Team leads and facilitators
Run the Collective Efficacy Protocol
What the Protocol is for, the five stages in order, and what the team walks away holding.
- Time to allow
- Two facilitated sessions of about 90 minutes
- Who can do this
- The person leading the alignment, with the whole team present
Before you start
- The Collective Drift Map is approved by the team.
- The people who will be held to the Protocol are in the room.
What the Protocol is for
The Collective Drift Map describes how the team leads today. The Protocol decides how it will lead from here. It turns description into agreed behaviour: what the team is for, how it supports, how it coordinates, and what it does under pressure.
Every stage produces wording the team confirms together. Nothing is imposed and nothing is anonymous — the Protocol only holds if the team can read it back and recognise its own commitments.
The five stages in order
- 1
Stage 1 — INTENT. Agree what this team exists to make possible.
Result: One intent statement the team confirms.
- 2
Stage 2 — SUPPORT. Each person states what support they need and what they will give.
Result: A support statement per person, permanently attributed.
- 3
Stage 3 — COORDINATION. Agree how work moves between people.
Result: The coordination field, with agreed handover behaviour.
- 4
Stage 4 — PRESSURE. Agree the activation phrase and the reset moves.
Result: One activation phrase and up to three reset moves.
- 5
Stage 5 — The Protocol. Assemble, commit and export.
Result: The signed Protocol document and its PDF.
Stages open in order. A stage stays closed until the one before it is confirmed.
How to facilitate it
Read the drafted wording aloud before the team edits it. People agree faster to language they have heard than to language they have only scanned.
Where the team stalls, name the choice rather than the disagreement: what would have to be true for this sentence to read as ours?
What good looks like
- Every statement uses the team's own words, not the drafted wording as supplied.
- Each person can say what they personally committed to.
- The activation phrase is short enough to say out loud mid-meeting.
If something goes wrong
- A stage will not open.
- The previous stage is not confirmed. Open it and confirm the outstanding item.
- The drafted wording reads generic.
- Draft again from the team's evidence after the team has added specifics; the draft follows what has been confirmed.