The Shared
Kitchen
Every team works in a shared kitchen. One honest hour to name the habits, heat, and house rules you’ve never said out loud before they shape the work.
Your cooking style
Eight ingredients behind how you communicate. Answer from your real habits. A sentence or two is plenty. Answers save automatically.
How I cook
Start with the kitchen your teammates are still learning.
How much context do you add before the ask: a pinch, or a heavy hand?
Do you follow the steps or improvise? How do mid-cook changes land?
When do you check in: while it simmers, or once plated?
How much does presentation matter? Can a rough draft travel, or does it need polish first?
When things get tense, do you say it plainly or keep heat low?
How much planning first: everything measured, or figure it out at the stove?
How do you close the loop: tidy as you go, or follow up later?
What habits did you inherit from past teams, mentors, or home?
Finish the sentence
These stems say how to work with you when time, trust, and feedback are in play. Finish each in your own words.
Working with me
Cooking ideas with me means naming the heat before the pan is full: what should simmer, what can be tasted early, and what needs a cleaner counter before the next move.
Kitchen rules I assume everyone knows
The “obvious” rules that surprise people: common sense to you, news to someone else. Naming them turns private expectations into shared ones.
It goes without saying that…
List the rules you noticed only after someone broke one.
The one that genuinely bothers you when broken.
Taste your own cooking
Read back what you wrote, then choose what is worth bringing to the table. This is the pass where patterns usually show up.
What I’m bringing to the table
You choose what to say out loud. Write honestly first.
The printable workbook
Prefer paper — or want to run this as a facilitated session? Download the free 17-page workbook. It’s the whole exercise, expanded, with room to write.
- All four reflection cards, with generous space to write by hand
- “Stuck? try…” sentence-starters on every prompt, for when an answer won’t come
- A facilitator guide: a timed flow, discussion prompts, and a shared-kitchen canvas
- Eight facilitator tips, each grounded in research
This page was made by Tricia while consuming a lot of coffee.
Want to say thanks and buy her a cup?
Facilitator mode
Everyone has cooked alone. Now open the shared kitchen: flow, prompts, and a norms canvas for what the group agrees to practice next.
Open the shared kitchen
A ready-to-run 30–40 minute conversation. Reveal it after reflection time, so the room moves together.
The flow
Cook alone
Cards completed privately. Music on. No comparing yet.
Taste around
Round the table: each person shares two ingredients and one rule.
Spot the gaps
Where do our kitchens clash? Dig into the differences.
Write the house rules
Capture shared norms on the canvas. Everyone leaves knowing them.
Group discussion prompts
Whose seasoning is heaviest, whose is lightest — and what would help the light-seasoner follow the dish?
Where do our heat levels differ most? What happens when high-heat meets low-heat under pressure?
Whose ‘finished’ is someone else’s ‘rough draft’? How do we hand off so plating expectations don’t collide?
Which ‘rule everyone knows’ turned out to be one person’s only? How many of us shared it?
What does ‘heads-down’ mean for each of us — and how should the team read it?
If we agreed on one new house rule today, which would prevent the most friction next week?
The shared kitchen canvas
Fill this in together as you talk. These become your house rules: short, memorable, and easy to revisit. Print the page to keep them.
Default context, and where the ask goes.
How we raise hard things and read directness.
When we check in and share work-in-progress.
How we close loops.
The unwritten menu, finally written. Keep it memorable.