This is why mindfulness online is a great team building method
“Yeah, celebrating you Hanna!”- I cheered up my colleague on our weekly afternoon get-together. This time it was through an online collaboration tool, due to the Covid-19 circumstances. Many of us moved to work remotely. Office meetings became online. There are pros and cons to running meetings remotely. One of the cons is that online meetings decrease personal contact, and it is harder to build deeper relationships with colleagues. However, I am going to tell you how an online meeting can be a great tool for team building and creating deeper connections with each other.
We are living in a time of uncertainty, rapid changes, high expectations, and competition. This leads us to naturally focus on constant self-improving, gaining new skills, and correcting unsatisfying parts in our selves. As the pace of change is so quick, the pressure can easily cause challenges to mental health. As human beings, we have a natural need to be connected to other people and be part of the community, however, from time to time the external factors, such as Covid-19, prevent the connection from us. The Covid-19 is restricting traveling and meeting people. All these factors influence our body and mental state.
Being grounded, able to manage our emotions, and supporting each other is key for mental health. Mindfulness is currently more and more apparent in the work environment. People see the benefits of practicing mindfulness; it helps to be more focused on one’s tasks, be aware of your one´s actions, and be calmer. With constant practicing mindfulness, you can manage stress, self-critic, be more compassionate for yourself and other human beings, and of course create more meaningful connections with each other.
Mindful session to celebrate and brag our success
I would like to share the mindful session I facilitated for our Design team! We have a diverse team, spreading across Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Poland. It is important to keep a good vibe and spirit inside of the team all the time, and especially during these strange times when everybody is working remotely from home offices. As a Fortum Design team, we were eager to explore and try new techniques to be more mindful, be more emotionally centered, and deeper connection with ourselves and with the team.
I invited my colleagues to share and celebrate themselves as we live in a world where we constantly think about our imperfections and failures instead of celebrating and bragging about our success.
The aim of this online gathering was to
- Let each designer deeply share their own celebrations, no matter how big or small they are. Share from the heart, something that really matters.
- Create space for active listening and tributing each other
- Raise the high vibe and create more positive emotions within the team
- Connect to each other in a more meaningful and deeper way
- Move the body as it wants by high vibe music
As a facilitator, I took a role to create a safe and non-judgmental space where each designer could open up, be vulnerable, and share and honor their own life wins.
And this is how it went in practice
We started our 30 minutes long session with everybody having video views on. I invited everybody to step into the session ritual with the following words:
“Hello everyone, I am really glad that you have joined this session. I am inviting all of you to step into this session by first closing the eyes, put one hand on the chest, and the other on the lower belly. Take three deep breaths, tap into your body.
Image that there appears a golden circle around you. You feel safe and protected inside of it. You see that each of your colleagues also is inside of their own golden circle. At the same, a big golden circle appears around all of us that came to this session. We all feel safe, protected inside of this circle. I invite you all now slowly when you are ready to open the eyes and join this session.”
After the opening words, I invited each person to share three celebrations, brags that happened the past week. The celebration could be in any way or form. There was no right or wrong. I encouraged them to share something each person wanted to celebrate deeply for themselves.
It’s important that during the person sharing all three celebrations, no interruptions are allowed. Just staying present and listening to each other.
And once persons have completed with their own celebrations, then joining as a group by clapping, sharing encouraging words, basically hugging virtually.
As a cherry on top of the cake, we finished the session by putting one high-vibe song on and danced together! 💃🏻🕺🏼
And about the outcomes?
It was a great session; the team really enjoyed it. We were able to connect in a more meaningful and deeper way as a team. And we learned new things about each other and were able to create a positive and peaceful state.
Celebrations and high vibe emotions create a positive state in one’s mind and body. People trust themself; they get more motivated and encouraged to continue.
Next time we need to ensure that the whole Design team joins the session!
If you got curious and wish to bring more mindfulness to your work, I encourage you to experiment, try, and see what is working for yourself and your team
By the way, a small tip on how you can celebrate yourself and others with 102 ways from this pdf file. https://powerofmoms.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/102-Celebrations-for-Tiny-Habits.pdf
References:
- Healing Circles, The practice of Healing Circles. Available online from https://healingcirclesglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/The-Practice-of-Healing-Circles-Module-1-How-to-host-a-circle-1.pdf and https://healingcircleslangley.org/what-are-healing-circles/
- The circle way (2020). Available online from http://www.thecircleway.net/
- BJ Fogg, (2015), Tiny Habits Academy. 102 Celebrations for Tiny Habits. Available online from https://powerofmoms.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/102-Celebrations-for-Tiny-Habits.pdf
- Elinor Jansen, (2015). Five Big Companies Who Swear By Mindfulness. Available online from https://www.happy.co.uk/blogs/five-big-companies-who-swear-by-mindfulness/
- Joe Mechlinski, (2020) How to Thrive in Times of Change and Uncertainty. Available online from https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/how-to-thrive-in-times-of-change-and-uncertainty-58b680f7ecd0
