A few weeks back, we wrote about how showing your pets on Zoom meetings, or at least not hiding them like guilty secrets, can help the team bond and get to know each other. But can it go too far? Here’s the other side of that conversation. Apparently, some people make their pets too central to the process. A reader recently told me about his boss, a lovely lady who has taken … [Read more...]
Is Social Time Wasted Time?
It’s NCAA Tournament time again, which means nothing to 90% of the civilized world. But here in the US it means three weeks of drama, gambling, and well-intentioned foolishness. It’s also a good time to examine the role of creatively "wasting" time with social activities at work. First, we’ll start with the supposedly bad news. According to lots of studies done every year … [Read more...]
Of Cats, Keyboards, and Building Relationships
Can a cat walking across a keyboard really help your team build working relationships on a remote or hybrid team? I have been thinking about this for a while, and as silly as it sounds, one of the signs of a healthy working relationship might be the team’s reaction to Mister Fluffybutt getting webcam time during a meeting. This might seem odd, and there’s no doubt there are … [Read more...]
Time to Assess Your Remote and Hybrid Team Culture
We are in an odd time when it comes to discussing work culture. Like being in the eye of a hurricane, we are stuck between the initial panicky onslaught of COVID: “Go work from home and we’ll figure it out,” and looking toward the future: “Okay, we have to figure out what we do next.” This moment is as calm as it’s going to get for a while, so we’d best do some assessing of … [Read more...]
Do You Trust the New Team Member?
When the pandemic hit, one of the more surprising things we learned was how well teams maintained existing relationships and work processes. People who were co-located and teams that functioned at a high level managed to keep it up when they were dispersed. Trust was a big part of that. But two years in, many teams have new members, and some are being completely reformed. Do … [Read more...]