The Team Agreements:
Guidelines for effective team function.
Explicit behavioral agreements that guide interactions and collaborative problem-solving.
Shared expectations for communication, feedback, and conflict management.
Structural support that establishes transparency, accountability, and psychological safety within teams.
No team member holds absolute truth. Every position contains a kernel of validity — synthesis is the goal of disagreement, not victory. When perspectives conflict, we identify what each position gets right before we assess what either gets wrong.
No one person has all the answers — and none should be expected to. When uncertain, team members bring the problem to the team rather than working alone. Consultation is not a sign of weakness. It is the structural practice that enables better decisions.
Team members differ — in their approaches, responses, and thresholds. That is expected. We don't have to agree on how to handle every situation, and we don't have to match everyone else's behavior. Diversity of approach isn't a problem to resolve. It's a condition to respect.
People have different limits — and those limits are legitimate. What one person can absorb, another may not. The team respects limits rather than pathologizing them and communicates clearly when limits are reached.
Before attributing negative intent, identify interpretations that are both charitable and grounded — consistent with the other person's experience. Question: given their context, history, and current regulatory capacity, how does this behavior make sense? Non-pejorative means not leading with blame. Phenomenologically empathic means seeing it from within their experience. That combination changes what's possible in the conversation.
Everyone makes mistakes. There will be moments where regulatory capacity falls short. That is expected — and it doesn't make anyone a failure. What matters is returning to the work with honesty, applying the same assumptions to ourselves, and continuing.