This is the second of two posts on this topic. Here is a link to the first post.
In the previous post, I outlined why we need team members to experience more caring relationships, referencing Pfeffer in Dying for a Paycheck and Murthy in the US Surgeon General’s 2022 Report. Both Pfeffer and Murthy explain that stress and lack of social support in the current work environment harms employees’ health and well-being. Murthy suggests, “Organizational leaders, managers, supervisors, and workers alike have an unprecedented opportunity to examine the role of work in our lives and explore ways to better enable all workers to thrive within the workplace and beyond.” This post focuses on the kind of practices that need to be put into place to move from the current harmful culture to a culture of inclusion and belonging.
An organization's culture is created in the conversations between its members. For that culture to change, those conversations have to change. All conversations contain two messages; one is the content, and the second is the regard in which each speaker holds the other, or in other words, the nature of their relationship, as perceived by each speaker. This second message is revealed through body language, eye contact, gesture, and tone. Although often unintentional, each speaker sends one of many hundreds of messages that may be negative or positive, e.g., feeling superior to the other, enjoyment in the other’s companionship, deference toward the other, viewing the other as a resource or tool rather than a human being, feeling a sense of trust, respect for another’s knowledge, pleasure in seeing the other, and many more. Just reading the list probably recalls your feelings from past conversations. That underlying message is difficult to fake, so regardless of how carefully the words are constructed, we experience the underlying message. I’m not suggesting we be more careful about the messages we inadvertently send; instead, I’m suggesting that if we heal our organizations and create more caring and compassionate relationships, our unintentional messages will be congruent with our spoken words.
Teams are the place to begin to change an organization’s culture because it is where most of our work conversations occur. And teams are the place to start because a team can establish a culture of warmth and acceptance regardless of an organization's overall culture. Even so, team culture is just a start; what is needed is for the culture of the whole organization to move from being transactional to being more relational and for all members of an organization to care for the whole. We will come to that later, but as change begins with teams, we start there.
To change the culture, teams need to design and put into place practices that engender a sense of well-being and belonging among team members. In this post, I describe the practices of two very different teams and, drawing on their examples, suggest the design elements of practices that build team relationships. I focus on the design elements because my intent is not to suggest you copy these specific practices but to provide guidance for creating practices that will work for your team.
Given that you have already met some of the team members of TechnipFMC in an earlier post, I start with some of their practices. Most of the twelve team members are located in Houston, but several are in other countries. The team is divided into three sub-teams, each responsible for one or more specific products. However, each team member is also a member of a second team, creating a complicated matrix of product teams. Being matrixed gives each team insight into what other product teams are doing, increasing the possibility of collaboartion and pollination across teams. Each product team holds weekly meetings to coordinate the projects they’re working on. And they’re intentional about taking the time to catch up on each other’s personal lives at the start of each meeting. A second practice occurs once a month when all twelve members engage in an online “Working Out Loud” session for 24-48 hours. Each team member logs into the WOL session to share what they are currently working on as well as social items for example, who has a new dog, is getting married or has viewed a fascinating new video. And, of course, team members comment on each other’s messages. Another practice the whole team regularly engages in is team development activities, for example, everyone reading the same book and then holding discussions about it or the entire group taking a personality inventory and then talking through the results. Such activities help team members share the same language, learn about each other, and grow their relationships.
The second example from a few years ago is ProQuest, a team whose members were scattered from San Diego to Amsterdam, and all worked remotely. The team of 30 software engineers was comprised of programmers, analysts, product managers, and designers in ProQuest’s research solutions division. The whole group met face-to-face three times a year for a three-day Summit.
