Originally published in Forbes, September 2022

By Chris “Mitch” Mitchell

Proactive, intentional and explicit sets of agreements on how to work together can help organizations avoid many of the obstacles often present in collaborative or team-based workplaces.

Most of us will concede that fully employed people typically spend more time with their colleagues than even their closest family or friends. This is especially true for those engaged in multidimensional, team-oriented workstreams and organizations. Such individuals regularly navigate demanding project challenges alongside the complexities that come from working collaboratively day after day. While not new, these working relationships have become increasingly complex and nuanced, with employees from different backgrounds and generations bringing distinct and often unique expectations and perspectives.

Take ABC Corporation, a client whose name I’ve changed for the purpose of this article. A large, private equity-backed organization, ABC Corporation has always prioritized collaboration among its expanding, multigenerational workforce. But these employees increasingly come from different worlds and articulate very different work preferences. Meanwhile, the pressure of intense change and scale is the new reality. An escalating number of dust-ups (and blow-ups) among team members prompted the company leaders to explore ways of proactively managing expectations, which they hope will help preserve morale and increase productivity in an increasingly uncertain business environment.

Fortunately for ABC Corporation and other companies contending with this challenge, there is a particularly effective and low-cost solution that improves both human dynamics and execution among coworkers—I call them “workstyle agreements.” These proactive, intentional and explicit sets of agreements on how to work together help organizations avoid many of the obstacles often present in collaborative or team-based workplaces. Norms like these help accelerate trust, which is the currency of teamwork.

Workstyle agreements can go by many names: proactive partnerships, workstyle compacts and even working covenants. But whatever you call them, they are gradually taking hold in high-performance organizations. Simply, they are a series of questions that serve as both assessments and commitments between coworkers, and even managers with their direct reports. They prompt individual teammates to share how they prefer to and best work with other people, a process that helps organizations boost engagement, professional satisfaction, retention and overall effectiveness. On a micro-level, they help build positive, productive relationships between employees and their managers. That is significant considering that relationships with the boss serve as the primary reason people stay at a job—or not.

A typical workstyle agreement addresses matters such as how often individuals like colleagues checking in or following up with them, preferences for audio versus video calls and what times of day are most conducive to productive meetings. They can even set expectations for response times for emails, Slack and texts. Leaders can also pose more relational questions, such as:

• What kinds of teammates, coworkers and partners have you worked best with, and why do you think it worked so well?

• What kinds of working relationships have been least productive and most frustrating for you?

• How do you prefer more challenging kinds of discussions to unfold?

• What does empowerment mean to you, and how can I help with that?

• What key agreements can you and I make with each other that will bring out our best work?

Organizations that encourage colleagues to engage in these kinds of proactive, precise and candid conversations experience them as extremely beneficial, especially when team members commit to ongoing dialogues to hash out and refine what’s working and what’s not. Further, they find that leaders frequently share their internal successes using these norms, leading to enterprise-wide adoption. Productivity can be contagious.

For ABC Corporation, workstyle agreements were game-changing. In less than a week, teams using them saw a noticeable improvement in collaboration, spirit, trust and productivity. Leaders rapidly became evangelists for them as easy-to-facilitate, no-cost tools and even implemented them within the C-suite.

Of course, there are potential pitfalls for companies looking to adopt the use of such agreements, which ABC Corporation successfully avoided. For example:

• Don’t make the process overly formal. The point of these agreements is that the conversations matter at least as much as the agreement, if not more. The intention is to create an ongoing dialogue that supports the best possible working relationships. Overly formalizing the process can put team members on the defensive and may even create problems where none existed previously.

• Prioritize culture first, if needed. Organizations with cultures rooted in power and control often normalize dynamics in which junior employees’ preferences don’t matter. Such companies are not well-equipped to adopt workstyle agreements, given that individual preferences might be ignored. Leaders should ensure that a healthy, collaborative culture is in place before attempting to roll out workstyle agreements.

• Don’t presume all preferences must be honored. The point of the workstyle agreement isn’t for team members to make demands or dictate how they’ll be managed. Rather, they outline a process that helps individuals consider how to best work together toward the proverbial win-win. Over time, colleagues learn how to partner with each team member while also holding themselves and their colleagues accountable.

Simple, no-cost, easy-to-implement tools rarely serve as effective, quick fixes. Workstyle agreements are an exception. They help organizations accelerate success by proactively building working relationships and ensuring teams are highly functional and productive—strengths that will become all the more vital if or when a recession takes hold.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mitch is a Principal at FMG Leading, a human capital strategy and advisory firm. A seasoned and motivating leader, coach, and speaker with over 25 years of experience, his expertise lies in his ability to successfully guide executives through times of upheaval and transformative change.

Mitch’s coaching philosophy brings a holistic approach to leader development. He focuses on the tension and gaps in leadership, while engaging the individual as a complete and integrated system. Through his unique background and expertise, Mitch excels at helping executive leaders thrive by managing essential habits and skills, such as the ability to compartmentalize personal and business issues, manage priorities, and overcome fear in performance, productivity and presence.

Mitch earned a Bachelor of Arts in Finance and Insurance from the University of Rhode Island, and his Masters in Divinity from the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts.