Ritual Bank

Stand ups are short, focused, sharp daily meetings that usually last about 15 minutes where all team members answer some variation of the below 3 questions:
- What did you accomplish yesterday (victories)?
- What do you plan on accomplishing today (goals)?
- What is getting in your way (impediments)?

They are meant to help team members stay focused on their goals, understand each other's constraints, manage risks, and share knowledge or best practices.

Remote group work sessions can be extremely productive, but also a little tiring. Recently, our team had one of those and we broke out into a dance party to lighten the mood and take a step away from the slides. A few pets got involved and the endorphins that good music brought were a huge help in getting us re-energized for the hours of work ahead!

HubSpot hosts an annual #GrowDay for customer-facing employees. These teams spend a full day disconnected from their work and instead, invest their time in personal and professional development. HubSpot hosts sessions for employees to learn about and up-skill themselves in areas such as negotiation, consulting and inclusive leadership. This year, the remote off-site was orchestrated around 25+ time zones from around the world!

Take a break from work-related banter (unless of course, you work in publishing) and invite your colleagues to join a monthly book club.

If you want your team to innovate, it's important to show them that failure is part of the process. A weekly session where people can share their failure of that week and help the team learn from it is one way of doing that.

On the first day of each week, schedule repeat meetings for the team to all speak over Zoom and go over the priorities for the week. Note down every intention your teammates set for the week ahead. This meeting may take longer than usual but it will be worth it!

If your team has not been performing as well as it should be, because of problems having to do with trust, it might be the time for a call to clear the air. It can be difficult to approach trust-related topics, so we suggest that you start the call with some ice-breaking to ease up tensions. Then, you can set the issues at hand, and have the team recognize what is the root problem. Each member should openly talk about how they feel about it, without any interruption. After that is done, the team leader suggests a path forward to unanimous agreement, and offers everyone a last change to disclose their feelings. This ritual is helpful with settling passive conflicts, as it allows team members to own up to their mistakes, have/give transparent feedback, experiencing relief instead of bottling up emotions, and improving empathy to one another.

Highlight good work or valiant efforts of your team members on a praise wall. This can be a slack channel or a weekly email thread commending employees on their achievements. A Praise wall will uplift morale, encourage performance and support a positive, nurturing work culture.

This activity is a great ritual to wrap up a busy week, start a workshop or introduce a new joiner. The idea is simple, ask people to come prepared with three facts about themselves, two of which are true and one is a lie. When it is a person's turn, the group has to guess which of the three facts are false. Individuals will get creative and share something about themselves that others may not learn otherwise.

Beyond our work titles, we are all humans with families, friends and hobbies outside of work. Check-in and ask questions about colleagues who are expecting kids, getting married, moving into a new home or going through a hard time. These lifecycle transitions are meaningful, easy ways to connect with your colleagues.

Begin meetings or brainstorms with one question everyone needs answer. These 'Jeffersonian' conversation topics can be your most embarrassing story, or the best piece of advice you have been given, or even your favorite quote. These activities establish common ground, create a safe space and evoke a sense of psychological safety, nurturing stronger team trust.

Begin each class or meeting with a short exercise to encourage mindful participation. This can be a short meditation, a moment to enjoy music with eyes closed or a quick intention-setting exercise. These rituals will result in a more concentrated, intentional approach to work and learning.

If we're being completely honest, Karaoke is best enjoyed in-person, but there can be something very creative about virtual karaoke. Assign a song to every participant or let them choose their own. Everyone should record an individual karaoke session singing the best they can. Let them get creative with backgrounds, costumes and props. Each team member should send the clip to the karaoke organizer, who will run a virtual award ceremony showing the best songs and awarding prizes. This is particularly relevant to theater students who are learning remotely. Source: Hygger Blog

Sonal Bahl, an experienced HR Director and a Career Strategist, shared her favorite ritual on a recent episode of Centaur Stage. Sonal keeps a perfume bottle on her desk and when preparing for important meetings or planning to host a live webinar, she sprays a few spritzes. The smell uplifts her mood and consequently, helps her show up happier and motivated.

