October's tips on Belonging for hybrid teams
Check in with yourself and take this month's Season of Connectedness poll
October was the first of five months in the “Season of Connectedness” on the Showing Up newsletter. The Season of Connectedness is all about finding connection across team members who work at a distance from each other — whether through work from home or through disparate office locations. October’s focus was “Belonging” for hybrid workers and teams.
Why Belonging? Anytime we work with less physical contact with our team members, loneliness can result. It’s common to feel a bit unmoored and detached from what’s going on in the team, what matters, why and how we fit. Because of this, leaders and members of hybrid teams need to take intentional steps to create a sense of Belonging.
I shared three tips with you this month about how to create Belonging if you work at a distance from your teammates, adapted from my book “Your Resource Is Human: How empathetic leadership can help remote teams rise above.”
Belonging Tip #1: Measure what you do. Setting goals helps you show what you’ve achieved and makes it easy for your coworkers to “see” you reaching milestones, and to celebrate with you. Read more in October’s first letter: Do you struggle to belong?
Belonging Tip #2: Work out loud. The metaverse and virtual reality are already here! Using video and audio tools to hear and see the people in your team while they are at work in a distant location helps everyone find a common rhythm. Try it! More in October’s second letter: The magic of being seen.
Belonging Tip #3: Double down on mentorship. By identifying a mentor or two who can support you, and likewise a few mentees you can in turn support, you are constructing a virtual support system whose interactions will help you feel more connected to your colleagues and your company. More in October’s third letter: How mentorship fuels hybrid belonging.
How are we feeling?
Here are three pulse questions to gauge how readers of “Showing Up” are feeling about Belonging… have a go (and be honest with yourself!):
[The poll will be live for 1 week from the date of this letter posting.]
In the case of this pulse, if we’re feeling a steady sense of belonging, there is only one right answer to all three: Always. If you couldn’t answer “Always” to one or several of them, click back and review the tips from October. If you have tips, reflections or questions, hit reply and let me know, or leave a comment below.
Looking forward to November and “Meaning”
November is the second month in our “Season of Connectedness,” when we’ll explore the hybrid team power mindset of “Meaning.” One of the biggest revelations for me when doing the research for “Your Resource Is Human” was that the #1 reason people liked their employer less after the pandemic was not because of their company’s response to the pandemic itself… it was that work became boring. Work also lost meaning. (Source: https://www.capterra.co.uk/blog/1948/workplace-skills-hiring-productivity-post-pandemic-uk)
Many of us became restless and detached from why we were doing what we were doing, and being physically separated from each other was part of the reason. As with Belonging, it’s important to be intentional about Meaning. I’ll share some top tips with you in November, so be sure to subscribe and you’ll get a new tip every Thursday.
I hope October has given you some new ways to Belong. I’d love to hear how it’s going in the comments!