It’s been about a month since 2025 began. Did you set goals for the year? Here at CultureSync, we hosted a goal-setting workshop to help our clients and friends create clear, actionable goals for the new year. Whether or not you attended, we want to check in—how’s it going? 

We know goal-setting can sometimes fall into the “set it and forget it” category. To avoid this, we recommend a monthly review to help you stay on track. Here are a few tips and strategies to ensure steady progress toward your goals.

Did You Complete Your Goal-Setting Process?

If you haven’t yet finalized your goals, take a moment to do so. If you already set them, consider sharing them with someone or setting up an accountability structure to keep you motivated.

Create a One-Sheet Summary

Compile a one-page document listing your key goals for the year. Place it somewhere visible as a daily reminder. For those who attended our goal-setting workshop, this sheet includes your:

• Guiding principles
• Empowering paradigm
• Focus for the year
• Core values
• Key roles
• Top 10 goals

Track Monthly Progress with Measurable Stats

We recommend you do a monthly review to help you stay on track with your goals this year.  Ideally, you can set up some monthly stats that will help you track your goals.  Look at each of your goals and set up a measurable monthly statistic to check in on.  Here are some examples:

• Goal:  Monthly date nights with my husband/wife.
  • Stat:  Date nights
• Goal:  Lose 12 pounds this year (1 pound per month)
  • Monthly stat:  Pounds lost
• Goal:  Read one book a month
  • Monthly stat:  Books read
• Goal:  Exercise 3 days a week (12 days a month)
  • Stat:  Days exercised

Some of your goals won’t easily lend themselves to a stat.  That’s okay.  ​You should think about how you want to make progress on those goals and if there is anything you want to do next month to move you closer to accomplishing them. Then, schedule that in your calendar or add them to your task list.

​You may ​also have stats you want to track that aren’t directly linked to one of your top 10 goals.  Examples:

• Read (pages, days, books, etc.)
• Booked Revenue
• Speaking Engagements
• Insomnia
• No sugar
• No alcohol
• Medication
• Vitamins
• Language learning (lessons, days, classes, etc.)
• Made the Bed
• ​Did the dishes before bed
• Went to bed by 10 pm (or whatever time you aspire to)
• Got up by 6 am (or whatever time you aspire to)

Reflect Monthly

Here are some additional questions for you to reflect on each month. If you decide to join us for CultureSync’s goal-setting session next year, this will make it very easy as you just go back to your monthly reflections and review them:

1. What did I accomplish this month?
2. What were my challenges or disappointments?
3. What are my favorite things?

I also like to go through my phone and grab 1-3 photos from the month.  I print those out using my HP Photo Sprocket (2”x3” photo stickers) that I can put on my review pages in my journal.  If you’re using an electronic journal like Canva, that’s even easier.  You just import your pictures. No new tech is required.

Adjust as Needed

Don’t forget this isn’t a life sentence or an exercise in self-flagellation.  If you are not making progress on certain goals, actively engaging with certain roles, or living according to specific values, perhaps you need to CHANGE WHAT YOU HAVE WRITTEN DOWN, rather than beat yourself up about it.

If you’re stuck on any of this and want help, reach out. We are here to help!

The post It’s Time to Check In on Your Goals! appeared first on CultureSync.

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Whether your team is fully in-office, remote, or in a hybrid model, retreats offer a valuable opportunity to strengthen team bonds, foster connection, and ensure everyone is aligned with the organization’s goals and culture. In today’s diverse work environments, team retreats provide a rare opportunity to step away from daily tasks and engage in deeper, more meaningful interactions. From learning about each other to reinforcing company culture and values, team retreats can strengthen your team, no matter where or how you work.

Here are a few pictures of our CultureSync team during our recent team retreat. Looking at this picture, you might wonder, “What Halloween group costume did this team try to put together?” This picture is actually from one of our activities during our team retreat when we all dressed up for a murder mystery game.

We were each given characters to play, outfits to dress up in, and clues to follow, creating an interactive mystery for us to solve. Not only did this provide an opportunity to have fun and be silly, but we also got to practice our improv skills. We engaged in the “Yes and” rule of improv, which encourages participants to accept and build upon each other’s ideas. This teaches flexibility, quick thinking, and the ability to support each other, which are crucial for teamwork.

Has your team considered facilitating a team retreat? Here are some reasons why team retreats are powerful tools for building trust, fostering collaboration, and creating lasting connections, regardless of your team’s work setting.

