How to Connect with Your Team Members

More than three years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, 22 million people are still working from home, an environment where it can be difficult to figure out how to connect with your team members. It is not uncommon anymore to go weeks or months without seeing a colleague in person. 

That increased social isolation can take a toll. In a recent Surgeon General’s Advisory, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy noted that “the harmful consequences of a society that lacks social connection can be felt in our schools, workplaces, and civic organizations, where performance, productivity, and engagement are diminished.”

Learning how to connect with your team members, and doing so regularly, can help. At Evolving Minds, we’ve found that quarterly or monthly happy hours and social events just don’t go far enough in building team culture. Instead, we think you have to be intentional about fostering social connection and community at work.

The best way we’ve found to do this is by instituting what we call a “culture-building meeting.” A culture-building meeting is 20 minutes of protected time and space on your team’s calendar weekly or bi-weekly, where the team comes together to practice building team culture skills. 

A culture-building meeting can be a part of a larger all-staff meeting or departmental meeting, but it is important to carve out those 20 minutes and not let the time become an afterthought.

How can I work on building team culture in just 20 minutes?

At Evolving Minds, we work on building team culture in these 20-minute meetings by using a mindfulness-based curriculum. We teach 12 mindfulness skills that can be integrated into a culture-building meeting, and those skills fall into four categories.

Reduce stress

The first category of mindfulness skills that you can incorporate into your culture-building meeting are skills that reduce stress. At Evolving Minds, we practice paced breathing, conscious relaxation, and self-compassionate techniques. A great way to get started with one of these skills is by following along with the paced breathing exercise on our YouTube channel. 

When we practice these skills in the work environment, we are intentionally prioritizing time to reduce stress together as a community.

Increase focus

The second category of mindfulness skills we teach involves increasing concentration and focus. This is particularly important because we know that people are increasingly having difficulty concentrating at work. Mental Health America’s analysis of survey responses from more than 11,300 U.S. employees across 17 industries showed 71% of respondents found it difficult to concentrate at work in 2021, compared to 65% in 2020 and 46% in 2018.

The mindfulness skills we use in our culture-building meetings to practice focus include: mindfulness of breathing, the five senses, and present-focused awareness. 

Boost empathy

The third category of mindfulness skills we use in building team culture is boosting empathy. Inherently there is going to be conflict in everyone’s work environment, but when tensions are high, we find it helps to keep in mind our common humanity. It is easier to work through conflict when we have empathy and understanding for each other. To practice, we use the mindfulness skills of compassion, loving-kindness, and interconnection.

Foster self-awareness

The fourth category of mindfulness skills you can practice during a culture-building meeting is fostering self-awareness. As work colleagues, we all come from different lived experiences and backgrounds. We are not always cognizant of the everyday challenges our coworkers face. Improving self awareness within a team ultimately reduces harm because if we're aware of ourselves, then we're potentially causing less harm in the world.

The mindfulness skills you can use in your meetings as you explore how to connect with your team members are: mindfulness of thoughts, body scan, and mindfulness of emotions. 

To learn more about the ins and outs of the 12 mindfulness skills and how you can incorporate them into a culture-building meeting, explore our Connected Cultures program.

How would I structure a culture-building meeting around a mindfulness skill?

When you introduce one of the mindfulness skills into a culture-building meeting, the most important thing to do is actually practice the skill, not just talk about it. We recommend ten minutes to practice the skill, and then breaking team members off into one-on-one pairs to process the experience. This can be done virtually using a meeting function like Zoom breakout rooms.

One-on-one pairs should discuss the experience for three-to-five minutes and then come back to the larger group to reflect on their one-on-one time. At Evolving Minds, we like to leave this larger group time very open-ended and allow teammates to share whatever makes them most comfortable.

Now you know how to connect with your team members, what’s next?

The culture-building meeting is a key pillar of our Connected Cultures programming at Evolving Minds. And we know first-hand that it works. It is a great way to build team connectedness on its own, but it is also just one part of our larger fifteen-hour curriculum at Evolving Minds. 

We offer our Connected Cultures program to nonprofit, educator and social impact organizations looking to build a caring work culture. To learn more about the Connected Cultures program, get in touch.