Putting together a summit took a lot of planning, most of which fell on the shoulders of Taco Ekkel, the team lead. He explains, “We have learned that it’s important to invest in preparing for the Summit. Before the Summit, the whole team brainstorms, “What do we want to discuss? What are the larger things that will come up in the next four months? What sessions we should have? What needs to be whiteboarded?” Most Summits are held either in New York, San Diego, or Amsterdam. On the morning of the first day, the meeting starts with an overview by senior management, providing updates about the business context, finance, sales, and new products. Then the group breaks out into work teams for the first sessions. Each work team’s task is to create the designs for the new products, which that team will then create over the next four months. At the Summit, each team meets around a whiteboard where members sketch out how a new feature will function. Once an idea is diagrammed on the whiteboard, it belongs to everyone in the room. Anyone is free to jump up, often with an eraser in hand, to make a change – and of course, what is added is just as easily changed again by another. The whole group reconvenes around 4:00. All the whiteboards are rolled into the main room, and each team uses its whiteboard to show what features it worked on and how each was solved. The last item on the daily agenda is Lightening Talks. As Lita, a team member, comments, “Lightening talks are voluntary. Different team members talk about what they think is neat or interesting, for example, ‘I programmed in some different language’ or ‘I thought of a different kind of identifier for people.’ Each person is given 5 minutes.” A large clock is displayed with a loud buzzer that sounds when time is up and a lot of laughter when the speaker has to be pulled off with the “hook” when he goes over the allotted time. There are typically five or six Lightening Talks at the end of each day – no more than 30 minutes. Taco notes, “We stop at
five and will be at the bar at 5:30 because the work is intense in the sessions, and the energy of everybody is depleted.” The evening social time is as much a part of the Summit as the sessions, strengthening relationships and trust. Team member Jason says, “My favorite part is the time after the meetings over drinks and dinner, a time to be more social. A lot of times, you're not talking about exactly what happened in the meeting, but you get an idea of how people are about different things. You hear about people’s families." Lita adds, “It is easier for me to talk with them about a work issue if I know something about them personally.”
On the two additional days of the Summit, each team continues to design the features they will be working on over the next four months, and in the evening, continues the merriment. Initially, the group met four times a year, but then realized that often they had not finished what they had discussed in the last Summit. So over time, they moved to three times a year. However, Taco explains, “After four months, we are out of steam and have a loss of shared sense of direction." So for the ProQuest team coming together for three days, every four months seemed the most effective frequency.
In between Summits, team members constantly communicated with each other using various forms of social media, including chat, Trello, and Flowdock. In addition, each team held a daily 15-minute “stand-up” meeting.
So what can these two examples tell us about how to go about building relationships within teams? They illustrate that there is no right way to create warmth and caring in a team setting. There are as many variations in how organizations help members care for each other as there are organizations. We can conclude that no set of practices will fit every organization. But what we can take away are some basic rules of thumb.
Work and Social Can Be Intermingled It is unnecessary to draw a sharp line between work and social or try to make sure they are separated. Work and social support each other. For example, at Proquest’s in-person meetings, teams work hard each day creating new software designs, but before they go off to dinner and Karaoke, they hold Lightning Rounds. As Lita wisely notes, “the social makes the work easier, and work gives members something to talk and joke about around the dinner table.” Weekly team meetings at TechnipFMC are about catching up personally and working on organizational issues. These examples show us that the work environment is not lessened by another person being warmed by your smile. Nor is it less productive because a team member, who has a great sense of humor, cracks a joke about the ridiculousness of something the team has been trying and failing to do. There may be no better way to feel connected than laughing together.
Multiple Practices Outside of work, you and your friends have many ways of staying connected - going to dinner, taking walks together, texting, having coffee at Starbucks, watching videos – it’s the same with the members of these teams. It’s not one practice they put into place, but multiple practices, some of which are initiated by the members themselves (that was so with the idea of the project matrix at TechnipFMC). Moreover, once a culture of caring and warmth is built, connection occurs spontaneously, as in TechnipFMC’s response to the death of Chris’s Grandmother, described in the earlier post.
Repeated Interaction The social practices in these organizations are not one-off events; they are activities embedded in how the team operates. Relationships grow through repeated interactions. As Taco said, “After four months, we are out of steam and have a loss of shared sense of direction.” - there is a need to meet again. Likewise, TechnipFMC’s monthly online “Working Out Loud” sessions build this continuity. If a team meets one time at a yearly retreat, relationships may be formed, but it is unlikely they will be sustained over time. Even pleasant memories fade without a continuing opportunity to check in, offer aid, and share what is happening. Building connections works best if such interactions have a regular schedule.
Naming the Practices Giving a name to a practice, for example, “Working Out Loud,” “Lighting Rounds,” or “Team Check-ins,” is as essential as occurring regularly. A name suggests a deliberate practice the team has put in place for a valued goal: to keep us connected.
Designed but not Facilitated The practices in the examples above were designed; that is, an individual or group thought about how to create a meaningful experience for the team. But notably, none of the practices are facilitated. There is no leader or coordinator of “Working Out Loud” or “Book Discussions.” There is confidence that members know what they need to do to build meaningful relationships. As Pascal so eloquently said, “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of... We know the truth not only by reason, but by the heart.”
None of the activities cited above are unique to these organizations; many will already be familiar to the reader. What is perhaps worthy of note is the intention in these organizations to frequently and consistently engage in activities that both help team members learn about each other and care about each other.