Building Trust 

Trust is the foundation for successful collaboration regardless of how often your team meets face-to-face. Team retreats offer dedicated time for trust-building through interactive exercises, open communication, and shared experiences. Trust naturally deepens when teams come together, especially in activities that require teamwork or creative problem-solving. This helps both in-office and remote employees collaborate more effectively when they return to their regular work settings.

Creating Connection Beyond the Office & Away from the Screen

Team retreats provide a unique opportunity for colleagues to step out of their usual roles and connect on a personal level, whether they work side-by-side or primarily over Zoom. By creating a fun and relaxed environment, retreats break down communication barriers and silos, especially between departments or individuals who rarely interact. These shared experiences foster empathy, strengthen bonds, and enhance collaboration, leaving team members more engaged and motivated to work together toward common goals.

Reinforcing Company Culture and Values Across All Teams

For teams of any structure, retreats offer a unique opportunity to align with the company’s mission and values. By stepping back from the day-to-day grind, teams can reflect on what the organization stands for and how their individual work contributes to the larger goals. This is particularly important for hybrid and remote teams who may not have regular touchpoints to reinforce these cultural values.

Keeping the Momentum Going

The personal connections and trust built during a retreat can have a lasting impact on team dynamics. For remote teams, the in-person time helps to reinforce the virtual relationships developed through screens. Hybrid and in-office teams also benefit by deepening relationships and encouraging more open collaboration in the workplace. Staying connected after the retreat ensures that the lessons learned and the bonds created are carried into everyday work life.

Ready to plan your own retreat? 

The CultureSync team is here to help! Whether you are looking to do a one-day retreat or plan a team getaway, we can help you build the perfect agenda with activities for connection, team building, and trust or help facilitate essential workshops and activities to support your team. 

The post Costumes, Clues, and Culture: Inside Our Team-Building Retreat appeared first on CultureSync.

• A high performing employee asked for a raise. She is awesome and does great work and we’re short staffed.  But we’re also facing massive budget cuts and giving her a raise would be incredibly bad optics for the organization.  And, I don’t want to risk losing her.
• My contractor is inflating my bills. I appreciate the work he’s doing and we’re at the end of the job and I don’t want to lose him.  But, I’m getting billed for a lot of things I didn’t agree to.
• One of our consultants isn’t doing a good job and needs to be reassigned. Everyone loves her and nobody wants to hurt her feelings, but the project is suffering.  She’s an internal consultant and the relationship with her boss and her team is really important to us and we don’t want to risk damaging it.
• It has become apparent that our vendor isn’t capable of delivering on their promises. We are contracted for the next year but want to unwind the contract and sever the agreement.
• My executive coaching client wants me available 24/7 and regularly asks for calls after 5pm and on weekends. He wants me at all of his team meetings.  He hasn’t paid his bills since March.  His business is suffering, and I want to continue to provide support, but I am feeling resentful of the time he’s asking for.
• We have been billing our client for extra crisis coaching since March. They originally asked for it and authorized it but didn’t realize it was still going on.  They are frustrated with the lack of clarity around the agreement and with the added fees that feel unexpected.
• One of our executives is tone deaf and makes inappropriate comments to women and people of color.  He is great at his job and has been with the company for 20+ years.
• Some of our white male employees are complaining that they’re feeling discriminated against in our anti-racism training.

In every single one of these examples, we used the following framework to support our clients.

Start by getting clear about:

1. Impact: How do you want the other person to feel?
2. Outcome: What do you want them to do?

If you start by reminding yourself how you don’t want to make someone feel, that can often help you avoid unintended impact.  Most of us don’t want to make people feel bad, stupid, unappreciated, painted into a corner, or resentful.  Instead, we generally want people to feel appreciated, heard, understood, supported, and valued.

We often don’t know what we want to do about it. So, it is our work to figure that out before the conversation.  You don’t have to (and probably shouldn’t) have it all figured out.  But it is good to be clear about any requests you have, any questions you have, and anything you’d like to figure out together.

When you have this all figured out and you are ready to have the conversation, we recommend this framework as a guide:

1. What’s working?
2. What’s not working?
3. What do you want?  Or what do you want to figure out together?
4. Is there anything else?

What’s working?

It is important to start with acknowledging that everything is not a problem and that there are things that are going well.  Share what you appreciate and what you value.  Acknowledge the other person’s strengths, challenges, values, contributions,  and commitments.

What’s not working?

