Align the Core Team
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Explain how to create shared understanding.
- Describe key methods for aligning your core team.
Methods for Alignment
Alignment is mostly a group activity, so most of these methods assume group participation. Hold workshops or working sessions to gather your group together in person or virtually, and guide them through the right activities to build alignment. It may not be possible to achieve total alignment, but these methods are some of our best practices for creating shared understanding and aligning your core team.
Shared Experience and Understanding Methods
Use these methods to increase shared understanding. To choose the right method, ask yourself whether the understanding you need to create is logical or emotional in nature, or a combination of the two.
Some examples of when to create shared understanding are when you need to:
- Connect stakeholders with a project’s value.
- Increase compassion for customer or community perspectives.
- Persuade the group of a compelling premise or way of thinking about a challenge.
- Communicate the intent of a solution, vision, or idea.
To increase shared understanding, try these methods.
- Build compassion for customers and users through research and prototyping.
- Use data to increase logical understanding.
- Use stories to increase logical and emotional understanding and compassion.
- Visualize a premise or framework to create a memorable shorthand.
- Use an experience narrative to convey a product or service vision.
Core Team Alignment Methods
Aligning your team sets them up for success, individually and collectively. Here are some best practices to align cross-disciplinary teams at key points during a project.
Before Kickoff
Clarify Project Goals
Make sure everyone understands what success looks like.
Discuss Team Members’ Hopes and Fears
Team members likely have feelings about a project at the start. Allowing them to share these feelings helps create social fabric within the team. It can also give project leaders some direction on what to watch out for and how to ensure team members are happy and effective.
Here are some examples of hopes and fears from past projects.
- I hope we get to create a video of user research clips.
- I hope I get to learn how to use a new tool.
- I hope the business leaders are open to big ideas.
- I fear that the project timeline is too short.
- I fear that I’ll have to sacrifice my exercise routine when we’re prototyping in the field.
- I fear that the vision we create will not be built.
Getting those hopes and fears out in the open helps team members support each other and set intentions for how the project can unfold.
Clarify Roles and Responsibilities
We all need to know our roles and responsibilities at the beginning of a new project. This is especially true on multidisciplinary teams and teams with multiple generalists. The RACI model (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed) helps you manage an extended team and manage their expectations.
But within the core team, you should also clarify roles early on. Who leads stakeholder communications? Who is responsible for facilitating workshops? Who leads research? Who facilitates critiques? While the leadership responsibility ultimately needs to rest with someone specific, you don’t need to observe a consistent hierarchical dynamic throughout a project if you do a good job of outlining roles ahead of time.
Consider the current capabilities of each member of your core team and the skills they want to learn. Is there an opportunity to mentor someone on a particular skill? Or shadow someone during a complex process? Consider the ways that your project can help your team and how you can set your team up to deliver on the project challenge.
Working Styles
Knowing yourself helps you be a better teammate. Before a project kicks off, it’s a best practice to invite conversation on each team member’s preferred ways of working. Here are examples of questions each team member can ask themselves, to help them convey what’s important to them.
- Are you an extravert who processes information by talking about it, or an introvert who needs quiet to focus?
- Are you most productive in the mornings or at night?
- Do you tend to simplify or complexify information intuitively? (Hint: both are important to have on a team, but might feel friction when working together)
- Do you prefer to work through problems by thinking or building?
- Do you like to communicate by Slack or email?
- What are your working hours, and when do you unplug?
- Do you want feedback in the moment or in private? And should it be frank or gentle?
Discuss ways to get each of your team members’ individual needs met.
Agreements
Once you know the working styles on your team, you can create formal agreements on how you’ll work together. For example, maybe you designate “team time” or time to collaborate versus time to work individually. Or perhaps you create norms and rituals that help you communicate more effectively, feel connected while remote, and respect people’s need to rest or be present with family. You can even include exercise breaks during team time in your agreement. Figure out what helps your team run smoothly before they get mired in problem-solving, and you’ll set them up for success.
At the Project Midpoint
Midway through the project, have a core team check-in, to talk about team alignment and how things are going. Ask a trusted person who’s not related to the project to facilitate it. Here are some best practices for the agenda.
Gratitude
Ask each team member to write something they’re thankful for about each teammate. It should be brief enough to fit on a sticky note, and the team should be able to write all of them within 5 minutes. Share them aloud, so everyone can hear what others are thankful for, and everyone gets to bask in the gratitude.
Mood Meter
Give each team member a blank diagram, with a horizontal line representing time from the beginning of the project until the current day. Ask them to plot key moments in the project on that line, be they personal moments, team moments, or project milestones. Then, turn this diagram into a Mood Meter by adding happy and unhappy icons above and below the line respectively, as if the farther you get from the line, the more extreme the emotion. Ask team members to reflect on their emotional journey throughout the project, and chart a line that represents the journey.
The point here is there are moments of intense inspiration and excitement in the work, and moments of anxiety, confusion, discomfort, and even fear. Make space to talk about the highs and lows, and use that as a way to foster group reflection while building trust among teammates.
I like/I wish/I will
Ask team members to spend 3–5 minutes writing reflections on sticky notes in the form of “I like” and “I wish” statements, with one statement per sticky note. The statements can be about anything at all related to the project, the work, or the team. They may or may not be related to the hopes and fears written before the kickoff, but it’s a similar idea.
Here are some examples from previous projects.
- I like how the team has kept a positive attitude even in challenging moments.
- I like how much our leadership team trusts us.
- I like working remotely.
- I like the deliverable we created.
- I wish we’d had more time for synthesis.
- I wish we’d brought in the technical perspective earlier on.
- I wish we could collaborate in person more.
- I wish we’d spent just a bit more time polishing the final edit.
Aim for at least three “I like” statements and three “I wish” statements per person, but don’t limit the number as long as you write them within the 3–5 minute window. Then take turns sharing what you wrote. The team should feel free to react to what’s said—to agree, share a different perspective, or build on the reflection. It’s hard to disagree with a statement that starts with “I wish” because the phrasing makes it clear that it’s someone’s individual perspective. But the format will successfully raise issues of friction for the team.
That’s where “I will” comes in. For any issues that need resolution, or any reflections that team members believe they could improve upon, team members can write an “I will” statement. These statements represent an intent to improve upon the team dynamic and ways of working. They allow people to assume responsibility for improving their teamwork, even if they’re not the formal team leader. They communicate that everyone has the power to impact the way things are done.
Wrap-Up Session
After the project is complete, have a facilitator from outside the team run a wrap-up core team alignment session. While this project is over, there are still opportunities to learn, and it’s always good to acknowledge the accomplishments and the journey. Here are some activities for the agenda.
- Gratitude: Just as you did at the midpoint, ask each team member to recognize every other team member with gratitude.
- Mood Meter: Repeat this exercise from the midpoint as well, noting whether the midpoint reflection had an impact on the experience of the rest of the project. What changed?
- “Take it forward” feedback: Ask each team member to give constructive advice or feedback to every other team member about something they can “take forward” to their next project. Feedback given in the spirit of nurturing personal growth is a gift, so ask the team to think of the feedback they give and receive in this way.
- Celebrate: At the end of a project, there is always something to celebrate. It’s tempting to move right on to the next challenge without a pause. But in doing so you miss the opportunity to appreciate all that you’ve learned and accomplished as individuals and as a team. Even if you didn’t reach every goal you set for yourselves, the celebration is an act of closure and appreciation for hard work.
Next, explore methods for decision-making and conflict resolution.