Facilitate a chartering workshop that produces a documented purpose statement and success measures.
Leadership & Management
Team Charters and Working Agreements for New and Restructured Teams
Trains managers to facilitate a team chartering workshop that defines purpose, decision rights and working norms, so new or restructured teams stop guessing how they are meant to operate.
🗓️Duration5 training days
📚Content4 modules · 8 sessions
🎓On completionAccredited attendance certificate
About the programme
Course Overview
A new or restructured team rarely fails because the individuals lack skill; it fails because nobody agreed how decisions get made, which channel carries urgent information, or what happens when two people disagree. This course treats the team charter as a working document rather than a one-off poster, built through a facilitated workshop that surfaces the assumptions people bring from their previous teams. Participants learn to design and run a chartering session that defines purpose, success measures, roles and explicit decision rights, then convert those agreements into day-to-day norms covering meeting cadence, response times and escalation paths. Particular attention goes to the situations that make charters necessary rather than decorative: teams formed from a merger or reorganisation, teams absorbing redundancy survivors alongside new hires, and teams that skipped chartering at launch and are now retrofitting one. The course closes with a practical method for revisiting the charter at set intervals so it evolves with the team instead of being filed away after the kickoff workshop and forgotten.
Expected Learning Outcomes
Build a RACI-based decision rights map that shows who decides, who is consulted and who is informed.
Draft communication norms covering channels, response times and meeting cadence for the team.
Design an escalation and conflict protocol the team agrees to before disagreements occur.
Integrate members from a merger or restructure into one shared charter rather than two legacy cultures.
Onboard a new team member into an existing charter without rerunning the full workshop.
Schedule and run a periodic charter review that updates norms as the team's work changes.
Who Should Attend
Managers standing up a new team from a reorganisation or merger.
Team leads inheriting a group with no documented working agreements.
Project managers chartering a cross-functional or matrixed team.
HR and organisational development practitioners supporting restructures.
Scrum masters and agile coaches facilitating team-level agreements.
Directors overseeing several teams formed during the same reorganisation.
Course Modules
Select any module to see its sessions and points.
01Why Explicit Charters Matter for Changed Teams
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1The Cost of Leaving Team Norms Unspoken
- Identify the assumptions individuals import from previous teams that silently clash in a new one.
- Connect unresolved norms to specific failures such as missed handoffs and duplicated decisions.
- Use the forming, storming, norming and performing model to time the chartering intervention.
- Distinguish a working team charter from a mission statement that nobody consults again.
Session 2Core Components of an Effective Team Charter
- Structure a charter around purpose, scope, roles, decision rights and communication norms.
- Write a purpose statement specific enough to guide a genuine trade-off between two priorities.
- Define measurable success criteria the team can check itself against each quarter.
- Separate charter elements that are fixed by the organisation from those the team can set itself.
02Facilitating the Chartering Workshop
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Designing and Running the Kickoff Session
- Sequence a chartering workshop agenda that moves from purpose to roles to working norms.
- Use a team canvas exercise to surface individual expectations before proposing group norms.
- Manage disagreement in the room so the charter reflects consensus rather than the loudest voice.
- Capture outputs in a shared, editable document rather than static workshop slides.
Session 2Defining Purpose, Success Measures and Decision Rights
- Facilitate a RACI exercise that assigns responsibility and accountability for recurring decisions.
- Agree which decisions the team makes by consensus and which sit with a single accountable owner.
- Translate the team's purpose into two or three measures reviewed at each retrospective.
- Resolve overlapping role expectations that surface once decision rights are made explicit.
03Working Agreements for Daily Collaboration
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Setting Communication Norms and Meeting Cadence
- Agree which channel carries urgent, routine and informal communication across the team.
- Set expected response times by channel and time of day, including out-of-hours boundaries.
- Design a meeting cadence that matches the team's actual coordination needs, not habit.
- Document norms for hybrid participation so remote members are not structurally disadvantaged.
Session 2Building Conflict Protocols and Escalation Paths
- Agree a conflict protocol that specifies how disagreements are raised and by when they resolve.
- Set an escalation path so unresolved issues reach the right person without becoming personal.
- Use a structured approach, such as the Thomas-Kilmann modes, to discuss conflict styles openly.
- Rehearse the protocol on a low-stakes disagreement before the team needs it under pressure.
04Sustaining and Evolving the Charter
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Integrating New Members Without a Full Reset
- Brief a new joiner on the existing charter within their first week rather than by osmosis.
- Distinguish which parts of the charter are open to renegotiation as membership changes.
- Pair a new member with a charter custodian who can explain the reasoning behind each norm.
- Fold minor adjustments prompted by new members into the next scheduled review, not ad hoc.
Session 2Reviewing and Renegotiating the Charter Over Time
- Schedule a charter review at a fixed interval separate from day-to-day retrospectives.
- Assess which agreements are still followed in practice and which have quietly lapsed.
- Update decision rights and norms as the team's scope or membership materially changes.
- Retire elements of the charter that no longer reflect how the team actually works.
What the participant receives
4 course modules
A structured syllabus
8 training sessions
across 5 days
32 detailed points
Applied, detailed content
Accredited attendance certificate
On completing the programme
Complete your registration
We will contact you within one business day to confirm.
Ready to start?
Reserve your seat and start building the skill.