Nobody seems to need any help figure this part out.  But there are some things to keep in mind:

• Don’t ask questions that don’t have good answers.  Examples:  What were you thinking? Why are you taking advantage of me?
• Don’t label other people. Examples:  You’re selfish.  You’re mean.  You’re a liar.  You’re a bully.  You’re a pushover.  You’re a racist.
• Don’t assign feelings to other people.
• Ask how they’re feeling or what they’re thinking instead of assuming.
• Don’t invalidate people’s feelings.  Example:  “Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”
• Don’t make excuses for other people’s bad behavior.  Example:  “She didn’t mean anything by it.”
• Never in the history of conflict has telling someone to “calm down” actually resulted in them calming down.  You can say, “Please don’t yell at me.  If we need to take a break and talk later, I’m okay with that.”

What do you want?

Make a request, not a demand.  Ask for other ideas on how to solve your problems.  Think about values.  Try to come from a place of values in the conversation and honor both your values and the other person’s.  Give them the space to be their best selves.

But, also remember that people will violate their values to meet their needs.  If someone’s not making enough money to support himself, he may be trying to figure out how to pay his rent and get his car repaired. He might not behave according to your values or, even, his own if his basic needs aren’t met.

Is there anything else?

What didn’t get covered?  What still remains unsaid?

I hope this helps you have some of those difficult conversations!  If you need help talking through your specific situation, let us know.  One of our coaches would be happy to help.

The post Framework for Having Transformational Conversations appeared first on CultureSync.

There is Minimal Feedback at Stage 1 and Stage 2

In stage 1 groups where the team is failing and willing to do whatever it takes to protect itself and its members, feedback isn’t safe and feedback isn’t used.  Think of the Wells Fargo Banking Scandal and the Volkswagen Emissions Scandal.  Feedback is not happening.  360s are not happening.  There is no safety and people are sneaking around, cheating the system in one way or another, and trying not to get caught, fired, or thrown in jail.  Most of you, hopefully, won’t be in a situation like this.  

In stage 2 groups, which are very common–about 25% of the groups we work with– there are rules and systems in place to create stability and order and most of them don’t require much expertise to interact with.  Think of organizations like DMV, Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and even Starbucks.  The systems and processes create order and the people are just there to follow the rules.  Follow the rules or get fired.  No feedback required.  It’s only when stage 2 begins to evolve to stage 3 and people need to be trained or developed that feedback begins to be relevant in stage 2 tribes.

Individualized Feedback at Stage 3

In stage 3 groups, expertise is required.  This is the majority of the groups we work with – about 49%.  Individuals are hired and retained for their credentials, their training, and their experience.  Think about physicians, engineers, executives, lawyers, accountants, and salespeople.  They are expected to know what to do and how to do it.  They are rewarded for performance.  There is competition for resources, attention, and outcomes.  Some of these people risk being fired if they make a mistake.  These are the people who most often need feedback.  In stage 3 cultures, feedback is often weaponized.  This is the realm of the 360.  360 Degree Feedback is a system or process in which employees receive confidential, anonymous feedback from the people who work around them. This typically includes the employee’s manager, peers, and direct reports. Smart executives that have the option to select their own raters will choose their fans so that they get feedback that looks good and proves that they are awesome.  High five!  If they don’t get to select their raters, and they often don’t, they generally get mixed and confusing results. In this type of situation, raters are generally your boss, all your peers (many who won’t bother to take the time to rate you because they’re too busy), and all your direct reports (who are afraid not to rate you but are generally afraid to tell you the truth, as well).  What you’re generally left with is with four types of feedback:

1. A self-evaluation that is probably the most useful part of this whole process.  One of the best and most usable tools for working with individuals in stage 3 teams is self-rated instruments. Self-reported data is seen as valid and useful and safe and can lead to great coaching, development, and performance conversations.  We tend to favor robust self-assessment tools like the Hogan Assessment for development and coaching.

2. The boss’s evaluation is hopefully helpful, but it generally depends on the boss and how good they are at giving feedback.  Preferably, this is not the only way your boss gives you feedback.  Ideally, there are no surprises here.  Unfortunately, the reality is that this is sometimes the only time a boss gives their employees any kind of feedback.  Hopefully, it’s usable.  The best part about the boss’s feedback on a 360 is that it is NOT anonymous.  So, if you have questions or want examples or want to work on something, you can actually talk to your boss about it.

3. Peer evaluations are inconsistent and unreliable.  Most stage 3 groups are extremely busy so the people who will take the time to do the evaluation generally have something to say, often something they haven’t said to your face but do say behind your back. Peers often lack sufficient context to give effective feedback.  And, this is where the people who have an ax to grind will grind it. 

4. The idea of asking direct reports for anonymous feedback is great in theory.  If they need to be anonymous to tell you the truth, this speaks volumes about the culture, the lack of safety, and the fear of retribution.  Dealing with that is more important than dealing with any of the feedback you get.  

