This session is for you if you want to achieve uniform expectations in your team. This can, for instance, make it easier to talk to each other about behaviour. In this session, you and your colleagues clarify your expectations for yourselves and for each other. Specifically, you focus on expectations about mutual cooperation in the team, with the manager and vice versa, with other organisational units and with external parties. You make things that are “under water” explicit. In this way, you create an understanding of where expectations are the same and where they conflict (the “pink elephants”). You then decide as a team how to deal with this.
Uniform expectations
Increase the effectiveness of cooperationFor whom?
Learning objectives
Approach
Preparation
No later than two weeks before the session, your team will receive the requested preparation. It is up to you to think about the different types of expectations and the decisions, agreements and actions needed to put them into practice. In this way, the thought process is initiated early on. This involves mutual expectations from you and the other team members about cooperation:
- Between the team members
- Between the team members and the manager and vice versa
- Between the team and other organisational units
- Between the team and relevant external parties
The session
During the session, we use an active instructional format. You and the other team members write down and present your input to one another. A striking aspect of the process is that you, as team members, have to find something to say about each other’s input. In this way, you gain an understanding of where expectations are equal and where they differ. The differences are recorded on a special “pink elephant flysheet”. These will be used as input for a group discussion. Here, we explicitly agree on how to deal with each other and what behaviour you do and do not accept as a team. This ensures a more effective cooperation. It also helps to encourage addressing each other’s behaviour if desired.
Securing
At the end of this session, you as a team will have a concrete overview of all perceptions, concrete agreements, decisions and actions concerning mutual expectations about cooperation. You will take these to the team meeting for securing or to one of the other consultation structures.