Create a Team Ritual for High-Performing (Remote) Teams
Maintain a High-Performing Team, Anywhere
Rituals enrich both our personal and professional lives, simultaneously grounding and connecting us. I hope that by sharing my experience with team rituals, I can help enrich your team’s holiday season.
Managing Remotely
I’m kicking off my Managing Remotely tips series, which leverages my experience managing teams often scattered across the globe.
The health of a company directly depends on the health of its teams. When team members connect with the company’s mission, engage in its goals, and enjoy their work, they enhance everything they touch—from products to customers, to colleagues.
Does location matter?
These days, one of the first questions asked when comparing high-performing and low-performing teams is, “Does location matter”? The answer is not at all. Based on a recent Atlassian survey, high-performing teams are located 39% in office, 34% remote, and 27% hybrid. Looking at that another way, 61% of high-performing teams are fully remote or hybrid.
"We're so distracted figuring out where teams should be working that we're missing the bigger picture on team health. Factors such as burnout, team and organizational culture, and the team's ways of working are so much more important than whether a team is remote, co-located, or hybrid." -- Dr. Mahreen Kahn, Senior Quantitative Researcher, Atlassian
Which Factors impact team performance?
If location isn’t a factor in a team’s performance level, which characteristics actually factor into whether a team is considered high-performing or low-performing? According to the Atlassian survey:
Team dynamics (understanding of the team’s goals and individual employee’s goals as related to the larger business)
Support structures (such as a framework through which to set and track goals and progress)
Processes (like time off requests)
Rituals (investment of time in fostering and enriching bonds among team members)
Create a team ritual (like Guess Who)
Making time for employees’ social engagement is well worth any manager’s time. Social interactions can help build rapport and trust among team members, creating the trust needed for productive collaboration and fostering a joyful work environment. According to the Atlassian survey, “members of healthy teams noted feeling a sense of belonging and support for new ideas … [thus creating] an environment of high engagement, which, in turn, serves as a buffer against burnout and fuels even higher performance.”
When I managed an international and physically disparate studio of 45 art directors and designers at Oxford University Press, we had a holiday ritual that focused on our skills of deduction and intuition. The name of the game: Guess Who!
To play Guess Who, every team member emails the game facilitator a photo of an object in their home. The facilitator anonymizes the object photos, creates a slideshow of the photos, then presents it to the team so they may vote on which object belongs to which team member. Based on the results (tabulated by the facilitator), a winner or winners are congratulated on their superhuman observation skills!
Guess Who is a classic team-building exercise for groups of three to 30 employees who have met or interacted before. It’s a fun way for teams to bond, regardless of work location! Plus, strong team cohesion––how bonded people feel to one another––is a key element for success in remote teams.
Ready to play?
Image credit: Amy Vosters unsplash.com/@amyvosters