Anonymous Feedback

In the case of both peer and direct report feedback, anonymity is designed to provide a way for people to give feedback without hurting feelings or without the fear of retribution.  But feelings still get hurt and retribution still happens.  According to Steffan Maier, whose company offers a non-anonymous feedback option, “Anonymous feedback became so popular precisely because it is difficult for most people to give others candid feedback. Anonymous reviews, in most instances, send the message to employees that all feedback-givers need to be protected and that it is dangerous to speak openly to your co-workers on an ongoing basis. Anonymous feedback can undermine the transparent, open and trusting culture people want to create today.”  Some HR experts say anonymity should rarely—if ever—be used when assessing performance.  According to an article posted by SHRM, the Society for Human Resources Management whose mission is to create better workplaces where employees and employers thrive together, “360 reviews have their downsides, organizations have discovered, not the least of which is that they can allow ill-intentioned employees to anonymously slam colleagues they may not like, may want to harm professionally or may feel competitive with.”

Weird Feedback

People will often get conflicting feedback on their 360s.  It will say both “you need to be more assertive in meetings” and “you should try to be less assertive in meetings.”  What are you supposed to do with that?  Most people try to wrestle with it a little bit, then dismiss it because the cognitive dissonance is too much to make sense of.  They don’t have the ability to put the feedback into context.  Perhaps, their peers want them to be less assertive so that they feel like they can get their way.  But their direct reports may want them to be more assertive and stand up for their team.  Or you might get comments like, “We need to have more meetings” and, also “we need to have fewer meetings.”  Perhaps, the extroverts want you to share more and talk more and have more meetings and the introverts want you to share less, talk less, and have fewer meetings.  

In a stage 3 environment, people often get feedback that is sort of like “if you were more like me, I’d be happier, and you’d do better.  Here’s how you can be more like me.”  Or “here’s how you can make my life better.” People get told, “Stop being so much like you and start being more like me.”  People get told, “Stop using your strengths.  They’re annoying.”  Or, “Fix all your weaknesses.  They suck.”  At this level, the feedback generally says more about the person giving the feedback than it does about the person the feedback is for.  But that is exceptionally hard to make sense of.

Dealing with Stage 3 Feedback

The identity is one of the strongest forces in the human psyche.  And, feedback like this often challenges a person’s identity, belittles their strengths, and highlights their weaknesses leaving them with the feeling that they only have a few options:

1. Quit.  “If I can’t be myself here, then I don’t belong here.”

2. Shrink and hide.  “In order to be less annoying, I need to hide my strengths.  In order to be less vulnerable, I need to hide my weaknesses.”  

3. Fake it.  “If I can figure out how to pretend to be less like me and more like some sterile standard, I can succeed here.”  This leaves you with the Stepford Wives version of the office where everyone looks the same and acts the same (until you’re in a conflict or a high pressure situation and people’s true colors shine). 

4. Put on armor and avoid responsibility for impact.  People decide to just not care about what other people think and decide to be themselves no matter the consequences and decide that how they are impacting others is other people’s problems and not their own.  

“I think the poster child for such a toxic culture has most recently been Amazon,” said Anna Carroll, an independent consultant to executives and author of The Feedback Imperative: How to Give Everyday Feedback to Speed Up Your Team’s Success. “I think Amazon’s emphasis on results at the expense of people led to the lack of integrity that resulted from this use of feedback.  Amazon has been harshly criticized following a New York Times article that described, their “Anytime Feedback Tool,” which allows employees to send praise or criticism about colleagues to managers. Bosses know who sends the comments, but the subjects of the remarks don’t. Employees told the Times that the tool is frequently used to sabotage others and has created “a river of intrigue and scheming. They described making quiet pacts with colleagues to bury the same person at once, or to praise one another lavishly. Many others described feeling sabotaged by negative comments from unidentified colleagues with whom they could not argue. In some cases, the criticism was copied directly into their performance reviews.”

There is an on-going collapsed distinction between performance and development.  A 360 is a developmental tool, but it often gets used as a performance evaluation tool.  And, it gets put (either officially or unofficially) in a person’s “permanent record.” Worse than that, it becomes indelible, data driven, proof of an employee’s performance, reputation, and potential and can create a narrative that is hard to rewrite.