Whenever there's a new project presented, you can have as a ritual as debriefing session where the "why" behind the project is explained. You outline the task list, share thoughts, and come up with an action plan where everyone knows exactly why they have the role they have, as well as the purpose of the project.

Sitting at a desk all day can leave you feeling achey and sore. One easy way to promote more active team participation and comfort is to lead a short 1-2 minute group stretch. Add music to encourage movement, combat fatigue and promote healthy blood flow.

A great way to make sure we learn from both the great and not so great aspects of our teamwork is to have a bi-weekly retrospective where the team can share the best and worst parts of working together. A good framework for this conversation is to list the things that as a team we should stop doing, start doing, or continue doing with clear action points for the next cycle. Check out our insights for more on retrospectives.

Offsites align teams, spark innovation, and drive organizational growth. This ritual is great for extended leadership teams to step away from work, zoom out and take time to think, ideate, and plan for the upcoming quarter. The best offsites are a mix of strategy, reflection, action, and engagement.

"To ring in the weekend, our team hosted a small TGIT (TGIF) celebration. We hosted a game/activity or invited an internal/external guest speaker. These were usually friends or acquaintances who are happy to share their story, adventures or cause. At the end of this session, we brought in lunch for the entire team which was a great way for colleagues to gather in the canteen and socialize."
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- Submitted by Rami, KSA

It's so easy to get caught up in using every virtual interaction to chat about work. This ritual will ensure you make time once a month to connect over all-things unrelated to work! #TeamTime is a space for coming together, whether that is to have casual conversations or for a fun activity (e.g.: Virtual mystery room, Pictionary etc). This can help in creating strong bonds among team members as they spend more time getting to know who they are outside of work, what they share in common, where they are different and create a human connection among them.

If an argument between team members breaks out and is resolved, those involved write their feelings and sentiments on a paper. The wider teams comes together to watch them tear up the paper and discard of the argument, putting it in the past and focusing on a way forward.

Lunch and learns are a great way to promote knowledge sharing and improve presentation skills. The idea is simple, a team member creates a presentation about any idea and presents it to teammates. Topics can be related to the nature of work, or of an entirely different subject.

Set up a way to collect innovative revenue or cost management ideas from all employees, create a committee to select some of these ideas for implementation, and provide a small budget for each idea. You never know which one ends up being what helps you grow or save the business.

Appoint a team member in charge of sharing the successes of a team in a single Slack post or e-mail thread. Keep it short and sweet and be sure to shout out any special all-star performers.

You can use this ritual to celebrate an important milestone for individuals or teams in terms who have really delivered for the company. By pinning a symbol of the company onto the individuals' clothes you welcome them into the circle of trusted employees. Be careful of this ritual becoming a way of excluding people if badly managed.

Prompt employees to nominate a peer that they feel embodies the values of the organization by creating an online submission form or adding a functionality to your HR software.

Begin each online meeting with a single question for employees/student, activating their critical thinking skills. This question should be relevant to the topic of the class/meeting, adding to the conversation and not distracting from the objective or purpose. Everyone can either share their response to a single question, or leaders/instructors can share a number asking the group to guess what that represents or stands for. It's a great way to get a group engaged before diving into the content of a meeting.

Leaders spend hours developing strategies and so little time communicating what they put together to the teams, but how can teams deliver on a strategy they are not familiar with? This simple ritual is a great way to ensure everyone is aligned and working to the same goals. Book a meeting room, share the document in advance, present an overview of the strategy and importantly, make time for questions. You want to ensure people are aware of and how they are contributing to it.

Playing online Pictionary is a great way for remote team members to have a fun time together! Thanks to the whiteboard feature on Zoom and random word generator websites, it's very easy to play this game virtually. Get into two teams, each team gets a word from the random word generator, and has exactly one minute to draw it on the whiteboard.

Companies around the world began to add bean bags and video games to their offices, creating space for employees to play, connect and take a break from work while in the office. This is easily replicated at home, whether it is a Words With Friends game or a Call of Duty tournament, this in-office ritual is super easy to create and helps employees with shared hobbies connect outside of 'working' hours.