Designing a Team Alliance (DTA) is a crucial part of building a strong, collaborative environment within your team. Drawing on Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) principles, this guide walks you through how to co-create an alliance that helps teams align on values, behaviors, and communication protocols.

Step 1: Set the Stage for Collaboration
Start by creating a space where team members feel safe to contribute openly. Everyone’s voice is important in shaping the alliance.
- Invite participation: Explain the purpose of the team alliance and how it will help everyone work together more effectively.
- Ensure psychological safety: Emphasize that all input is valuable and there are no wrong answers in this process.
Step 2: Explore the Team Culture
The first key aspect of the DTA is to define the kind of culture your team wants to create.
- Ask guiding questions:
- “What kind of culture do we want to create in this team?”
- “How will we know that we’ve achieved it? What would it look like in action?”
- Facilitate answers: Encourage everyone to express their ideas. To create transparency about how different team members understand these concepts, summarize key words and phrases that resonate with the team. Remember, this isn’t about creating a detailed definition—it’s about capturing the essence of what the team wants in a way everyone can remember and act upon.
Help the team align on how they want the team environment to feel. This taps into the emotional aspect of working together, which is vital for building trust and engagement.
- Ask guiding questions:
- “How do we want this team to be day-to-day? What is the atmosphere that you want to have when you meet with the team? Let’s find words that describe it, like empowering, supportive, open, creative, etc.”
- Facilitate answers: Again, focus on transparency. Summarize key feelings that emerge on a card or board—choose words that represent the team’s collective desires. Keep it concise and avoid trying to capture every nuance.
Step 3: Design for Conflict
Conflict is inevitable in any team, but designing how to handle it can turn conflict into a productive force. Here, the team defines behaviors for when the “going gets tough.”
- Ask guiding questions:
- “How do we want to behave when we face challenges or conflict?”
- “What conflict-handling protocols would we follow?” (What are the steps we take when conflicts appear?)
- Facilitate answers: Encourage team members to suggest actions or behaviors that would help navigate conflict. Summarize with a few key phrases or behaviors that can serve as a guide in tough situations.
- Hint: Do not “hide” from recurring conflicts. Recurring conflicts are signs that something needs to change.
Step 4: Define Commitments
Now that the team has outlined how they want to work and feel, it’s time to define individual and collective commitments. This is about accountability and mutual support.
- Ask guiding questions:
- “What can the team count on from each of you?”
- “What will you commit to for one another? What would that commitment look like?”
- Facilitate answers: Encourage team members to be specific yet concise. Capture these commitments in simple terms, summarizing them in a way that the team can easily reference and remember.
Step 5: Plan for Adaptability
The DTA should evolve as the team grows. It’s important to regularly check in on the alliance and adjust it as necessary.
- Set review checkpoints: Establish a cadence for reviewing the team alliance—perhaps quarterly or after major team changes.
- Process for adjustment: Agree that the alliance is a living document, ready to be adapted as the team dynamic or priorities shift.
Step 6: Document the Alliance
Once the team has co-created the alliance, document it in a way that’s easily accessible to everyone. This serves as a reference point for when the team faces challenges or needs to reaffirm commitments.
- Keep it visible: Post the team alliance where it can be easily accessed or reviewed, either in a shared digital space or a physical location.
- Simple and actionable: Avoid overcomplicating the document—keep it short and actionable, with only the key phrases and words that resonate with the team.
Step 7: Celebrate and Commit
Acknowledge the effort that went into creating the alliance and celebrate this important milestone. Recognizing the team’s collective effort reinforces the importance of the agreement and fosters a positive, collaborative mindset moving forward.
Facilitation Tips: Key Reminders
- Transparency is key: It’s important that each team member’s understanding of the key concepts—like the team’s desired ecosystem or commitments—is visible and acknowledged. Summarize in a way that’s concise but meaningful for everyone.
- Summarize, don’t detail: The goal is not to define everything to the last detail but to capture a few key words or phrases that represent the collective desires of the team. This is crucial for ensuring the alliance remains actionable and easy to remember.
- Stay flexible: The Team Alliance is not set in stone; it’s a living document that should evolve with the team.
By following this guide, you’ll be able to create a team alliance that not only aligns your team on core values and behaviors but also fosters resilience and adaptability through the ups and downs of teamwork.