Stage 4 Groups are Feedback Seeking

Stage 4 groups–22 % of the groups we work with–embrace strengths and differences and unite their teams around values.  They tend to be places where conflict is productive and where people give each other regular feedback.  Ideally, they don’t really need 360s.  Typically, they do anyway.  People generally don’t fully understand their strengths, their weakness, and their impact.  Ideally, they’re getting regular, usable feedback from their boss, their peers, and their direct reports.  But, a well-designed 360 process can be used effectively for development.  Companies like General Electric and Microsoft are taking an interesting approach to feedback.  General Electric has dropped annual performance reviews and the stack-ranking system that sorted workers into tiers and fired the bottom 10%.  Microsoft adopted this practice after GE’s Jack Welch and has, also, now dropped this practice under CEO Satya Nadella.  Nadella’s goal is to transform Microsoft’s corporate culture into one that values continual learning and growth and has adopted a “growth mindset” philosophy at Microsoft.

They polled Microsoft employees to better understand what is and isn’t working with performance feedback and learned that 90 percent of their employees find it valuable to share and receive feedback, yet only 25 percent say they get regular feedback from colleagues. And, only 7 percent regularly get feedback about how they can improve—though this is the feedback they want the most.  They have now adopted a program called Perspectives where they deliberately do not refer to “feedback” as that word, according to neuroscience researchers like David Rock, causes employees to recoil from feedback and triggers a fight or flight response.  

Kristen Roby Dimlow, the human resources executive in charge of implementing Perspectives at Microsoft, says “Even when you hear the word feedback, you can see a brain light up (in an MRI), and you feel a threat response.  If you feel threatened, your brain shuts down.”

Microsoft’s approach normalizes and institutionalizes giving and receiving feedback and creates a learning orientation on a team.  I know they’re walking their talk on this.  They hired us to come in and lead a two-day retreat on how to give and receive effective feedback.  They asked us to focus on appreciation, acknowledgement, coaching, and mentoring.  

Okay, how does all of this help you? What should you do?

We challenge you to seek more feedback, give better feedback, build regular feedback loops into your teams and your organization, and create more psychological safety around the whole idea of giving and receiving feedback. Let us know what you’re doing that’s working or if there’s anything we can do to help you improve your feedback process.  

The post Feedback: Stage by Stage appeared first on CultureSync.

As I worked to incorporate this change, I couldn’t bring myself to use y’all. I stumbled through greetings, unconsciously defaulting to “you guys” until I began to use “everyone” instead.

When it came to using “y’all,” I hit an internal roadblock, despite spending my formative years in Texas and Louisiana.

Then I remembered the first time I used the word “y’all” in conversation after relocating to New Jersey. I was in a group of new friends, and the conversation literally skidded to a stop.

“What did you say?”

“Was that a ‘y’all’?”

“How many syllables did you use?” (The number of syllables in the word y’all depends on the degree of emphasis you are using. Apparently I had been quite emphatic.)

Whenever I used the word, I got similar results. Tired of highlighting my differences in every conversation, I began using the regionally appropriate phrase “you guys” instead. This was a loss I processed over many phone calls to my Southern friends, all of whom deeply understood the importance of the word “y’all” in our shared dialect.

Many years later, when encouraged to use the word “y’all” again, it brought up these memories, and with a fuller understanding of the prejudices I had faced based on my accent.

I tell this story because adapting to change is often viewed as a purely intellectual activity. The change leader provides information and guidelines, perhaps some training, and voila! They expect the new behavior to be quickly adopted into the culture of the organization.

But there’s an emotional component to change that is too often overlooked.  Between learning about the change and being able to adapt to it, people need time to process what the change means to them. For me, it meant processing all the ways that my Southern identity has not been acceptable in other parts of the country. It meant a fuller understanding of how I had adopted a “go along to get along” strategy of minimizing my identity to fit in. It meant that, in pursuit of more inclusive language, I had to reckon with the ways I have not been included in the past.

Too often, we write off someone else’s slowness to adapt to more inclusive practices as evidence that they’re uncaring. But when I coach leaders and teams, we often uncover stories of the complex and invisible identities and histories that lie just under the surface. Many times, resistance to change is built on stories of loss and the adaptations people have made to survive. Bringing these stories into the sunlight can be the catalyst for real and meaningful change.

For me, using the word “y’all” isn’t just about gender inclusive language. It’s a bigger and more complex question about the intersection of my Southern heritage and my LGBTQ identities.

Having said all this, maybe it’s time to bring back my y’all after all.

The post Giving up on y’all appeared first on CultureSync.

According to the Tribal Leadership model, culture describes the beliefs, behaviors, and values of groups ranging in size from 20-150 people.  When’s the last time you were in a group of 20 people?  Unless you were at the Republican National Convention, it’s probably been awhile.

