Refining Practice Together: How Teams Learn, Adjust, and Grow 

January Series: Teaming That Holds: Building the Infrastructure for Sustainable Leadership

Estimated read time: ~8–9 minutes 

Teaming holds implementation together. When it’s unclear, the system absorbs the cost in time, trust, and emotional labor.  

By the time a team reaches a stretch point in the work, one felt when the team is navigating the tension of a new initiative, settling into shared routines, responding to turnover, or simply carrying more difficult decisions, something important has already happened. 

• People have learned. 
• Capacity has grown. 
• The work has evolved. 

Yet many teams are still operating with agreements, routines, and norms that were created for an earlier version of themselves. Generic, lightly worded norms or routines that don’t match the level of care, rapport, or work the team holds. 

Refining practice is about what happens after teams begin building trust, clarity, and psychological safety, before misalignment hardens into frustration. It’s about refining practice together: not through correction or compliance, but through intentional reflection and adjustment that protects both the work and the people doing it. People and practice are held together by the teaming structures the team creates together. 

Norms Are Living Agreements, Not Static Rules 

Most teams introduce norms early. Sometimes it’s during forming. Sometimes it’s after a storming moment. Norms get named, posted, referenced, and then quietly disappear as the work accelerates. Effective teams, on the other hand, don’t treat norms as a one-time activity. They treat them as living agreements that must evolve alongside changing context, shifting roles, and growing expertise. 

Team research consistently points to periodic self-monitoring and reflection as a marker of effective teaming (Hackman, 2002; Salas et al., 2018). Importantly, that research does not prescribe a universal cadence. There is no “right” quarterly or annual schedule. 

Readiness, context, and trust all play a role. Some teams are ready for deep reflection. Some teams are only ready to surface small friction points. Both are valid. Reflection isn’t about fixing what’s broken. It’s about aligning how the team works with who the team has become. 

The Triggers That Make Reflection Necessary 

In practice, teams rarely revisit norms because “something is wrong.” More often, it becomes necessary because something has changed, sometimes visibly, sometimes quietly. 

Common triggers include: 

• Team composition shifts (new members, size changes, turnover, role transitions) 
• Work expectations change (new responsibilities, new initiatives, shifting priorities) 
• Capacity grows (teams become more skilled and outgrow their original structures) 
• Meeting friction shows up (circular conversations, unclear decisions, uneven participation) 
• Tools stop matching reality (agendas, documentation, or roles no longer serve how the team actually works) 

These are signs the team is evolving and growing alongside the needs of the system, not a failure of the teaming practice. That discrepancy we feel is exactly why reflection can bring emotions to the surface and cause teams to be hesitant to revisit norms or teaming structures holistically. 

Naming inefficiencies can sound like criticism. Suggesting a change can feel personal. Even asking a simple question, “Is this still working?”, can feel like it threatens the stability people rely on. That’s why how teams revisit norms matters as much as when they do. 

Reflection as Maintenance, Not Correction 

A common misunderstanding is that revisiting norms requires a full reset. In reality, most teams do not need an overhaul. They need maintenance. Maintenance is a care practice, just like with prescribed self-care. What we take care of can, in turn, take care of us. Maintaining teaming practices, norms, and documentation efforts enables the team to keep the system healthy. 

Sometimes the most powerful refinement is small: 

• clarifying who pre-reads and synthesizes information before a meeting, 
• rotating note-taking so one person isn’t carrying invisible labor, 
• adjusting an agenda so it becomes a thinking tool instead of a list, 
• naming a missing role (like “focus monitor” or “communications coordinator”) so the group doesn’t lose sight of a particular responsibility that is feeling heavier to lift. 

I’ve watched teams reclaim 20–30 minutes per meeting simply by identifying one missing role highlighted by acknowledging one repeated point of friction. The team then agreed on a small shift they could try immediately. They didn’t need a complicated protocol. They needed permission to notice and name what wasn’t working. 

