The Team Charter Workshop: Agendas, Templates, and Exercises

Prerequisite: This guide is the practical companion to How to Make Team Charters Work. Read that first to understand the “10 Problems” and the “Fluff Gap.”

You already know the theory. You know that a charter must be a living agreement, not a dead document, and that “Respect” is just a pleasant abstraction until it is tested by pressure.

But understanding the philosophy is different from standing in front of a whiteboard with 10 cynical team members, a stack of sticky notes, and a 90-minute clock.

This guide is on the mechanics of alignment. It ignores the “why” and focuses entirely on the “how”, providing the specific scripts, agendas, and exercises to move your team from “Fluff” (vague values) to “Concrete” (observable behaviours).

The Core Methodology: The “Fluff-to-Concrete” Framework

As the facilitator, a primary job is to be the “Fluff Police.” Most charter workshops fail because they stop at an aspiration. The team agrees on a nice word like “Innovation” or “Respect,” everyone feels good, and the meeting ends. But those words are “fluff.” They are open to interpretation, which means they are open to disappointment. To make a charter work, you must force every agreement through the 3-Column Translator.

The Setup: On your whiteboard or digital canvas (Miro/Mural), draw a massive table with three vertical columns. Label them clearly:

The Flow

Explain to the team that a sticky note cannot survive in Column 1. It must evolve as it moves from left to right.

• Column 1: The Value (The “Why”). This is where we start. We list the abstract concepts we care about (e.g., “Trust,” “Punctuality,” “Candour”).
• Column 2: The Behaviour (The “What”). This is the filter. We translate the value into an observable action. Ask: “If a video camera were recording us, what would it see us doing?” (e.g., “We do not send Slack messages after 6 PM”).
• Column 3: The Breach (The “Then What”). This is the accountability. We define what happens when the rule is broken, because it will be broken. (e.g., “If I message you after 6 PM, you are expected to ignore it until morning”).

The Facilitator’s Rule:

You cannot move a sticky note to the “Final Charter” area until all three columns are filled. “Respect” is not an agreement. “Ending meetings 5 minutes early” (Behaviour) + “Walking out if it runs late” (Breach)

is

an agreement.

Examples

1. “Respecting Time”

2. “Responsiveness”

3. “Open Communication”

4. “Deep Work”

5. “Knowledge Sharing”

The Philosophy of the breach

Why “nice” teams fail

Before we attempt to write the Breach Protocol, the specific steps we take when a rule is broken, we must address the emotional obstacle that usually prevents these agreements from sticking. That obstacle is our own desire to be “nice.”

Most teams value harmony. We want to be liked, we want the day to flow smoothly, and we certainly don’t want to be the person who stops a meeting to point out a violation. But in the context of high-performing teams, this instinct for politeness is often a poison.

When we prioritise being “nice” over being “clear,” we allow small resentments to calcify. We let the meeting run ten minutes late because we don’t want to interrupt the speaker. We accept the vague email because we don’t want to seem pedantic. We let the standard slip, inch by inch, until the charter becomes a fiction.

To make a team charter work, we have to rewrite our internal definitions of kindness, empathy, and safety.

1. Clarity is kindness

We often hesitate to correct a colleague because we fear it will be perceived as aggressive or mean-spirited. We ask ourselves, “How can I tell them they missed the mark without upsetting them?” But as Brené Brown argues, this hesitation is not about protecting the other person; it is about protecting ourselves from discomfort.

The old mindset tells us that correction is unkind. The new mindset, the one required for a living charter, is that withholding correction is the unkindest act of all. If we allow a colleague to drift from the team’s agreements without saying a word, we are knowingly setting them up to fail. We are denying them the data they need to improve.

In this light, a Breach Protocol is not a punishment mechanism; it is a signal system. It is a way of saying, “I respect you and your contribution too much to let you be out of alignment with the team.”

2. The trap of “ruinous empathy”

Kim Scott’s concept of Radical Candour gives us a precise language for what happens when we strip the “Breach Protocol” out of our team dynamics. She warns against the quadrant of “Ruinous Empathy”, a state where we care personally about our teammates (Column 1 of our charter) but refuse to challenge them directly when things go wrong (Column 3).

Ruinous Empathy is the leadership equivalent of seeing spinach in a colleague’s teeth and saying nothing because you don’t want to embarrass them. The result is that they walk around all day looking foolish, and you feel “nice” for having spared them a moment of awkwardness. But in reality, you have failed them.

3. Psychological safety is not comfort

Perhaps the most dangerous misconception in modern teamwork is the confusion between safety and comfort. Influenced by Amy Edmondson’s work, many leaders believe that a “psychologically safe” environment is one where everyone is always comfortable, conflict is low, and the boat is never rocked. That is not safety; that is complacency.