Social distancing is creating physical, social, and emotional distance between people.  While it is effectively slowing or limiting the spread of Covid-19, it is also effectively slowing down and limiting the spread of your corporate culture.  For years, we have been studying what’s working for successful organizations.  Many of our clients have had flexible work from home policies and distributed teams for years.  They have built their cultures to be inclusive of a partial or substantial remote workforce.  They have used leadership to empower and engage geographically dispersed individuals and teams.

Here are ten tips and best practices to strengthen your virtual culture:

1. Prioritize Values

Clarify and refocus on your values.  One of the most distinctive anchors of organizational culture is organizational values.  While how you work has changed, your values shouldn’t have.  If you’re not sure about your personal or organizational values, try the Mountains & Valleys exercise to make your values explicit rather than implicit.  The most culturally adaptive teams use their values to guide strategy, decision making, and conflict resolution.

2. Command Their Attention

Attention is the most precious resource you can manage in yourself, your employees, and your customers. Establish a team norm of having cameras on during video meetings.  If you can’t get together face to face, this is the next best thing.  Having cameras on minimizes multi-tasking and encourages people to pay attention to themselves and each other.

3. “Reach out and Touch Someone”

Those of you who are old enough will remember the moving AT&T commercials from the 1980s that reminded us to use the phone to connect with people in deep, meaningful ways.  Zoom fatigue is real.  Not all meetings need to be a video conference.  If it would have been a phone call pre-Covid, let it be a phone call now.  Most one on one meetings are very effectively managed by phone.  While video quality is emerging, phone connections are still better and more consistent than internet connections.  As coaches, we find that there is often more psychological safety and depth of attention on a phone call than there is in a video conference.  Use the phone as a first choice for 1:1 connections and conversations.

4. Create Opportunities for Informal Conversations

Use technology to create a water cooler experience.  Culture and relationships are often built in between meetings and in informal gatherings and spaces.  Now that we’re not in the office together, we aren’t running into each other in the elevator or in the kitchen or hanging out chatting pre and post meeting.  Dedicate time at the beginning and end of meetings for check ins, icebreakers, and social conversations.  It may feel like a “waste of time.”  But, building your culture is definitely not a waste of time.  According to our research, teams with great cultures outperform mediocre teams by at least 300%.  Try internal message boards like Slack and Yammer to create informal and social connections on your teams. When appropriate, encourage people to use the chat feature in Zoom to … chat with each other during meetings.

5. Experiment with New Technology

Experiment with new technology for virtual collaboration, team meetings, and all hands meetings.  Check out virtual collaboration tools like Mural and Miro.  Try using additional features in Zoom like polls and breakout rooms.  Embrace organizational tools like Webex, Teams, BlueJeans, Google Docs, and Remo for enhanced team collaboration.  Make new technology optional and inclusive.  People are doing their best to adapt to all the new tools and changes that remote working requires.  New technology should be an added benefit not a method of excluding, frustrating, or torturing your teammates.

6. Host Informal Gatherings

Dedicate time to informal gatherings and conversations.  Host coffee chats, themed lunches, happy hours, trivia games, book clubs, employee wellness classes, and team building virtually to encourage relationship building and team development.  Your employees need the opportunity to get to know each other personally and to develop deeper, more meaningful relationships.  Vary the size and time of events to be inclusive of your entire team.  Introverts will be less likely to join very large group video chats.  Folks with young kids at home are going to be less likely to join a social event in the evening.

7. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

You cannot over communicate.  Send regular email updates and motivational messages to your employees.  It is important to remember that communication is verbal, non-verbal, written, and visual.  Working from home, we are less likely to focus on non-verbal and visual communication.  Most experts agree that communication is 70-90% non-verbal. Facial expressions matter.  Tone matters.  Intentions matter.  And, we are more likely to lose focus on the softer, more intuitive side of communication when we’re using email and Zoom for most of our work communication.  On video calls, use gallery view to observe yourself in meetings.  Watch your facial expressions, your body language, your posture, your hand movements, and the distractions in your environment.  Prepare for meetings and use screen sharing to share slides and other visuals to focus people’s attention and improve understanding with visual communication.

8. Check In

Observe your team.  Notice who is talking and who is not.  Check in with people when you notice they’ve disappeared or that they’re showing signs of stress, burnout, irritation, or frustration.  You don’t have to schedule a formal call.  You can just ask if they have a few minutes to check in.  Share your observation, ask how they’re doing, and make some time to simply listen.

