Navigating Next Normal: Team Conversation Guide
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Obviously, a lot changed in 2020, and into 2021.
It’s always important for teams to be having conversations to determine ground rules and team norms, but especially now when there may be a lot of unspoken expectations (or lack thereof) floating around, and confusion around what returning to the office will look like.
So today I’ve got a downloadable resource for you, and I’ll go over some of the pieces of the resource in the video and the blog.
I highly encourage you to download the full PDF resource, it’s a comprehensive list of questions for you to come together, answer, discuss, and determine what the future of work looks like for your team specifically.
Side note, some of these might be really obvious in conversations that you're already having. Some of these might be conversations you've never had together as a team. So hopefully it's a mix of both.
#1. In-person, remote, hybrid? What does that mean?
What does that mean for us? What does it mean to be remote work or in-person? How often are we in-person? Is it a certain amount of days per week? Is it weeks per month? Is it months per year? Do we have certain days that are required for everyone to be there, and then a couple of days a week that are flex days where you come in if you want or not?
Also, think about start times. Start and finish times in the regular work day, are they flexible? Are they rigid? Can people start at different times? What does that look like for us going forward?
#2. What does communication look like for us now?
What are the channels that we use? How do we add clarity and transparency to the communication that we have between people? How often do we communicate and what are we communicating about? Along with that, are there any new ground rules that we have to establish, or is there new technology that we can use or utilize to streamline and make sure communication is really straightforward as well as project management, so team flow and project flow, is there new technology, new ground rules that we have to establish for how we communicate and do projects together?
#3. Connection, networking, social interaction.
Are we making time, how are we prioritizing and creating opportunities for water cooler chats and hallway conversations?
Now, especially if we have a lot of remote teams, it's harder for people to network or connect and be social with people inside the company and other departments. We don't want to lead to this “us versus them,” or we only interact with a small group of people because it can that can create silos.
So how are we making time for time for connection? How are we prioritizing that? How are we creating opportunities for people to connect, network inside the company, be social, interact? There's a huge benefit to working for a company is that you have other human beings to interact with and be social outside of work.
#4. Meetings.
How are we holding and running meetings where we have potentially some people in-person and some people virtual?
It should be more intentional than just, "Well, these people will call in on their laptop." Think about, "How are we including the voices of," and making sure that we're being intentional about what the ground rules of those meetings are and how we include people that are virtual.
Do some meetings have to be in person, do some meetings have to be virtual? Think about the ground rules of meetings, potentially hybrid meetings. How often you're having them, when are they etc.
#5. Feedback.
Of course, I am a champion of this feedback. How often are we giving feedback? Who's giving feedback to whom, and about what, are we using regular check-ins and feedback and maintenance conversations to evaluate as a team and as individuals working together with each other? What's working, what's not working, what needs to be improved, etc. Anytime as a team, organization or in a relationship, feedback is critical. It's imperative that we set up and establish some timelines for that to answer questions about feedback, because that's the one way that we continually improve, continually monitor and evaluate "How are things going? Do we need to change anything?"
And, don't just do passive feedback. When I say that I’m referring to things like, "Well, if something comes up, let us know. Let's talk about it." Nope, schedule specific meetings once every other month or whatever to check in as a team and ask, what's working, what's not working? What do people need? Determine very intentionally what do we give feedback about, who's giving feedback to whom, and what is the feedback around and about?
Here's the full download⤵️
Never stop having these conversations and pressing in with your team to understand, "How do we work together?"
What are some of the ground rules working together that make communication easier, that just make work flow and the dynamics of being human beings together working on a team and in an organization easier.
I hope that you love the resource, go be awesome.
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This article was created by Galen Emanuele for the #culturedrop. Free leadership and team culture content in less than 5 minutes a week. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Culture Drop at https://bit.ly/culturedrop
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