What is a team charter and why you need one
How co-created team agreements build trust, clarity, and alignment.
Most teams are full of unspoken assumptions. People arrive with different expectations about how decisions are made, how conflict should be handled, or what “good communication” looks like.
These assumptions often remain invisible until they clash, resulting in a breakdown in communication, collaboration and trust and creating frustration, duplication, or conflict. This can be avoided when teams agree on the basics of how they work together.
That’s where a team charter comes in. Sometimes referred to as a team agreement, team contract, or team alliance, a charter is a simple yet powerful tool. It’s a co-created set of agreements about purpose, roles, and behaviours which removes assumptions and makes ways of working together explicit. It explores how people show up and support each other, and the behaviours that build trust and psychological safety.
It’s not just about practical ways of working; it goes deeper, focusing and aligning the team behind a shared purpose and what they can achieve by working together, better than they can working individually.
When do you need a Team Charter?
A team charter is useful whenever a group of people need to work together intensively or over a sustained period. It helps teams get aligned quickly and avoid costly misunderstandings. Team Contracts are particularly valuable:
For new teams to accelerate through Tuckman’s “forming” stage and avoid getting stuck in “storming.”
For project teams where people from different functions must deliver under pressure and without established norms.
For teams in transition after restructuring, leadership changes, or shifts to hybrid/remote work.
For leadership teams to ensure clarity about priorities, accountability, and stakeholder expectations.
For example, a chief executive came to me about a fully remote working team who weren’t performing. The staff survey revealed frustration about duplication, miscommunication, and uncertainty over decision-making. In their own words, team members said:
“We need more clarity on roles and responsibilities.”
“A shared understanding of our goals and how we contribute would help us work together.”
“We don’t communicate well, especially around decisions.”
Through the facilitated process of co-creating a team charter, they agreed on how they would work together, reflecting:
“The Team Charter helped us get to know each other better and agree on how we want to work together. It’s something we can keep coming back to - a guide to help us stay on the same page and support each other.”
What a Team Charter is and isn’t
At its simplest, a team charter is a shared agreement about how we work together. It usually covers:
Purpose and mission: why this team exists and what value it brings.
Goals and success measures: how progress will be judged.
Roles and responsibilities: who owns what.
Norms and ways of working: communication, decision-making, meeting rhythms.
Behaviours and values in action: how we build trust and psychological safety, and build a diverse team
Review process: how and when the charter will be revisited.
A team alliance is not a corporate policy handed down from leadership, nor is it a static document to be filed away. The most effective charters are co-created by the team and treated as a living agreement that can evolve as the team learns.
Why Team Charters Matter: The Evidence
Research proves that teams that create charters perform better by;
Improving communication and clarity: Studies show that charters help teams specify communication norms, objectives, and contingency plans, reducing confusion later. (Do Team Charters Help Team-Based Projects? Johnson et al, 2021)
Increasing trust: found that charters actively build trust by reducing ambiguity and creating transparency. (How Team Charters Dynamically Improve Trust, Nguyen, 2023)
Strengthening cohesion and satisfaction: Student team studies show that charters improve mutual support, collaboration, and satisfaction. (The Effects of a Team Charter on Student Team Behaviors)
Hybrid and remote value: Recent studies show that charters are particularly effective in distributed teams, helping set expectations around communication, boundaries, and connection. (Hybrid and remote team chartering: Creating clarity in an increasingly virtual world, Sperry, 2025)
Taken together, the evidence shows that charters are far more than a nice-to-have. They directly impact performance, cohesion, and trust.
A living and evolving thing
One of the most common mistakes is to treat the team charter as a one-off exercise. Created at a workshop or team away day, written up neatly and then filed away, never to be seen again. For a team charter to be useful, it has to be lived and evolving. It should be referred to regularly: when conflict arises, when decisions stall, or when someone feels frustrated. It should be used to onboard new team members so they understand not just their role, but how this team works together.
And it must be reviewed regularly: is this still relevant? What’s working and what’s not? What have we learned? What needs to be added, tweaked, or taken out?
This is especially important because, as Tuckman’s Team Development model reminds us, teams don’t just move neatly from forming to storming, norming to performing. They loop around those stages whenever circumstances change, when new members arrive or when priorities change. A charter helps teams move through those transitions more quickly, providing stability in times of flux and a reference point for “how we do things here.”
Pitfalls to avoid
Charters are simple, short, practical, and owned by the team. But they can go wrong if:
They’re imposed top-down instead of co-created by the team.
They become over-engineered and too long and wordy.
They’re treated as symbolic, not practical and rooted in reality.
They’re never revisited, so they become outdated.
Why every team needs a team charter
Teams break when expectations are unspoken, assumptions clash, and alignment is missing. A team charter fixes that by building clarity, trust, and shared accountability.
Whether it’s a new team, a project group, a leadership board, or a hybrid workforce, a team charter is one of the simplest, most powerful tools you can use to build cohesion and effectiveness.
Frequently Asked Questions About Team Charters
What is the purpose of a team charter?
A team charter defines why the team exists, what it aims to achieve, and how members agree to work together. Its purpose is to make expectations explicit, reduce misunderstandings, and build trust so the team can focus on achieving its goals.
Who creates a team charter?
A team charter should be co-created by the whole team, not written by the leader alone. The value lies in the conversations that surface assumptions and build alignment. A facilitator can be useful to guide the process and make sure every voice is heard.
How often should a team charter be reviewed?
A team charter is a living document. It should be reviewed regularly — quarterly works well for most teams — and updated whenever priorities, roles, or context shift. The review is a chance to ask: Is this still relevant? What needs to be added, tweaked, or taken out?
For a practical guide on how to create your team charter, read the next article >
Need help to create a team charter?
At Growth Space, we facilitate workshops for teams to co-create team charters and improve how they work together.
If you’d like to explore how this could support your team, get in touch >