9. Give Feedback

Our clients are complaining that they’re running from call to call and meeting to meeting without a bio break.  Their calendars are fuller than ever before.  As a result, they’re leaving small and large frustrations and irritations unaddressed.  We used to find informal opportunities to clear the air and clean up messes between meetings, in the kitchen, in the elevator, over coffee or lunch, or by dropping by someone’s desk.  It is important to make time to clean up messes and give each other specific feedback–both positive and constructive.

10. Have Fun!

Try themes days or themes for specific meetings–Formal Friday, Crazy Hat Day, Show and Tell, bring your lunch, or workout wear Wednesday–maybe by creating a day for it, you can get people out of their gym clothes the rest of the week?  Invite your team to share pictures of their kids, their pets, their weekends, their vacations, and their food on team message boards like Slack.  Try virtual team building activities like trivia games, cooking competitions, cooking classes, scavenger hunts, and book clubs.

These are a few tips to help build the culture of your virtual workforce.  Let us know what you try and how it goes.  Share your tips and best practices with us.  And, let us know if there’s anything we can do to help.

The post Ten Tips for Strengthening Your Virtual Culture appeared first on CultureSync.

There is a new metric that captures much of the math people perform every day in their decision making. It also factors in some of the economic, social, race, gender, and education inequities in our system.

Return on Specific Anxiety (ROSA) 

Return on Specific Anxiety (ROSA) calculates the “is it worth it?” risk versus reward math for once-normal activities like going to the grocery store, attending a wedding, going to the doctor’s office, or taking a vacation.

Let’s break it down:

• Return: that which we get back (usually some form of benefit or profit)
• Specific: caused by an identifiable source (e.g., event, occurrence, condition, stimulus)
• Anxiety: natural response to stress, or fear of what is to come

Before, this was a simple calculation of benefit minus costs. Today the math is different.

Real Life Examples

Now that some parts of the world and the United States are better able to control COVID spread, we (CultureSync) are getting requests for in-person executive strategy sessions, leadership education sessions, and diversity, equity, and inclusion work. In the Before Times (BTs), it was a question of resource availability and economic return. Airline miles, hotel points, and rental car upgrades were all fringe benefits. The time we had in airline lounges and in-flight to read, clear out inboxes, sleep, and network would also be generally positive factors.

To calculate a traditional return on investment (ROI), you divide the benefit by the cost and multiple by 100.  ROI = (Benefit / Cost) x 100.  Modeling this, the return on specific anxiety (ROSA) is the benefit divided by the risk multiplied by 100.  ROSA = (Benefit / Risk) x 100.

Today the math is different–a little different for the numerator, but entirely different for the denominator. Things that used to be benefits have become risks.  Airports, lounges, airplanes, rental cars or shared ride services, and elevators have all moved below the line into the denominator. They now contribute to the risk and build Specific Anxiety. And the risk isn’t just personal, it is a public health issue.  Participating in these activities increase the likelihood of COVID community transmission by having people breathing, coughing, and sneezing on each other.  Compared to staying home in our family bubble, the risk for ourselves and our communities is significantly greater.

As we increase the number of factors in the denominator, the numerator needs to change to keep pace. We need a significantly greater benefit to outweigh the increased risk.

Even something that was routine pre-Covid, like going to the grocery store, is causing us to do some fancy math. In the BTs, it was a no-brainer. Need something for a recipe? Run out to the market and get it. Today, there is more strategy involved. You need to factor in the time of day (e.g., early or late, senior hours, etc.), the store selection (Trader Joe’s or Costco), the number of people in the store, the store policy and enforcement of mask requirements, etc. There is just more thought and planning involved. All of this gets added to the denominator.

Another example is letting our kids get together with other kids for playdates. Now we have to run through a litany of questions.  How many people have my kids been around in the last two weeks? Are any of the other kids or parents immuno-compromised? Are any of the kids in regular contact with their elderly grandparents? Has anyone in their house traveled lately? To where? Again, all factors that increase the denominator and contribute to a growing sense of Specific Anxiety.

The Zoom Factor 

In our work setting, we have another factor–one that helps the numerator. We are getting better at working and collaborating virtually. Zoom, Teams, Remo, Bluejeans, Meet, FaceTime, MIRO, MURAL, Office 365, Google Suite, Whiteboard, Jamboard, and many others are real-time collaboration tools. These tools help reduce the downside of virtual vs. in-person meetings.

