UNSW Business School

Team
Agreement
Team Agreement

Tutorial day and time Team number

Team contact
person
(if tutor needs to
contact the team)
Student Name zID (without the z) email
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Team Agreements
A Team Agreement outlines what your goals are (both individually and as a team) and the
processes that your team will follow to help you reach these goals. It is “go to” document for
how your team is going to work together for maximum success. Think of it as an informal
contract of the way things get done in your team. It’s a way of having the ‘tough
conversations’ up-front so everyone agrees in how to engage with your team. To complete
the Team Agreement, follow these steps:

business.unsw.edu.au
 Diversity audit
Behind observable diversity (e.g., gender, race) are unobservable experiences, and the latter
unobservable diversity in teams brings different perspectives, which is important for
innovation. On the diversity map below, where does each team member lie? For each type
of diversity (row), every team member needs to place their initials under the scale 1-5
(column).

Scale: 1 & 5 - Extreme, 3 - Neutral, 2 & 4 - Moderate

1 2 3 4 5

Personality Extraversion: tends to be

Introversion: tends to be reserved enthusiastic, talkative, assertive
or reflective; gathers energy from and gregarious; gather energy
reflection / solitude. from
human interactions.
Personality Curious: open to experience,
Cautious: Consistent, gain willing to try new things, a general
fulfillment through perseverance, appreciate of unusual ideas,
pragmatic, data-driven, can be adventure, open to emotion, art
perceived as closed-minded. and ideas in general.
Personality
Disagreeable: competitive, Agreeable: seeks social harmony,
challenging, argumentative, gets along with others,
skeptical about others’ motives. considerate, generous, and
helpful.
Culture
Individualism: Prefers to work Collectivism: prefers to work in
alone and pursue individual goals teams and pursue collective goals.
Cultural fluency Low: little
experience interacting with High: experience interacting with
other cultures. other cultures.
Time urgency
Low: relaxed with deadlines, tends High: being on time is important,
to go with the flow hurries, senses time pressure

Based on the insights drawn from the diversity audit, list at least 3 strengths and 3
goals you want to achieve in COMM1120. Poor example: I want to be better at time
management. Better example: I aim to arrive to all group meetings at least 5 minutes
early with all my

Team Member Strengths Goals

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

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 6.

4
 With these strengths and personal development goals in mind, please identify some key
roles that you believe will make your project successful

Project Team Roles Team Member

For example:
Mediator
Organiser
Idea generator
1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

What areas can you learn from one another?

What are some potential risks you foresee when you are working on your project?

How do you plan to mitigate these risks?

Transition Processes
Effective teams have clearly established goals so that there is a common purpose and
objectives. This includes planning and evaluation activities.

Ask each team member to share their individual goal for whilst working in this team. Once
that’s done, share your availabilities to meet each week so everyone can achieve these
goals.
Name Goal Availabilities

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 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

By putting time and effort into understanding the Team Orientation at the beginning of the term,
working together and respecting an individuals’ needs will be easier because you will have an
understanding of implicit expectations of working together.
Many teams aim to have high performance, learn as much as they can and foster relationships
with people all at the same time. However, compromises and trade-offs often need to be made
because multiple time pressures and stressors are experienced (e.g. work vs study vs personal
life). For example, if team members are exploring a team assignment in depth (focusing on
learning), they may not leave enough time to write up and edit thoroughly to obtain a high grade.
If your team is to work together effectively, you will need to reach agreement about how you
intend to balance these potentially competing priorities (Performance, Learning and People).
In order to establish your shared priorities, discuss each statement and then circle a
number on the scale to indicate your team’s level of agreement. Your aim is to resolve any
differences of opinion, and reach a consensus.
How important are the following for YOUR TEAM? 1 2 3 4 5
Strongly Moderately Neutral Moderately Strongly
disagree disagree agree agree

a. Our focus will be on learning as much as possible,

even if it means achieving a lower grade.
b. Our effort will be focused towards achieving good
grades.
c. Our primary goal is to develop positive working
relationships that extend beyond this course.
d. It is important to continually challenge ourselves by
exploring content areas and skills that are new and
unfamiliar.
e. We will do what it takes to ensure we achieve
higher marks on the team assessment than most
teams.
f. We will regularly spend time ‘off-task’ with team
members to ensure that the experience of working
together is a positive one.

g. Rather than capitalising on existing strengths, we

will work on assignments in a way that ensures we
learn new skills and content.

h. We will make sacrifices in other areas (e.g.

breadth of learning / personal life) to ensure we
achieve the best possible grade.

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7
 i. We will spend as much time as possible working
with other team members so as to build strong
relationships with one another.
j. It is not so bad to make mistakes if we learn from
them
k. Seeking good marks is more important to us
than learning a new skill
l. We want to become good friends with one
another, not just work together in this course.

To determine the strength and direction of your Team Orientation you need to total the
relevant items below. Each Dimension will be between 4 and 20 points.

Total for items 1a, 1d,1g & 1j = Learning orientation

Total for items 1b, 1e, 1h & 1k = Performance orientation

Total for items 1c, 1f, 1i & 1l = People orientation

Based on the above, make note of anything in your team dynamic that the team needs to be aware
of in the future:

TEAM GOALS: As a team, what will success look like, and how will we measure this success?
Write 3 common goals.

Action Processes
Effective teams know how they will communicate and coordinate activities to accomplish
goals. Note: for workload sharing and meet requirements for UNSW assessments, every
member must substantively contribute to the task (not just write the introduction / conclusion)
and be involved in creative abrasion.

How will we share and understand ideas from all team members?

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 How will we integrate ideas and make a team decision? Consensus, majority vote, by the
team leader? What is the leadership approach: team leader only, swapping leadership roles,
and/or shared leadership by splitting up roles?

How will we communicate? What medium will we use (i.e. email, mobile, chat function,
Microsoft TEAMs)? What is a reasonable response time?

How will our team track and monitor the progress of our project?

What is expected for sharing the workload (e.g. individual attendance, punctuality, coming
to meetings prepared, and involvement in meetings)? If someone is consistently not
contributing to the team, how will other team members try to encourage the team member
to contribute; and when will we notify the Tutor?

Interpersonal Processes
Effective teams develop relationships by building motivation, managing emotions,
and engaging in conflict resolution

What will we do to make the experience of working together a positive one? (e.g., are there
ways to make this fun, celebrate successes & commiserate goals not met)

What areas create potential conflicts?

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 How do you plan to manage these conflicts?

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