Using rituals to enhance team engagement

The term “ritual” has different connotations depending on your background and culture. Communities have been leveraging rituals for thousands of years to celebrate, mourn, and build relationships with each other. Rituals can look different across various groups, and they all have 5 main things in common:

1. They tie people together at an emotional level

2. They are performed around specific events

3. They serve as a tangible display of the culture

4. They are meaningful and intentional.

5. There are a precise sequence of words, activities, and objects that are used

The most common form of rituals shows up in our personal lives – weddings, funerals, religious ceremonies, graduation parties, birthdays, ect. We all have personal rituals that ground us when there is change or chaos going on in our lives that we cannot control. For me, its my morning meditation, spraying my pillow with lavender mist before bed, and daily gratitude journal. For a fun activity, take this ritual quiz 😀

Pause and consider 3 rituals that you cherish… They are likely activities that help you connect with others and bring stability and comfort to your life.

So what if we incorporated rituals into our workplace to create more trust and deepen relationships among our teams?

After reading Michael Norton’s book, The Ritual Effect, I started weaving this concept into workshops that I facilitate with clients to enhance their culture in a way that was customized to them. How does this work?

I’ll give you an example… A team that I worked with was productive and successful in achieving their goals. They had doubled their employee size since 2020, and the Company adopted a remote work model hiring talent from all over the U.S. The Senior Leadership team approached me with a request to help them to increase engagement, collaboration, and psychological safety.

As part of the workshop that I facilitated with this group, I guided the team through creating their own set of workplace rituals that aligned to their mission and values. They developed 3 specific rituals:

1. Daily: At each morning stand-up meeting, the team started by choosing a zoom emoji that represented their current emotion. There was no further group discussion or explanation, but it allowed team members to follow up with each other and ask “How are you feeling?” and increased the authenticity and psychological safety among the team. This supported their “We care” value.

2. Monthly: At the end of every month, the team celebrated wins together by creating a slack channel that was dedicated to sharing celebrations. Senior leadership started the chat by sharing something they felt proud of the team for accomplishing. Then others were encouraged to add wins and complimenting their team members. This supported their “Excelling together” value.

3. Quarterly: They implemented a quarterly lookback and learn review of their annual OKRs (goals). The entire team participated and had the ability to share what is helping them achieve their goals, what is getting in their way, and ideas for iteration for the next quarter. This supported their “Continuously innovate” value.

Incorporating these rituals into their organizational practices did not require additional meetings or work. They just required a reframe and new perspective along with senior leaders setting an example and actively participating in making these rituals come to life. The outcomes after just 6 months of incorporating these rituals were increased engagement and retention, employees speaking up in meetings to share creative ideas, and employees describing their culture as “fun, helpful, and invigorating”. The best part is that these rituals can evolve over time as the organization shifts and grows!

If you want to begin creating rituals to enhance your workplace culture, follow these 3 guiding principles:

🤗Let your employees establish them. Leadership mandates of rituals will not stick.

❤️Tie them to your organization’s values so they become tangible representations of your culture.

😄Make them simple and easy to implement. Rituals should be enjoyable, meaningful, and evoke positive emotions!

Are you ready to strengthen your culture and help your team become more engaged the productive? If so, let’s spend 15 min discussing how we can incorporate rituals into your culture!