It's especially worth doing on a distributed team, where the unwritten norms differ from person to person and culture to culture. This is the exercise we recommend in our playbook for managing an offshore marketing team. Use the template below as a starting point, then make it your own as a team.
How to Run It
- Share this template with the team ahead of time so people can think about it
- Get together (a call works fine) and talk through each area
- Agree on a few concrete commitments per area, in your own words
- Write the agreements down somewhere everyone can find them
- Revisit and adjust as the team grows or the work changes
Keep it a living document, not a rulebook. The goal is shared clarity, not bureaucracy.
The Template
Work through each area and write down what your team agrees to.
1. How We Communicate
Get specific about channels and speed so nobody is guessing.
- Which channel for what (chat vs. email vs. a comment in the project tool)
- Expected response times, and how they differ by channel and urgency
- When something should be async versus a quick call
- Core hours when people should generally be reachable
2. How We Hand Off Work
Progress shouldn't depend on one person being awake or online.
- Where work and status live, so nobody has to ask
- What a clean handoff includes (context, deadline, what "done" means)
- How we flag when we're blocked, and how quickly we unblock each other
3. How We Give and Receive Feedback
Name this explicitly, because feedback norms vary a lot from person to person.
- How we give feedback (and a shared default toward private, constructive, specific)
- How each of us prefers to receive it
- That it's safe to disagree, raise concerns, and say "I don't understand"
4. How We Make Decisions
- Who owns which decisions, and what needs group input
- How we disagree and commit once a call is made
- How we document decisions so they don't get relitigated
5. How We Recognize Wins
- How we celebrate, individually and as a team
- How each person likes to be recognized (public shoutout, private note, and so on)
- That we pause to notice wins before rushing to the next thing
6. How We Respect Each Other
- Assume there's a whole human on the other side of the screen
- Respect time off, holidays, and personal boundaries
- Make space for light personal connection, it makes the work better
A Few Prompts to Get the Conversation Going
If the team needs a nudge, these questions surface the unspoken stuff fast:
- What's one thing that would make working together easier?
- When has a handoff gone wrong before, and what would have prevented it?
- How do you prefer to be told when something you made needs changes?
- What's your honest preference: a quick call, or write it down?
- What does a great teammate do that you wish everyone did?
Write the answers into your agreements. The act of saying it out loud, together, is most of the value.
A Filled-In Example
Blank prompts are easier to use when you can see what "done" looks like. Here's an example of a completed ways-of-working agreement from a growth marketing team. Yours won't read exactly like this, and it shouldn't. Use it as a model for the level of specificity, then write your own.
Our Ways of Working
This is a starting point, not a rulebook. Our work moves fast and touches a lot of the business, so how we show up for each other matters as much as what we ship. These agreements help us do great work, build real relationships, and feel proud of the impact we're making. The goal is simple: work hard, support each other, and grow together.
1. We lead with humanity. People do their best work when they feel known and respected. We make space for light personal sharing when it fits, we respect boundaries (sharing is invited, never required), and we assume there's a whole human on the other side of the screen. Strong relationships aren't a distraction from performance. They make it better.
2. We share the credit and own the outcomes. Wins are collective, accountability is individual. We celebrate wins loudly and often, and we pause to notice them before rushing on. We give credit generously and specifically. We own our numbers, our commitments, and our follow-through.
3. We default to action and momentum. Progress beats perfection. We act even without complete information, we unblock ourselves and each other instead of waiting, and we ask for help early and without hesitation. When we're stuck, we ask: what's the smallest next step we can take? To keep things moving, we make clear agreements about who owns what and how work gets handed off, so progress never depends on a single person.
4. We treat everything as a learning opportunity. Our work is experimental by nature. We treat wins, misses, and surprises as data, we talk openly about what didn't work without blame, and we use what we learn to make better calls next time. Curiosity over defensiveness. Candor over comfort. Learning over ego.
5. We maximize opportunities, for the team and ourselves. We look for leverage in our work and our growth. We raise our hands for stretch projects, we share context and insights proactively, and we help each other build skills, confidence, and visibility. One person's progress strengthens the whole team.
6. We own our own growth. Growth is something we actively pursue. We take responsibility for our own development, we ask for feedback and clarity when we need it, and we treat our manager as a partner and coach, not the sole owner of our growth. We meet investment in us with ownership, curiosity, and initiative.
Notice what makes this work as an example: it's specific, it's written in the team's own plain voice, and every agreement names a behavior rather than a vague value. That's the bar to aim for when you write yours.
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