The Value of Being Explicit 

Responsive, adaptive organizations invest time upfront to make future work easier. I call this frontloading.

One simple, impactful and repeatable way to frontload work is by performing a team agreement at the start of a project or when forming a new team.

Ever had a terrible roommate? Imagine how much time and energy you could have saved by getting clear about your boundaries with that person before they left dishes in the sink for two weeks?

I’ve worked with hundreds of teams during my career and I know team agreements are a game-changer. If you do them.

At the moment you’re reading this, I am in the middle of a project with several other business owners in the Tampa Bay area. At the start of the stay-at-home order, we agreed the best use of our energies was to help others struggling, or unemployed, as a result of the pandemic. Excited, and full of hope, we hopped on Zoom and started to divvy up tasks. “You start fundraising, I’ll handle operations, we will all procure products … ,” and we’re off. 

All was fine for a few days until the unknowns started to pop up like whack-a-moles. 

One is not so bad; you can ignore one. But then another, then five, then 10 more. Who would have thought that requests for free stuff, asking people for donations and working with a team of people I’ve never met, during a global pandemic, would be so complex?

In retrospect, would I have changed my endeavor of this project? Probably not. It’s given me purpose, fulfillment and a challenge during this time. If you’re a leader like me, a time without any of those things is pure torture. 

What I would change is how I showed up for that team at the start. 

One hour of getting explicit, with a team agreement, could have alleviated dozens of hours of rework, hundreds of unchecked conspiracies and avoided confusion on roles, responsibilities and expectations. 

Said differently we could have been much more successful, and much happier. 

A team agreement looks something like this: 

Team Purpose

❏ Why does this team exist?

❏ What is our definition of success?

❏ How do we know we’ve reached success or gone too far?

Beneficiaries

❏ Who are we serving?

Structure

❏ Who’s on the team and what are our roles?

❏ How often do we meet and why?

❏ What technology do we use to stay connected?

❏ How do we share our work?

Accountabilities

❏ What is expected of all team members?

❏ What are the top two or three accountabilities of this team?

Decision Rights

❏ What can we decide alone? What do we need approval for?

This space is also the perfect time to establish boundaries with your teammates. All those annoying little things about people that get in the way of doing good work—but we can never say anything about it because that would be impolite, right? Wrong. Clear is kind.

Establishing boundaries means being explicit about what is OK and what’s not OK.

If you’re the leader, it’s your responsibility to help the team understand what is most important to you and what is not.

If you’re an individual contributor, boundaries could be more personal. How do you work best? Are you OK with 10 p.m. phone calls?

Ultimately the decision to act is up to you, the leader. ♦

Kim Linton is the owner of 1Light Daring Leadership & Facilitation. She works with individuals, and teams, who want to make work modern, courageous and intentional. She is a certified “Dare to Lead” facilitator and provides agile, repeatable, profitable solutions for teams. Reach her at [email protected] and see more at weare1light.com.

You May Also Like
Ask the Experts: Crafting an action plan for poor sales performance

Don’t look now, but we’re already into the second quarter of 2025. The first quarter is in the books and, if you’re like most sellers and sales leaders, you probably

Read More
March is the time to reflect on your sales strategies

March Madness is a well-known term in sports, signifying the NCAA college basketball tournament — a thrilling, single-elimination, winner-take-all event. Beyond the basketball courts, March also brings the excitement of

Read More
Ask Debbie Lundberg: Savy, Single and Sick of Questions

Hello Debbie! In February, many of my work, and personal, interactions had people asking me about my relationship and sometimes the inquiries were difficult to address.  As an introvert who

Read More
How to effectively qualify sales opportunities

If you’re reading this, you already know that sales can be a challenging business—constant rejections, numerous dead ends, endless price quotes and proposals that often don’t lead to anything. It’s

Read More
Other Posts
How Sales Managers and Salespeople Can Thrive in 2025

As the new year begins you (hopefully) have drafted and are preparing to implement a plan to increase sales and drive revenue, in 2025. Take a moment to survey the ever-changing

Read More
Jim Marshall
Traversing long-term traumatically impacted people & conversations kindly 

By Loran Jarrett, DBA, and Debbie Lundberg, MBA  Educators, Entrepreneurs and Hurricane Helene/Milton Home Loss Victims You hear about it on the news or through a friend of a friend

Read More
The unsung ripple effect of back-to-back hurricane disasters in the SBA world

By Brooke Mirenda, CEO of SEDCO  As a Small Business Administration lender, I received notice on Oct. 15, at 5:30 p.m., that the SBA has already exhausted its disaster funding

Read More
Brooke-mirenda
Mental health in the wake of Tampa Bay’s double hurricane hit 

By Carrie Zeisse, chief executive officer of Tampa Bay Thrives Tampa Bay residents are no strangers to hurricane season, despite the area being spared a significant, direct, hit for over

Read More