When creating a healthy team culture, consistent “norms” of behavior across a group are healthy and encourage a positive caregiver experience. Whether informing how we show up to meetings, how we behave, or even how we dress, these norms are important, even during this pandemic period of remote, virtual work.
Group norms provide expectations of how we behave and promote high performance, including:
- Building trust and rapport
- Supporting better time management
- Creating common language/terminology among peers
- Decreasing opportunities for conflict
Doug Lewis, GVP, of IS Administrative Technology, and executive sponsor of the IS Caregiver Experience Committee, is a big proponent of the group norm concept.
“Group norms are important because they help everyone know how we are going to work together and what the expectations are. As a result, you get improved alignment and speed.”
“They help take the unknown, and provide knowing and certainty. In a world of uncertainty, it brings clarity to our teams,” shares Doug.
Within his own team, Doug and his leadership took the following approach to understanding and establishing appropriate group norms, which involved:
- Conducting an initial survey that provided feedback on a virtual workspace
- Holding follow-up focus groups to dive deeper
- Drafting a list of norms from looking at themes and trends in the survey and discussions
- Prioritizing norms by vote
- Establishing a “Norm of the month” calendar, focusing on practicing a norm per month across the team
- Gathering feedback from the team on learnings
- Creating and sharing a tip sheet
Insights and what worked best for establishing group norms in Administrative Technology
Insights and Lessons Learned:
- Norms were in two buckets, which sometimes overlap – Behavior Norms and Work Norms (shared practices in the workplace, that tended to involve use of tools, e.g. Teams).
- Keep the process simple, refine as you go.
- Be specific about behaviors and what you expect.
- A system of mutual accountability is needed.
- Evaluate periodically for continuous improvement and keep “top of mind.”
- Microsoft Whiteboard helped with facilitation and allowed for anonymous input.
More information and resources
Read the inspiration for this effort, “10 Ways to Create Group Norms in Your Office” (toggle.com)
Review a full case study of group norms work in Administrative Technology
For more information, please contact John Lee, PM, IS Caregiver Experience Committee.