When nurturing a culture of trust and collaboration at work, we often rely on a sense of camaraderie that is hard to replicate online. We cannot share our food on the same table, sit in a circle or read each other’s body language.

This takes our culture to a different digital mode. Not better. Not worse. Just different.

We now must go one level deeper and share our purpose, our values and the best way to heal each other’s wounds.

Here are some ways to help you connect with each other virtually and go beyond a little box on the screen.

1. Share small gifts and surprises, from handwritten cards to care packages to plants or desk toys.
2. Before a staff meeting, send the same food over to each person and invite them to eat during “lunch meeting”.
3. Build regular music playlists around specific theme and have people listen to it throughout the week. A unique conversation theme arises.
4. Ask each member to recommend a song to listen to. Rotate daily songs.   
5. Create an internal weekly group blog where each member is asked to write a short post on something funny / creative / strange/ foolish / bold. The trick is to keep it simple and easy, so it doesn’t feel like chore.
6. Set up regular shows for employees to share personal interests. Their passions, their causes, their struggles and how they overcome them.
7. Create fun contests or digital challenges to resemble friendly pranks that happen in the office (notice any surfacing bullies)
8. Host internal podcast and interview other employees. Focus on their families, hobbies, personalities, more than work. Let others get to know them personally.
9. Embrace anchors. Send a physical poster, a plant, or a desk item for your team with your name and number of it. Ask them to place it where they work daily. This anchor will remind them to call or connect with you whenever the need arises.
10. Send a “Good morning” message through IM or text. This morning connection helps plant a seed for people to remember you during the day or link you in a discussion they heard the previous day. Your network will grow and your culture of trust will prosper.  
11. The next time you feel the urge to write a long email about a subject at work, create a video instead. Your video will be more memorable and the message clearer. This can be as simple as using your phone to record a selfie or using an easy tool like “Loom” that allows you to share your screen and record yourself at the same time. 

What other ideas do you have to increase the connection between your remote-working team?

What’s your word for the day?

A single word can build and preserve your creative momentum of the day.
Pick a word, write it down, keep the note in front of you for the day (or the week). This will be your criterion for decision making.
A word like “adventure” will guide you through decisions in terms of picking food, planning a work-related project, engaging in a team exercise or clearing up space. Compare that to a word like “prosperity”, what changes will that make on how you go through the day?

Pay attention to your understanding of the word.
What feelings does it evoke?

A word like “confidence” could represent the meaning of………. “empowerment”,……… “elegance” …………or ………. “respect”.
Which one do you associate with the most?
You understanding of this one-word will affect the outcome of whatever decision you make that day.
The same word can change meaning used on another day.
So choose with intention.

Here’s a thought experiment that will help you wear different hats to increase the chances of finding creative solutions.

When facing a certain problem at work, on a piece of paper write 7 types of jobs that are as far from your current career as possible. For example, a nurse, a truck driver, an architect, a fire fighter, a winter sports athlete, a carpenter and a lawyer are examples far from my line of work.

Now thinking about one specific challenge you have at work, frame it as a question and write it down. “i.e. In what ways can we speed up our client’s onboarding process?”.

Write a few ideas on how to solve it in a list.  

Next, using the list of jobs you have, ask again the same question of your challenge borrowing their heads this time.

For example: how would a nurse see this problem? In our example: In what ways can a nurse speed up the “onboarding” of patients?. How would a truck driver view it? “How would a truck fleet owner  onboard ongoing new drivers?”

Provide a list of ideas for each one of the suggested professions and questions. Or better yet, ask someone who has this role for ideas. The more out-of-your-way the career is, the better ideas to pollinate from.

The end result will show you not only how boring your original ideas are, but how magnificent those creative juices started to flow in your head coming from different directions. You know how seven, no, eight, lists of ideas. If each list is only 10 ideas, well, you do the math.

Stay creative, while staying safe.

Randah