Activating Team Culture in Remote Settings - WIN x The Design Gym Virtual Workshop Recap
In the last few months, our collective shift to remote working has left many teams to adjust to a new way of collaborating. In a WFH world, we ask ourselves how do we uphold a culture of Innovation?
Now, more than ever, WIN continues to enable connections between our network of women and bring experiences that help our community collaborate, learn and grow as innovators. We partnered with The Design Gym to bring you our first global virtual workshop, Activating Team Culture in Remote Settings, to help us all navigate the challenges we face during online working.
With brilliant facilitation from The Design Gym’s Erin Lamberty and Kelsye Gould, along with Ashley PinaKiewicz founder of Looking Glass Strategy, Hannah Dubin founder of The Group Forward and Kiely Sweatt Director of Innovation at Oracle Consulting, we broke out into discussion rooms (thank you Zoom!) to brainstorm about tangible remote culture ideas to take back to teams and organizations. Using Zoom breakout rooms and Google Docs, the session felt as collaborative as usual. The presence of a facilitator in each breakout room made the transitions and discussions all the more seamless.
Here are some creative ways to uphold a culture of innovation while WFH:
Teams need to feel mentally and emotionally safe to do their best work. Here’s how to make remote working more human:
Start your meetings with a quick prompt to get a sense of how everyone is doing
Start with a “Fist of Five” to see how members are feeling on a scale of 1-5
Check in on the wellbeing of your colleagues
If your organization uses Slack, prompt colleagues to respond with an emoji that reflects how they are feeling
Acknowledge that WFH presents different challenges for everyone
Be flexible to a new timetable. People may be juggling more at home and may need adjustments to their work days. Invite members to share their timetables with their teams and use slack statuses to show availability
It's no secret that collaboration is instrumental to innovation. Here’s how to keep the culture of brainstorming alive online:
Give team members the freedom of anonymity while brainstorming
Use ‘anonymous mode’ on Google Docs to let everyone contribute ideas from an equal volume, order, and level of fidelity. This is great if you are all on a call and want to take solo time to jot down ideas and then come together to discuss
Ensure that everyone has an equal chance to share their perspective
Do “rounds” on virtual calls so that everyone has a moment to add to the conversation. Tip: Let the most senior person go last
Try out online collaboration tools
Diversity of perspectives pushes our work. Here is how to share work and receive feedback when you can’t walk around the office asking, “What do you think about this?”
Give team members the space to ask questions and discuss their work
Set up a feedback channel in Slack, Teams, or org. wide chat space for asynchronous feedback and/or to put out open calls for input on projects or artifacts
Give team members the opportunity to discuss work with colleagues not on the project or from a different discipline
Set up open virtual office hours where peers from a variety of disciplines can come together and share an idea they’re working on, solicit feedback, provide feedback
A huge thank you to The Design Gym and our facilitators for running a killer virtual brainstorm. A big shout out to our community that joined from all over the world! We’re excited to continue to bring our global community together virtually.
Editorial: Marcela Madera
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