Feeling Disconnected From Your Team? Tap into what you know.
The Joys of Knowing Your People
There's a book imprint in the publishing industry with a disproportionate number of Virgos on staff. Roughly a quarter of the entire team have birthdays between August 22 and September 23, including the Publisher, the Deputy Publisher and folks across marketing, editorial and publicity. It’s a running joke that their "Virgo-ness" is part of their special sauce as a team. Before the pandemic, they would celebrate August and September birthdays with a Virgo-themed party in their midtown Manhattan office. (You may be like, a Virgo celebration? But for them, it was a whole thing.) When the pandemic hit, they had to invent a new way to gather.
Remote and flexible work seem here to stay for many teams. Though gathering well virtually started as a band-aid, it’s become a crucial ingredient to the future of knowledge-based work. How do you create shared, enlivening experiences for teams and organizations when you don't share physical space? Well, I can tell you what one team did – to great success – to celebrate their people, one gathering at a time.
The Most Virgo of Them All
Instead of canceling the annual festivities, they put the non-Virgos in the office in charge of creating a "Who is the most Virgo?" contest to play on Zoom. On the big day, two non-Virgo staff played host.
"As you all know, we have a lot to celebrate. And a lot of the great work that comes out of this place comes from the Virgos who work here," one host began. "These Virgos are great. They're creative, hard-working and loyal. They also can be perfectionists, judgmental, and hyper-organized," another deadpanned. And then the big reveal: "To find the greatest Virgo of Them All, we put together a game."
Each of the following three rounds would be judged by a non-Virgo colleague.
Round 1: "Show us an organizational system in your house." The Virgos carried their laptops through living rooms, kitchens, and bedrooms to show off an alphabetized spice rack, an archival photo filing system, and many a color-coded bookshelf.
Round 2: "Show us your most tasteful or aesthetically-pleasing object." One Virgo proudly showed her kilim rug, while most others showed colorful wall art.
Round 3 was a hypothetical: "It's Sunday at 7 PM and your boss texts you that something that technically wasn't your responsibility wasn't done correctly and needs to be fixed. What do you do?" The responses were pretty similar: "Obviously we would immediately fix it – what other possible answer could there be?"
After the first three rounds ended in a tie, the hosts (a non-Virgo editor and a non-Virgo publicist) announced that there had been a secret fourth category all along: one of the publishers had been quietly judging which Virgo was the sorest loser. (At this point, everyone was cracking up.)
The overall prize was a "hideous" trophy — a snow globe featuring three Woodstocks cavorting in a nest — that the host wanted out of his basement.
Three Reasons the Zoom challenge really worked for this team.
1. They found a specific, funny way to celebrate the qualities of their people in a virtual setting — while also not making it too saccharine.
The more focused and particular a gathering is, the more narrowly it frames itself and the more passion it arouses. "The most Virgo" challenge took a long-running joke (and a specific, particular, quirky point of pride) to the next level. The slight ribbing across hierarchies allowed for a deeper value to also be celebrated: their precision, their aesthetics, and yes, even their competitiveness.
2. The structure of the gathering introduced just the right amount of risk, playfulness and choice for each player without being overwhelming. It was also fun to watch.
Making the event a competition created an energy that can be lacking in regular Zoom calls. Three rounds — with the surprise 4th — was enough to make it interesting, but not too long. It also allowed other colleagues to play roles (host / judge / witness / audience), and become an important part of the whole experience. (There were different judges each round.)
3. They took advantage of the medium and tapped into the worlds behind them.
You have to be home to be able to show off your alphabetized spice rack or beloved rug. The team found a creative — and boundaried — way to share parts of their colleagues that would be impossible in an office. (Note: the asks were very specific and within appropriate work fare.)
You can do this too.
I’m not suggesting that everybody host a Virgo party (though I can hear you Virgo readers clapping on this first day of Virgo season). I am suggesting you get to know the members of your team well enough to even be able to host fresh, inventive gatherings that feel relevant and fun.
Think about a time you felt really seen by a group.
How did these people get to know you?
What are some ways you have gotten to know others in a group?
Do you know your team members well enough to design a specific gathering around some of them? How might you get to know them better?
How might you honor or create joy around that the next time you come together?
The publishers understood who they were, but didn't take themselves too seriously. In designing a fun, friendly, doable competition, they added warmth, humor and the unexpected into remote work.
In Case You Missed It
American Express chose The Art of Gathering as a "next chapter in business" book and I sat down recently to talk all things gathering and conflict at work with their host, Cardiff Garcia. You can listen to our conversation here.
Inspirations
A powerful, honest essay in ELLE magazine from the writer Brea Baker on her own grappling about how and where she would marry. It's the best kind of essay, seemingly about a wedding, but also so much more: land, identity, rituals, shared and broken and reformed belief systems, and finding our ways through.
Jack Saul, a psychologist and expert on collective trauma, creates re-entry and re-membering rituals for veterans returning from war and their communities. He has penned an accessible, beautiful essay on how we might collectively treat "wounds to the soul." He shares four important practices in an "emotional toolbox" in this work.
When the pandemic hit and concerts were canceled, the singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers enrolled in divinity school. She joined the first class of a new program — Harvard's Master of Religion and Public Life — and studied the spirituality of public gatherings. She graduated and this July launched the resulting album.
