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Manager Forums: Leading Teams with Creative Workplace Rituals

Many have come back to work with feelings of uncertainty, concern, and burnout lingering from 2021. Kursat Ozenc provides ways you can create new team rituals.

The February 15 Manager Forum facilitated a great discussion that centered on how we can impact our culture as more employees return to working on-site and in hybrid environments. Our featured guest speaker, Kursat Ozenc, who teaches design with a focus on rituals at The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, guided forum participants through a series of ritual exercise examples to help engage, connect and energize your team. Below is a forum summary, and highlights and examples shared by Kursat in the session. 

The February forum

Kursat began the forum with a virtual “Shake-down” ritual warm-up to help everyone loosen up and center themselves. The ritual uses your body to activate your senses to feel present. Once everyone was warmed up, energized and centered, Kursat jumped right into the meaning of culture and how rituals help support rebuilding that culture. 

The focus of the time was spend guiding forum participants through various ritual example exercises that touched on how to:

  • Rebuild connections to foster friendship and belonging in the team
  • Engage team members with low interest in doing things together
  • Bring out kindness, empathy and understanding within the team 
  • Energize my team when things are draining or there’s low energy

Forum participants then took the examples shared and split into virtual breakout groups to discuss how they might try or remix to fit their team’s needs. 

The forum concluded with a share out of ideas from the breakout groups and a note from Kursat that a ritual evolves over time to better suit the people and the situation. 


Forum highlights

Culture

Kursat defined culture as big, something hard to grasp and a nebulous term–it can be anything. He then proceeded to share that culture didn’t have to be defined like mentioned above if we looked at it from a design perspective with both visible and invisible forces interacting with each other. “Visible things are things we can see, like Stanford’s nice buildings, when you enter into the lobby, the things that we can grasp – artifacts, behaviors, even our metrics. Then there are these invisible things that we don’t really see. These are beliefs, values and assumptions. And typically, if you don’t think from a design perspective, the invisible part is really harder to change because they’re more ingrained and they’re harder to grasp; but this is where rituals come into play” Kursat shared.  

“Rituals are one way to shift the culture because they make invisible forces more visible and tangible, like beliefs, values and assumptions—and that's where their power comes from—if you can grasp on something you can act on it” continued Kursat.

What is a ritual, exactly?

Actions that a person or group does repeatedly, following a similar pattern or script, in which they’ve imbued symbolism and meaning. Rituals live in a spectrum and can be big and stand out or they can be small, every day, and personal. Rituals also help you regulate people’s energy. Kursat shared the examples of a rugby team doing a haka ritual before a game to dial-up energy or doing a guided breathing exercise to dial down energy. “You have the power with rituals to adjust energy in the room for your meetings and your events”, noted Kursat. 

Why rituals work 

When people are performing a ritual it creates a synchronization between your mind and body and when your mind and body are in sync that means you are in the state of unity or flow. 


Ritual exercise examples

I want to rebuild connections to foster friendship and belonging in the team. How do I do that?

Ritual example #1: High-quality connection

When people form high-quality connections with each other they are more likely to perform better as a team because they have a trusted base to work from. 

  • Virtually: Pair up in breakout rooms and chat for 2-3 minutes about shared goals, shared histories,  or shared interests. Debrief with the team after. 
  • In-person: Ask your team to turn to their right or left and chat for 2-3 minutes about shared goals, shared histories, or shared interests. Debrief with the team after. 

Ritual example #2: Uncommon parallel

  • Virtually: Split your team into breakout rooms in small groups of (2-3) for 2-3 minutes. Ask them to find something they have in common that most people on your team don’t. Share out with the team. 
  • In-person: Ask your team to turn to their right or left and have a brainstorm conversation for 2-3 minutes with the person next to them about something they have in common that most people on your team don’t. Share out with the team

I need to engage team members with low interest in doing things together. How do I do that?

Ritual example #1: Variety hour 

Designed for team members to share their work and passions with the community by giving them the freedom to share things they care about and help co-workers discover where teammates get their energy from. 

Have your team sign up for sessions that are anywhere from 1 minute to 30 minutes and share whatever content they want –personal or professional. This can be done virtually or in person. A targeted question could also be used for these meetups; e.g., “Share about your favorite vacation.” or “Share a favorite recipe and why you enjoy it so much.”

Ritual example #2: Meet’n three

organize informal lunch dates between three people, not two, to chat and get to know each other. Having three people instead of two helps lower the barrier of awkwardness. Repeat the lunch dates with new people.  This can be done virtually or in person.

I need to bring out kindness, empathy and understanding within my team. How do I do that?

Ritual example #1: Connection web

This exercise is meant for a larger group. 

  • Virtually: Create a Google Slide that has a circle of people icons all with a name next to it, representing a person on the team, or attending the meeting/gathering. Instead of using a string like in the in-person example below, the person will draw a line on the slide from the person icon to the person they want to share something they learned from or gratitude towards. Repeat each person drawing a line until everyone has been mentioned and had a turn.
  • In-person: Have the team/group stand in a large circle. Take a ball of yarn and have one person wrap the end of the yarn around their hand and then toss the yarn ball to whomever they would like, creating a yarn trail across the circle. The person who tossed the ball then shares one thing about the person they tossed the ball to –something they learned about that person or appreciation and gratitude towards that person. Repeat passing the yarn until everyone has received the ball. The end result should be a yarn web across the circle and a web of learning and appreciation across the team. 

Ritual example #2: Small moments jar

Helps teams build a healthy culture by instilling a habit of recognizing contributions of all shapes and sizes.

  • Virtually: Create a Google form or Slack channel for teammates to submit when they want to recognize another teammate –whether it’s helping with a deadline, giving a great presentation, etc. The Google form submissions should be reviewed at the end of a weekly team meeting to help recognize small moments that matter. 
  • In-person: Provide the team with a jar and paper in a common area. When a teammate does something great–whether it’s helping with a deadline, giving a great presentation, or bringing in fancy cupcakes–another teammate can write it down on a small slip of paper and put it in the jar. The jar should be emptied regularly, such as at the end of a weekly team meeting to help recognize small moments that matter

I need to energize my team when things are draining or there’s low energy. How do I do that?

People’s energy can be activated in multiple ways, from moving together, to interacting with each other in meaningful ways.

Ritual example #1: Charades

Charades is a guessing game for movies, book names, or songs. 

Virtually:  Teammates pair up. One of them picks a movie and sends a direct message to their partner. The partner needs to act out the title by using gestures and movements without using any words. The winner pair is the one with the highest number of right guesses. 

Ritual example #2: Partner bonds

Partner Bonds are rituals that you can encourage pairs in your teams to build together. They are one-to-one, usually secret actions that team partners can develop together. Strong partnerships at work can help unite people with different skill sets and seniority levels. Partner bonds can be carried out over days, weeks, etc., and can be shared out with the team after.

Visit the Manager Toolkit to watch the full recorded session and view previous forum topics and resources.