Principles Instead Of Rules

Prime your principles instead of policing your policies. Rules tend to show up because principles are not clear or trusted. When you know that people have bought into standards, you can give them freedom for decisions and behaviors. If this alignment doesn’t exist, you must micromanage with regulations, expending much more energy in the long run

Any new team needs to be more conscious of defining and expressing their collective values. Here are a few of examples of values that are beneficial to any team:

• Consistently challenge yourselves to play in the bigger game.
• In day-to-day interactions, be directed by curiosity instead of control, which means create an environment that welcomes questions without a complete authoritarian atmosphere. 
• Make it is safe for all of the members of the team to explore, express and move on without ridicule.
• Support creative, conscious risk taking.
• Be respectfully polite to each other.

“Team principles” can often be like “motherhood and apple pie,” without much connection to the real, everyday world. Your principles should help create an authentic setting that inspires. 

--The Coaching and Leadership Journal

Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life