The Secret to Better Collaboration: Build a Team Charter

When a team pulls together toward a common goal, great things can happen. But as any experienced leader understands, effective teams don’t just magically gel. To excel, teams require clear guidance about what they need to accomplish and how to get there. And there’s one proven method for helping teams start off on the right foot: the team charter.

A team charter identifies pathways for your team, providing a roadmap to common goals and establishing the processes you’ll use to achieve those goals.

Let’s take a closer look at what a team charter is, why you need one, and how to implement one to keep people and projects moving forward.

 

Understanding team charters

A team charter is a written outline of your team’s purpose, goals, roles, and operating norms. It acts as a shared roadmap that tells team members how to keep moving in the right direction. Charters are centered on team collaboration and let you establish clear expectations, address risks, and define what success looks like.

A well-crafted team charter helps keep coworkers united around specific goals and aware of the tasks they must accomplish to achieve them.

Why do you need a team charter?

Whether you’re all in the office or some of your team members work remotely from home, you need a guidance system that unifies how you work together.

Creating a team charter can pull your team together by identifying who’s in charge of decision-making, clarifying everyone’s role, and setting performance goals to measure success. It provides a foundation of accountability. When everyone knows what the goals are and what is expected of them, they can focus their energy on the work itself and taking projects over the finish line.

Key components of an effective team charter

An effective team charter includes a clear mission statement, defined roles for each team member, a timeline of deliverables, and guidelines for communication, decision-making, and conflict resolution. These are the essential points to cover in a team charter:

Team mission and vision statements

Develop a clear mission statement that defines your team’s purpose in the organization and what it aims to accomplish. It might apply to an entire department or specific units within it. For example, consider a hospital. Everyone is working toward the wider goal of delivering healthcare, but an emergency care team needs a structure for efficient triage while a records team’s charter would focus on unifying complete patient health histories.You might have one person or a few people identify the mission and vision, but it can be helpful to bring in other team members to refine them.

Roles and responsibilities

List job titles and clearly define the roles and responsibilities of each team member. This transparency helps people understand who’s involved and what their part is in achieving success. It should be more than a general job description and cover duties specific to the team, such as “point person for resolving disputes” and “head of client outreach.” Keep it updated if roles change.

Goals and timelines

This section will be a work in progress as you move through projects and refine workflows. Use it to lay out project-specific goals, identify metrics for success, define budgetary limits, and chart a timeline. Clarify which team members are connected with each task, and describe the workflows and processes you will use. Keeping this section updated allows team members to understand how their work fits into the larger effort and who to go to when they have questions or problems.

Communication guidelines

Strong communication is essential to the success of any project. Establish expectations about the cadence of check-ins, who reports to whom, how everyone should communicate, and what knowledge sharing tools your team will rely on. It can help to keep notes, plans, conversations, and anything you collaborate on in a unified work operating system. Especially when team members aren’t working in the same place at the same time, you’ll need to know which remote collaboration tools are your go-to’s.

Decision-making process

Explain how your team will make decisions. Does every choice require a consensus or a majority vote? Are some decisions left up to a leader? Talk through your processes and clearly define them in the document. Putting these guidelines in writing will help prevent conflict around decision-making.

Conflict-resolution strategies

Coworkers and collaborators will have disagreements from time to time. Lay out in your charter how the team will handle conflicts and set boundaries for good communication. You can also reinforce company culture by setting guidelines that encourage active listening, mutual respect, constructive criticism, and being solutions-oriented. Discuss this section of the charter with your team and encourage them to contribute.

Steps to create a team charter

It can feel intimidating to document so much information on team goals, roles, and processes, but you can break it into stages and have multiple people help compile and review it. Here are the main steps for creating a successful team charter:

1. Gather input from all team members to ensure shared ownership. Start by asking team members for their input on key components of the charter, as outlined in the previous section.
2. Work together to reflect the team’s consensus. Use real-time collaboration tools to discuss ideas and draft the charter together. If needed, assign team members to draft different sections of the charter. Then reconvene to put everything together and refine the document. Seek input from each team member and ensure everyone’s ideas are heard and considered.
3. Review and finalize, and make sure everyone is on the same page. Share the draft or outline of your team charter and gather feedback. Set up a meeting to walk through each section and brainstorm together to refine your mission, goals, and communication guidelines. Once everyone is happy with the charter, have team members sign off on it. Share it with others in your organization to help clarify your team’s role and objectives.

 

Implementing the team charter in your organization

Once you’ve finalized the document, it’s time for implementation. Here are a few tips to get the most out of your team charter:

Ensure easy access

Keep the finalized charter in an accessible place within your online collaboration environment to ensure everyone has easy access. For example, if you’re using a work operating system like Slack, you could pin it in your team’s channel so it’s always at the top of the page.

Integrate into your daily workflows

Integrate the charter into your daily workflows, meetings, and decision-making. Don’t make it and then forget about it—keep it top-of-mind and refer back to it as often as needed to inform decisions and keep everyone moving toward common goals.

Regularly review and update the charter

Your team charter is a living document, not a static declaration. Revisit it often and make updates to reflect evolving goals and team dynamics. If your team grows, create new role descriptions. As you move to new projects or refine processes, revise those sections.

Benefits of a well-crafted team charter

Creating a team charter lays the foundation for working together well. Here are some of the main benefits it brings to the table:

• Unites the team around a shared purpose. A team charter highlights your team’s common goals and defines the workflows and processes to achieve them.
• Increases productivity and operational efficiency. When team members know their responsibilities, they’re more productive and efficient. An effective team charter clarifies roles and expectations for each member to prevent confusion and keep projects moving forward.
• Supports a positive, collaborative team culture. Team members involved in creating a team charter are invested in its success. They’re empowered to proceed with confidence, knowing their responsibilities, how to treat others on the team, and what to do when a conflict arises.

 

Charting success for your team

A team charter gives you a roadmap that keeps your team focused on a common goal and sets a clear path to success. As you unify your team, it helps to have a strong work operating system that integrates with a variety of software, keeps information organized, and offers AI-powered tools so you can work more efficiently. With a clear charter to pave the way forward, your team will know what to expect and can focus on collaborating to achieve results.