True psychological safety is the belief that the environment is robust enough to handle the truth. It means the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. Therefore, psychological safety means it is safe to be uncomfortable. It is safe to say “I don’t know.” It is safe to say “I made a mistake.” And, crucially for our charter, it is safe to look at a peer, or a boss, and say, “We agreed not to do that.”

Sample agendas

Choose the format that fits your team’s reality. These are just examples and can be adapted to your needs.

Option A: The “Intensive” (half-Day offsite)

Total Time: 4 Hours

• 0:00 – 0:30: Warm-up & Purpose.
• 0:30 – 1:30: Exercise 1: The Clarity Canvas.
• 1:30 – 1:45: Break (Mandatory)
• 1:45 – 3:00: Exercise 2: Boundary Mapping.
• 3:00 – 3:15: Break
• 3:15 – 4:00: Exercise 3 & 4: Authority & Breach Protocol.

Option B: The “Modular” (sprint-based)

• Module 1 (60 mins): Purpose & Clarity Canvas (Exercise 1).
• Module 2 (60 mins): Boundary Mapping (Exercise 2).
• Module 3 (60 mins): Decision Making & Authority (Exercise 3).
• Module 4 (60 mins): The Breach Protocol & Sign-off (Exercise 4).

The step-by-step exercises

Exercise 1: The Clarity Canvas (Defining Excellence)

Time: 45-60 Minutes Most conflict arises because we have different definitions of “Good Work.” One person thinks “done” means “fast”; another thinks it means “perfect.”

• The Tool: Use the Clarity Canvas to map expectations across two dimensions: What We Do (Tasks) and How We Work (Behaviours).
• The Prompt: “We use words like ‘Quality’ and ‘Ownership.’ But what does that actually look like? We need to define three levels for our critical tasks.”
• The Activity: Draw a grid with three columns:
  1. Beyond Expectations: What does “amazing” look like?
  2. Meets Expectations: What is the baseline standard we promise each other?
  3. Below Expectations: What does it look like when we are failing? (This is the most important column).

Facilitator Note: Ensure the “Below Expectations” column is honest. It is often where the “Breach Protocol” will later be triggered.

Exercise 2: Boundary Mapping (The Traffic Light System)

Time: 60-90 Minutes This replaces the typical “brainstorming norms” session with a structured negotiation of limits.

• The Tool: Use Boundary Mapping to visualise what is acceptable, flexible, or forbidden.
• The Prompt: “To perform at our best, we need to know where the edges are. We are going to map our boundaries in key domains like Time, Communication, and Meetings.”
• The Activity:
  • Select Domains: Choose 4-6 areas (e.g., Time, Communication, Decision Making, Meetings).
  • The Traffic Light Sort: Ask the team to categorise rules into three levels:
    • Red (Non-negotiable): Agreements that must always be honoured. Breaking these destroys trust.
    • Yellow (Flexible): Boundaries that can shift with discussion.
    • Green (Negotiable): Areas open to case-by-case agreement.

Exercise 3: The “Zones of Authority” (Decision Making)

Time: 45 Minutes Unclear decision-making is the fastest way to drain trust. When people don’t know if they have permission to act, they freeze, or they act and get punished. This exercise (often called “Delegation Poker” or “The Bullseye”) clears the fog.

• The Tool: Draw a target with 3 concentric rings on the whiteboard.
  • Centre Ring: “I decide” (Autonomy). You have full authority. You act, and you don’t need to tell anyone until later. (Speed is high).
  • Middle Ring: “We consult” (The Advice Process). You have the authority to decide, but you must consult specific people before you act. The decision is still yours, but the process is shared.
  • Outer Ring: “Manager decides” (Permission). You cannot act. You must propose, and the Manager/Lead approves. (Control is high).
• The Goal: The facilitator’s goal is to push as many sticky notes as possible toward the Centre. Speed and autonomy live in the centre; bottleneck and politics live at the edge.

Exercise 4: The Breach Protocol (Accountability)

Time: 30 Minutes You have defined your Red Boundaries in Exercise 2. Now you must decide how to defend them. Without a protocol, checking a colleague feels like an act of aggression. We need to turn it into a pre-agreed “game mechanic” so it feels safe.

The Menu of Protocols (Choose 1-2):

1. The “Yellow Card” (Visual): If someone interrupts, rambles, or gets personal, any team member can hold up a hand (or type “✋” in chat). No words are spoken. The speaker must stop and yield the floor.
2. The “ELMO” Rule (Verbal): Acronym: Enough Let’s Move On. When a discussion goes in circles, anyone can say “Elmo.” It is not rude; it is efficient.
3. The “Rabbit Hole” Signal (Gestural): If the team dives too deep into technical details during a high-level meeting, someone makes “bunny ears” with their fingers (or posts a 🐰 emoji). The topic is “parked” immediately.

