your team suffer from having unclear roles and responsibilities? Team members might end up doing a lot of work, but is it the *right* work or are they wasting time? This game is a quick and fun way for your team to dig into these questions.
Team Enablers
Team Norms
Team Norms is an agreement between two people or a group of people which outlines how they work together. It encourages conversation and common understanding of an engagement relationship and outcomes.
Here are some "Powerful Questions" to help support the conversations around team norms. Consider the categories as you build out your working agreement.
Retrospectives-Companion to Norms
A retrospective is an opportunity to learn and improve as a team. This worksheet is designed to use when revisiting how effective the team norms are, and how the team is holding itself accountable to living their norms.
Team Prioritization
Stephen Covey has said: “If the big rocks don’t go in first, they aren’t going to fit in later.” Big Rock Planning helps you establish quarterly goals for your business to be successful. Big rocks should be established at every level in an organization: company-wide, leadership, departmental, and personal.
Eisenhower's Prioritization Matrix
The Eisenhower Matrix is a task management tool that helps you organize and prioritize tasks by urgency and importance. Using the tool, you’ll divide your tasks into four boxes based on the tasks you’ll do first, the tasks you’ll schedule for later, the tasks you’ll delegate, and the tasks you’ll delete.
The 80-20 rule (aka the Pareto Rule) is the principle that 20% of what you do results in 80% of your outcomes. Put another way, 80% of your outcomes result from just 20% of your inputs. Also known as the Pareto principle, the 80-20 rule is a timeless maxim that’s all about focus.
Team Retrospectives
Stretch project? Try… LIKED / LACKED / LEARNED. A retrospective is an opportunity to learn and improve. It is time set aside – outside of day-to-day routine – to reflect on past events and behaviors.
Lots of twists & turns? Try… FLAT (Future focus, Lessons learned, Accomplishments and Thank you). This team discussion should take place to support your team’s impact and focus.
Need to Regroup? Try… Learned / Missed / To Do. When your team is stuck or has hit a roadblock, have the team reflect on work from a different angle.
Retrospectives-Companion to Norms
A retrospective is an opportunity to learn and improve as a team. This worksheet is designed to use when revisiting how effective the team norms are, and how the team is holding itself accountable to living their norms.