With a lot of discussion about the Great Resignation, it is more important than ever to build a positive organizational culture. How can nonprofit leaders do this now?

In her book on The Art of Coaching Teams, Elena Aguilar lays out a number of “truths about building teams” (pages xxxi-xxxii). These include:

• A team’s collective emotional intelligence is the key factor in its level of performance

• Learning is the primary work of all teams

• The health of a meeting reflects the health of the team

While Aguilar writes about school teams, her framework is equally applicable to nonprofit staff or board teams.

We retain staff or board members by building a positive, resilient culture that builds the team’s collective emotional intelligence, celebrates learning, and ensures that meetings are healthy.

But how?

There are a few different ways to do this as we’ve discussed before. One important way is to start with meeting agreements.

Meeting agreements give the opportunity for the group to explore and come to agreement on: How do we want to be together?

A few years ago, we shared the story of how creating meeting agreements set the tone for a productive day together for one nonprofit team.

Since then, we’ve referred to the post countless times in conversations with clients or colleagues. After leading hundreds more meetings and revising our process, we wanted share our current process. This process works for us and I encourage you to adapt and adopt a version of it for your organization as well.

This is how we use meeting agreements today:

1.    Introduce the agreements by sharing the importance in the context of the question: How do we want to be together?

2.    Use these agreements from Margaret Wheatley (and other sources):

• We acknowledge one another as equals

• We try to stay curious about each other

• We recognize that we need each other’s help to become better listeners and to act with more courage

• We slow down so we have time to think and reflect

• We have the courage to interrupt if something is going amiss or being left unsaid; we make the invisible visible

• We remember that conversation is a natural way humans think together

• We expect it to be messy at times

3. Sometimes we include other “logistical” agreements (such as asking people to put their devices away during the meeting).

4.    Read the agreements aloud so that each person hears them – they are also visible on our virtual or physical wall.

5.    We ask whether anyone has any agreements to add.

6.    Once we’ve collected all of the agreements, we ask participants to give the “thumbs up” to indicate that they agree with the agreements.

Why do agreements work?

One explanation is that they represent an aspiration, or collective vision, for how we want to be in relationship with one another. This is an obvious extension beyond our time at a meeting. They remind each of us of how we would like to treat each other at our best.

As we talk through our agreements and imagine a world that fully honors them, we move towards building more resilient teams, organizations, and communities. After all, these agreements are participative for all attendees to give everyone the opportunity to share what is important to them. This can have an opportunity to extend beyond the meeting room walls, and into the organization itself. Further, this structure establishes a sense of value for all members.

Try this:

1. Set aside 5 minutes at the beginning of your next meeting to agree on community agreements.

2. Notice how it impacts the meeting dynamic.

3. Let us know what happens!