Resolving the differences between explict and implicit contracts

In our Pumping the Colors simulation we encourage teams to make the implicit team contracts explicit. For example, suppose a team has as one of the their explicit team contracts, an agreement to meet every Monday morning at 10:00 a.m. to review the next week's activities; that's the explicit team contract. The implicit contract might be that the team meetings start when Joe gets to the meeting room and if Joe is out of town, then the meeting will be postponed until the following Monday or whenever Joe is back in town.

We encourage teams to look at those implicit contracts alongside the explicit contract and make a new explicit contract. The new explicit contract may be anything the team wants it to be. We believe it is important to resolve the differences between the implicit and explicit, especially when they conflict. In fact, it's important to try to resolve them even when it appears they don't conflict, because just identifying the implicit contract creates a healthier, trusting environment and makes it more likely that future conflicts will be faced and resolved.

However, teams need to know that once a contract is made explicit, it has to be dealt with and there's no going back to the implicit contract. So it's important that teams learn how to identify implicit contracts, many times they are below the conscious level, and once they're identified how to discuss, evaluate and resolves issues that the gap between the implict and the explicit often creates .