The Practice Round: Do not just agree to it. Rehearse it. Ask the team to use the signal on you while you ramble.

Specific protocols for hybrid & remote teams

In an office, you can see when a colleague is “heads down” with headphones on. You can see when they are eating lunch. In a hybrid team, invisibility creates anxiety.

When we can’t see our colleagues, we tend to compensate by over-communicating (“performative presence”) or assuming the worst (“they aren’t working”). “Communicate often” is a disaster instruction for remote teams—it leads to Slack fatigue and Zoom gloom.

To fix this, we need explicit “Traffic Laws” for our digital highways. Replace the vague “be responsive” rule with these three specific Operating Systems.

1. The Communication Escalation Ladder

The Problem: A team where every notification sounds like an emergency. If we treat a Slack DM with the same urgency as a server fire, we destroy our ability to do deep work.

The Solution: Define your “Service Level Agreements” (SLAs) for each channel. The team must agree that Urgency determines the Channel, not the sender’s preference.

Facilitator Tip:

The most important row is the first one. Once the team knows there is a dedicated “Bat Signal” for true emergencies, they feel safe closing Slack to focus for 3 hours, knowing that if the world burns down, their phone will ring.

2. The “Signal System” (Digital Body Language)

The Problem: In the office, wearing headphones is a universal sign for “Do Not Disturb.” In Slack/Teams, a green dot just means “I am at my computer,” which invites interruption.

The Solution: Agree on a set of status emojis that act as your digital office door. This prevents the “Are they there?” anxiety.

• 🟢 The Open Door (No Status): “I am working and open to quick questions. Interruptions are fine.”
• 🎧 The Deep Work Mode (Red Status): “I am online, but I am in the flow. Do not DM me unless it’s a ‘Bat Signal’ emergency. I will reply when I surface.”
• 🌴 The Life Mode (Yellow Status): “I am walking the dog / picking up kids / eating lunch. I am not at my desk. I will be back at [Time].”

The Breach Protocol: If I have the 🎧 emoji up and you send me a “Hi, quick question?” DM, I am allowed to ignore it for 2 hours without guilt.

3. The Hybrid Handshake (Meeting Equity)

The Problem: “Room Bias.” In meetings where three people are in the office and three are remote, the people in the room inevitably start talking to each other, making eye contact, and using the whiteboard. The remote people become second-class citizens, reduced to passive observers.

The Solution: We adopt the rule of “One Person, One Screen.”

• The Rule: Even if we are in the same conference room, everyone opens their laptop and joins the Zoom/Teams call individually (with audio muted to prevent feedback).
• The Why: This ensures that everyone—remote or present—occupies the same sized pixel box on the screen. It democratizes the visual hierarchy.
• The “Remote-First” Speaking Order: When asking for feedback, the facilitator always goes to the remote participants first. “Jane (on Zoom), what do you think?” before asking “John (in the room).”

Maintenance rituals: Preventing the “zombie document”

The single biggest point of failure in this process isn’t the workshop itself; it’s what happens thirty days later. A team charter has a natural half-life. Without active maintenance, it decays into a “Zombie Document”, a file that lives on the shared drive, technically “alive” but devoid of any actual influence on how the team behaves.

Culture is not a marble statue that you carve once and admire forever; it is a garden that tends toward entropy. Weeds grow. Habits slip. To keep the charter alive, you don’t need more workshops; you need micro-rituals built into your existing cadence.

Ritual 1: The Weekly “Charter Check”

The Context: Do not schedule a separate meeting for this. Accountability works best when it is low-friction and high-frequency.

The Protocol: Reserve the final two minutes of your Weekly Team Meeting or Sprint Retrospective for a “Pulse Check.” The leader asks a single question:

“On a scale of Red, Amber, or Green, how well did we live our agreements this week?”

The power of this ritual lies in the definitions:

• Green (“All Good”): We operated exactly as we said we would.
• Amber (“The Wobble”): This is the most important state. It means, “We mostly got it right, but I saw a few emails slip in after 6 PM.” This allows for a 30-second micro-correction without drama. It signals that small slips are noticed, preventing them from becoming big habits.
• Red (“The Alarm”): A Red rating stops the meeting. It means a core value was violated (e.g., someone was publicly criticized or a deadline was missed without communication). You cannot ignore a Red flag; you must discuss the root cause immediately.

