How Teams Can Define Success for Themselves

Brief 

Teams can benefit from a formal document declaring values, desired behaviors and how those traits influence hiring, promoting and coaching, writes Art Petty. “Done correctly, this tool opens the door to feedback important for your growth and development,” Petty writes.

Insight

There’s a reason I frequently write, coach, and speak on the topic of leaders and managers defining the rules of success.Clarifying your group’s values or creating a Manifesto for Success gives substance and meaning to the working environment you want to bring to life with your group members.

This activity is essential and impactful whether you are leading a senior management team, a functional group, or a project team.The Manifesto for Success defines what it means to be a part of your group. It outlines the principles that govern working together and the behaviors expected by all involved.

Perhaps more importantly to many frustrated managers, the Manifesto for Success directly or indirectly highlights the unacceptable behaviors in the daily pursuit of work.

When the positive behaviors and principles are crystal clear, the inappropriate or disagreeable behaviors are as well. (This is double important for CEOs, General Managers, and Managers of Managers who regularly lament they wish their management team members would find a way to work together instead of against each other.)

How to Work With Your Group to Create the Manifesto for Success

I love introducing this initiative as an effort to define what it looks like to create a high-performance working environment where everyone is motivated and supported to be their best selves. You might get some eye-rolls, but that’s fine. People will buy in as the initiative gains steam. And, whether they admit it or not, everyone is interested in reducing stress, inefficiency, and dysfunction in their day jobs.

Start by facilitating discussion around these questions: