Group norms examples: How to set team norms that work

What do you think would happen if you walked into a meeting wearing a clown costume? Or did you change all your computer notification sounds to cats meowing?

Even if these things aren't explicitly against company policy, your teammates might still do a double-take. That's because of group norms, implicit ground rules that your team follows, even if you've never written them down. Group norms shape how the group behaves, including small details like commonly accepted dress codes.

Group norms are usually implied rather than defined, so you may have never thought of them before. By intentionally creating group norms, you can empower team collaboration, increase efficiency, and maximize effectiveness.

What are group norms?

Group norms are the spoken or unspoken rules that guide how team members interact, collaborate, and work together. These norms shape how your team makes decisions, communicates, and resolves conflicts. Usually, group norms aren't written down. Instead, they're implicit standards of behavior guided by the company's culture.

Even if you've never consciously created group norms before, you've definitely experienced them. Every type of group, friendship groups, informal groups, and working groups, creates and refines norms over time.

In this article, we'll focus on working group norms. Unless you're building a brand new team, you likely already have a few norms in place, things like:

• The communication or project management tools your group uses

• How your group resolves conflicts or addresses setbacks

• The way group members typically interact, whether that's formally or informally

• How acceptable is it for group members to be late to meetings

By clearly identifying and proactively shaping group norms, you can build and empower a high-performance team and take them to the next level.

Why are group norms important?

Positive group norms give team members a sense of normalcy and stability. Here's why they matter:

• Create shared value systems: Norms help team members align on expectations and achieve their best work.

• Reduce uncertainty: When everyone knows what's expected, doubt and stress decrease.

• Boost collaboration: Teams with clear norms work together more effectively and make a bigger impact.

When team members understand and follow group norms, they know what is expected of them and can execute accordingly. Just as knowing your project priorities helps you focus on your highest-impact work, understanding your team's expectations helps you collaborate most effectively.

Group norms also help team members spend their time more intentionally. Too often, our attention isn't aligned with our intention; we spend so much time on busywork instead of our most important tasks.

Group norms simplify meeting practices and communication preferences by clearly defining how team members should interact. Turning these implicit rules into explicit, team-wide policies reduces guesswork and increases effectiveness.

Additionally, group norms also:

• Create a sense of belonging among team members by empowering them to take part in decision making.

• Increase trust by ensuring everyone is on the same page about what's happening and their role in it.

• Boost teamwork by replacing uncertainty with predictability.

• Establish team-wide policies on communication styles to reduce perceived social loafing.

Types of group norms

Group norms can be categorized into different types based on what aspect of teamwork they address. Understanding these categories helps you identify gaps in your team's existing norms.

Communication norms

These norms govern how team members share information and stay connected. Examples include preferred communication channels, response time expectations, and meeting etiquette.

Decision-making norms

These norms establish how the team approaches choices, from minor daily decisions to major strategic ones. They clarify who has authority, how input is gathered, and how final decisions are communicated.

Meeting norms

Meeting norms define how your team conducts meetings, including start and end times, agenda requirements, participation expectations, and follow-up protocols.

Accountability norms

These norms set expectations for responsibility and ownership. They address how team members track progress, report on work, and handle missed deadlines or commitments.

Work-life balance norms

These norms protect team wellbeing by establishing boundaries around working hours, availability expectations, and respect for personal time.

Examples of group norms for high-performance teams

Every team has unique group norms, and teams usually don't write them down. That being said, if your group were to write down a list of norms, here's what you might write:

1. Every meeting has an associated meeting agenda, so team members can show up to meetings on time and prepared.

2. Team members track individual to-dos in a shared work management tool so everyone sees who's doing what by when.

3. Team members communicate about work in shared tools like Asana and Slack, so everyone has access to the information they need. The team prioritizes transparency, visibility, and group discussions whenever possible.

4. Team members share their priorities every Monday morning. If new work comes up, they're empowered to adjust due dates to get their most important work done (while still keeping project deadlines or launches in mind). Work and projects are connected to individual key performance indicators (KPIs) or team and company objectives and key results (OKRs) to ensure team members understand and prioritize high-impact work.

5. Group members assume positive intent and lead with intentionality. If a disagreement arises, they proactively address it using established conflict-resolution strategies.

6. Team members prioritize clear, fast decision making. If necessary, they use a decision matrix or problem-solving strategies.

7. Group members do their best to ensure stakeholders are looped in early during the project process. Using RACI charts, they identify key stakeholders for their work and ensure everyone is on the same page.

8. Group leaders and team leads proactively allocate resources to reduce burnout and promote balance.

9. Group members stay up to date through project status updates shared in a central source of truth, such as Asana.

10. Group members schedule focus time on their calendar using time blocking to maximize flow state and individual productivity.

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How good group norms build healthy group dynamics

Group norms are the foundation for a healthy group and great group dynamics. Bruce Tuckman first described how groups are formed in his 1965 theory, Tuckman's stages of group development. According to Tuckman, there are five stages of group development: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning or Mourning.

Groups naturally create their own norms during the Norming stage of group development. But without clear guidance and leadership, individual members will inevitably create their own group norms. By creating group norms up front, you can ensure group cohesion.

How to create group norms for your team

Creating effective group norms requires intention and collaboration. Follow these four steps:

1. Determine your team's unique needs

2. Get input from your team

3. Make norms specific and actionable

4. Document and share norms openly

Determine your team's unique needs

Start by assessing your team's current challenges. Are meetings running over time? Is communication scattered across too many channels? Identifying pain points helps you prioritize which norms to establish first.

Get input from your team

Norms work best when team members help create them. Hold a collaborative session where everyone can share what's working, what isn't, and what expectations they'd like to set. This builds buy-in from the start.

Make norms specific and actionable

Vague norms like "communicate better" don't give team members clear guidance. Instead, create specific norms such as "respond to Slack messages within four business hours" or "share meeting agendas at least 24 hours in advance."

Document and share norms openly

Write your norms down and make them easily accessible. Store them in a shared location, such as Asana, so new team members can find them during onboarding and existing members can reference them when needed.

How 7 Asana managers intentionally create team norms

Group norms are to teams as organizational culture is to companies. If you don't intentionally create group norms, they will naturally develop over time, and not necessarily in the way you want. Intentional group norms are a lot like great team-building activities: You need a strong leader to guide the group. To help you get there, we asked seven Asana team leads to tell us how they've created group norms over time. Here's what they had to say.

Tony Chang, Product Manager, Asana

We start our regular team meeting by checking in on how each team member is feeling using a red, yellow, green color code, regardless of whether the source of their feeling is work- or non-work-related. This allows us to start the meeting with transparency and context, which helps us communicate more effectively and understand each other better.

Sinéad (Nade) Nic Eoin, User Operations Manager, Asana

1. Leading with empathy and starting with heart. Managers on the team lead by example by showing up to 1:1s and conversations with empathy. During every conversation, managers strive to understand what's happening in their team members' lives.

2. Open discussion in team huddles every day. Our team has daily huddles to give updates on any bugs or issues customers are experiencing. These meetings are a pivotal part of our day; they bring the team together, allow us to share knowledge, and create space for connection.

3. Assuming good intent. On the User Operations team, we approach every interaction assuming good intent. This allows us to get the work done and reflect on what needs to happen in order to reach a resolution.

4. Safe silence in meetings. We try not to be afraid of silence. Sometimes people simply need a few extra seconds to get their thoughts straight or muster the courage to speak up.

5. Active and respectful listening. We understand that interrupting others stifles conversation. We have a group norm of listening fully to people as they speak and share feedback or ideas.

Greg Dodds, Brand Design, Asana

We practice a culture of open and active feedback, especially during our design critique meetings. Team members can bring in a piece of work at any stage of the creative process and get support from their team. Creativity is difficult in a bubble; having a tradition of a standing design critique meeting creates a safe space for folks to bring their work in any state and get fresh ideas and feedback from others.

Ariel Tavares Grilo, Localization Manager, Asana

1. I schedule weekly team meetings to focus on priorities, share updates, and solve problems collaboratively. If necessary, I also encourage the team to use this time to provide constructive feedback to teammates.

2. I also frequently reassign responsibilities and tasks based on each individual's interest in the work involved. That way, each of us can work on activities that are most interesting to us and stay motivated.

3. A pillar of the team is Respect for others. As a result, we've built our relationship as a team and interact with other teams in a very respectful way. Doing so is key to building a healthy work environment.

Erin Cheng, Head of Public and Analyst Relations

On our team, we embrace Asana's value of starting with heart. We've been building our team during this work-from-home period and have never met in person, so it's even more important that we ground ourselves in authenticity about what we may be tackling both in and out of work.

At the beginning of our weekly team syncs and all 1:1's, I always start by asking "How are you doing?" or "How are you feeling?" instead of jumping straight into the agenda. It not only creates space for our team to share what they may be dealing with in their personal and professional roles, but also creates a safe environment and an ongoing dialogue that's not just about the tasks at hand.

We also strive for absolute clarity in defining when we are and aren't available. I have a toddler at home, so I often catch up on work after bedtime or on weekends during naptime. I've made it clear to my team that, while these hours are best suited to my work, I have no expectation that they will be online or respond. It's critical that everyone can unplug.

By setting clear expectations and group norms for communication and responses during off-hours, everyone can get the time to rest and recharge they need without feeling pressured to be online just because their manager is.

Sonya Chu, Head of Marketing Analytics, Asana

Slack norms after switching to remote work

When the team first went remote, there was suddenly a completely new way of working together to figure out, compounded by the fact that we also had new members who didn't have strong existing relationships. Rather than enforcing existing rules, we approached it as a team exercise to share what we were worried about and the norms we wanted to establish.

For example, we decided that maintaining the feeling of being able to tap someone on the shoulder for a quick question was important, as was protecting long stretches of focus and flow time. As a team, we decided we were OK with biasing towards over-communication rather than under-communication, so we all agreed that Slack anyone anytime was fine, with the understanding that each person would manage their own Slack notifications and could choose to respond at a time that was most convenient to them.

Asking dumb questions

I've found that analysts produce higher-quality work faster when they feel they can ask for and receive frequent input from other analysts. While everyone on the Marketing Analytics team is very approachable and helpful, with all of us being remote, and many of the team being relatively new, it was often difficult for the team to feel comfortable asking each other questions, especially since they weren't always sure exactly who to ask. Asking in the team channel felt inappropriate and scary, since we used it for team announcements.

One of the analysts came up with a great idea: creating a safe space for questions by creating a Slack channel literally called "dumb questions." In reality, most of our questions aren't dumb at all, but dedicating a space for "dumb questions" really helped people to get over the fear of being judged for their questions. That, along with having the more tenured analysts and me modelling the behavior by asking our own "dumb" questions, really helped establish that asking questions is always encouraged.

Akira Uchino, Japan Marketing Lead, Asana

Cut to the core is the first step. Part of driving clarity includes helping team members set an "individual best" at something. My job is to encourage team members to see what they are capable of. Then, with that understanding, they have a clear vision for growth and how they can get there. From there, we can solve it together, figuring out how they can take the next step in that direction, and how the Japan marketing team can support their growth.

Build stronger teams with intentional norms

Though group norms take time to build, investing in them is investing in your team. Clear group norms remove uncertainty and provide team members with clarity about what is expected of them. That way, everyone is set up for success, and new members can hit the ground running on day one.

Ready to put your group norms into practice? Asana helps teams track shared expectations, communicate transparently, and collaborate in one shared space. Get started and see how your team can work better together.

For more tips on how to empower your group and build great teamwork, read our article on 10 easy steps to boost team collaboration.

The Impact Playbook: Motivating employees in a fast-changing world

Boost motivation by helping your employees understand why their work matters. In this free ebook, learn how to create a shared sense of purpose on your team.

Get the insights

Frequently asked questions about group norms