Ritual 2: The “New Hire” Reset

The Context: When a new person joins a team, they usually inherit the rules of the “ancestors.” This kills ownership. A new hire cannot feel responsible for a law they didn’t help write. If your team changes by more than 20% (or a key leader swaps out), your old charter is effectively void.

The Protocol: Instead of demanding compliance, offer the charter in “Draft Mode.” Use this script during onboarding:

“Welcome to the team. This is the charter the previous team wrote. It is currently in ‘Draft Mode’ for you. I want you to live with it for your first 30 days. On [Date], we will hold a session where you can challenge, delete, or rewrite any rule that doesn’t make sense to you.”

The Result: The new hire shifts from being a “guest” in your house to being a “co-owner” of the culture.

Ritual 3: The Quarterly “Dust-Off”

The Context: A charter should change as the team matures. A rule that was vital six months ago (e.g., “Cameras on”) might now be stifling. During your Quarterly Planning or Offsite, dedicate 30 minutes to “Pruning the Garden.”

The Protocol: Run a “Keep / Kill / Add

The “fist of five” ratification: breaking false consensus

You may by now have spent hours wrestling with definitions, mapping boundaries, and negotiating protocols. The room is tired. The temptation now is to look at the board, smile, and ask the most dangerous question in facilitation: “Does everyone agree?”

In polite teams, people will nod. They will nod because they want lunch. They will nod because the boss is nodding. They will nod because they don’t want to be the “difficult one” at the end of a long day.

But this silence is not agreement; it is compliance. And compliance evaporates the moment the meeting ends. To make a charter stick, you need explicit commitment. You need to know, before you leave the room, who is actually on board and who is secretly planning to ignore the rules (the “Pocket Veto”).

We use a physical ritual called the Fist of Five to force this truth into the open.

Why this works

• It destroys “Social Proof”: When you ask for a verbal “yes,” people wait to see what the influencer in the room does. With the Fist of Five, everyone reveals their hand simultaneously. The junior engineer can show a “2” at the exact same moment the CEO shows a “5.” It makes dissent visible before peer pressure can hide it.
• It validates “Good Enough”: Perfectionism kills charters. This tool teaches the team that Commitment ≠ Perfection. You don’t need a room full of “5s” (Total Excitement) to succeed; you just need a room with zero “1s or 2s” (Blockers). It gives people permission to say, “I’m not thrilled, but I will support it.”
• It is a Physical Seal: Intellectual agreements are forgotten easily. Physical rituals stick. There is a somatic weight to raising your hand and making a sign. It shifts the charter from being “some notes on a board” to “a pact we signed.”

The Protocol

1. The Setup

Do not spring this on them. Explain the scale clearly on the whiteboard so there is no ambiguity. Emphasise that honesty is the only requirement.

2. The Vote

The facilitator says: “We are going to vote together. On the count of three, hold up your hand.”: “1, 2, 3, SHOW.”

3. The Negotiation (The Crucial Step)

Scan the room. Ignore the 3s, 4s, and 5s for a moment. Look for the 1s and 2s.

If you see a 2, stop everything. Do not ignore them. Do not try to persuade them. A charter signed with a hidden “2” is a charter that will be undermined in the hallway tomorrow. A “2” is not an insult; it is data.

Turn to the person with the “2” and ask this specific question:

“What is the one specific change to the wording that would move you from a 2 to a 3?”

Often, it’s a simple tweak (e.g., changing “Always” to “Try to”). Make the edit live on the board. Then, re-vote. Do not leave the room until you have a sea of 3s, 4s, and 5s.

When the hands go up and the “2s” are gone, the work is done. You have alignment.

Conclusion: The paper is not the point

Completing this workshop feels like a finish line, but it is actually a starting line. The sticky notes and the “Fist of Five” vote are simply the mechanism we use to build something far more fragile and valuable: Trust.

We must reframe what this document actually represents in the daily life of the team:

• Reframe Clarity: Stop seeing definitions as “micromanagement.” See them as kindness. You are giving your team the freedom to run because they know exactly where the edges of the field are.
• Reframe Accountability: Stop seeing the Breach Protocol as “policing.” See it as stewardship. When a team member flags a broken rule, they are protecting the agreement you built together.
• Reframe Maintenance: Stop seeing the weekly check-in as “admin.” See it as hygiene.

Reflection questions:

As you prepare to facilitate this session, ask yourself:

1. The Reality Check: If you were to film your team for a week, would the footage match your values? Where is the gap?
2. The Safety Check: Are you truly ready for a team member to use the “Safe Word” on you?
3. The Clarity Check: Who on your team is currently struggling not because of a lack of skill, but because of a lack of definition?

Do you have any exercises that have worked for you?

Thanks for reading!