Other teams need something deeper: 

• a recommitment conversation, 
• repair after tension, 
• re-alignment on how decisions get made, 
• or a refreshed set of norms that reflect a changed reality. 

Effective reflection respects readiness. Teams don’t need to rush into deep repair to be doing meaningful work. Sometimes the most productive move is to pause, name what’s shifted, and adjust lightly. At other times, those same reflections surface the need for more intentional recommitment. Both pathways strengthen the system. 

Why Psychological Safety Shows Up Again Here 

Revisiting norms is one of the clearest tests of psychological safety and trust. For reflection to work, teams must believe: 

• it is safe to name barriers, 
• suggestions won’t be weaponized, 
• disagreement won’t become disconnection, 
• honesty will be met with curiosity. 

When those conditions are present, reflection strengthens cohesion and collective efficacy. When they’re absent, teams either avoid reflection entirely or perform it at the surface level. That’s why refining practice together is not a technical task; It’s a relational one. Healthy teams don’t avoid tension. They build maintenance and repair into the system. 

If You Only Have 10 Minutes: A Simple Team Pause 

Not every team is ready for a deep norms reset. Not every leader has the capacity for a long facilitation session in the middle of an already full meeting and change season. That’s okay. If your team is not ready to engage in a longer process, use the questions below during the last 10 minutes of a meeting or as a brief opener: 

A 10-Minute Team Practice Pause 

1. Name what’s working (2 minutes): What part of our meeting practice is helping us right now? 
2. Name one friction point (3 minutes): Where do we lose time, clarity, or energy? 
3. Choose one small shift (4 minutes): What is one adjustment we can try next meeting? 
4. Close with ownership (1 minute): Who will set us up to follow through? 

This isn’t a “fix everything” conversation. It’s maintenance practice. One that is small enough to sustain and meaningful enough to reduce friction. 

Lean on the Expertise Already in Your System 

If your system is in need of a deeper reflection of your norms or practices, many systems already have leaders, coaches, facilitators, or team members who are trained in restorative practices, facilitation, coaching, or reflective dialogue. The Making Champions of Change Team invites teams to leverage internal expertise. If your system includes: 

• a restoratively trained administrator, 
• a coach skilled in holding reflective space, 
• a facilitator trusted by the team, 

Invite them to help hold this conversation in your next meeting. Reflection does not require an external process to be meaningful. It requires a space where people feel seen, heard, and respected. Often, the capacity to do this work already exists within the system. 

Reflect. Connect. Grow. 

Reflect (Sense-Making): 

Where do your current norms still serve your team well—and where do they feel out of step with today’s work? 

Connect (Systems Awareness): 

Where do you see teams compensating for unclear processes or old agreements that no longer match the moment? 

Grow (Intentional Direction): 

What is one small adjustment that could reduce friction and strengthen how your team works together, without adding more to anyone’s plate? 

Looking Ahead 

Refining practice together is one of the most sustainable ways teams care for both the work and one another. It’s how teams protect clarity. It’s how they preserve trust. It’s how they keep learning and moving, without shame. 

In the final learning entry of this series, we’ll step back and look at how individual teams connect to system coherence: how purpose, feedback loops, and shared responsibility allow teaming to travel across roles and levels. For now, pausing is enough. Noticing is enough. Adjusting, together, is the work. 

References

Argyris, C., & Schön, D. A. (1978). Organizational learning: A theory of action perspective. Addison-Wesley. 

Edmondson, A. C. (2019). The fearless organization: Creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation, and growth. Wiley. 

Hackman, J. R. (2002). Leading teams: Setting the stage for great performances. Harvard Business School Press. 

Salas, E., Reyes, D. L., & McDaniel, S. H. (2018). The science of teamwork: Progress, reflections, and the road ahead. American Psychologist, 73(4), 593–600. 

Aguilar, E. (2016). The art of coaching teams: Building resilient communities that transform schools. Jossey-Bass.