When used properly, many of these tools can make the virtual experience BETTER than the in-person one. For example, sending people to a breakout room during an in-person conference can take 5-10 minutes of transition and bathroom time, and see a melt rate (people opting out of the breakout in favor of the bar or restaurant or email) of 5-10%. In Zoom, as the host, I click a button and <<snap>> everyone is in a breakout instantly, with no melt. Click another button and they are all back in the main session, instantly. With breakouts, polling, real-time document collaboration, individual/ group/everyone chat, I can increase engagement more quickly than walking around a physical room and checking in on people at tables.

Technology is changing our math. We all have significantly more experience with online collaboration tools in the last six months than in the last six years. Tech firms are also investing in these tools more than ever before. Microsoft’s roadmap for their Teams product was greatly accelerated and investment increased as it moved from an eventual SharePoint replacement to critical business infrastructure practically overnight.

So, we are currently at least on-par with in-person and virtual sessions. The online experience is only going to become easier and better as more competitors bring new features. Add to that, when we do have in-person meetings, participants will be masked and distanced. It will be a different experience. We are likely not going back to traveling as before or working as much in person as before. Technology is making it comparatively less necessary and less efficient.

The Necessity Multiplier  

The Necessity Multiplier lives outside of the ROSA equation. The Necessity Multiplier makes the basic benefit vs. risk equation insufficient to explain people’s choices. It might be that they have a calling (e.g., physicians, nurses, caregivers, etc.). It is more likely that their job has been labeled “essential” and requires in-person work (e.g., meat processing).

Some of us have the luxury to limit our risks more than others. There are many more people who do not have a choice as to whether they go to work or not, regardless of how safe they think it is or how much money they make. Many front line and essential workers are going to work despite the risks to themselves, their families, and their communities. This highlights some of our systemic inequities.

The Necessity Multiplier is another indicator of privilege. Education level, family history and network, and access to educational opportunities help reinforce who has to contend with the Necessity Multiplier and who does not.

We have seen white collar professional work rebound to pre-COVID levels now that many companies have realized that can be done remotely, from home. Thus, lowering their risks (the denominator) while keeping the benefits mostly constant. So, their return on specific anxiety has gone down in general, until you start factoring in homeschooling kids, making meals, and exercising less. It is blue collar workers and on-site service workers who have not seen unemployment rebound. Those jobs continue to lag in recovery as restaurants, movie theaters, gyms, and salons remain closed–for valid reasons.

Implications and Remedies 

Now what? Where do we go from here? Our national response is a patchwork of approaches, data sources, philosophies, and opinions.  The best we can do is more personal and local. We cannot look to our national leaders to guide our behavior in a consistent, science-based, apolitical way right now. So, it is up to us–up to us to do our math, look out for one another, shop and spend responsibly and locally, check in our elderly neighbors and friends, and make the decisions we have to. We need to realize that we have crossed the chasm on adopting virtual work, wearing masks, and raising expectations about what it means to be good citizens.  The world will likely never go back to how it was.

In the meantime, recognize that not everyone is doing the same math right now. We may use the same equations and the same math, but our variables are more personal than ever. We are all doing individual ROSA calculations. The best we can do right now is better understand the math your friends, family, neighbors, and coworkers are doing right now and why. It may be different than yours. Data would suggest it’s more similar than we fear. When we understand why people are making the decisions they are, then we can help each other get through this.

One suggestion: Please don’t tell people they shouldn’t feel anxious or nervous, or that their ROSA calculation is wrong. In general, telling someone what they should or shouldn’t feel is not a winning approach to any discussion. Start with trying to understand, then you can help them with their math. Be sure to show your work when you do.

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I hired a chef from one of my favorite cooking schools to teach a virtual cooking class for our team.  They put together a wonderful menu called “Chinese Takeout.”  We were going to make wonton soup, shrimp fried rice, and almond cookies.  The very first thing I had to do was ask for substitutions for some of the ingredients to make the menu more inclusive for our team.  One of our team members is mostly vegan and totally vegetarian and doesn’t eat pork.  Two of our team members are Jewish and may or may not eat pork or shrimp.  And, one of our team members is allergic to shrimp.  No problem.  Chicken, tofu, and vegetable options were added to our menu.

My team had varying levels of enthusiasm for the idea.  Several of us are recreational chefs.  Harte describes cooking as her “happy place.”  Carolina makes Instagram and wedding worthy cakes and pastries as a hobby.  Jack chooses an international theme and will cook only from that culture for a month at a time.  But Jack has never baked cookies before and was stressed out about that.  Lindsay doesn’t cook or know her way around a kitchen but is always up for a new adventure.  I wasn’t really sure what Ken thought.  I think it was on the order of “if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”  But he typically approaches any shopping opportunity with passion.

I sent the shopping list with the invitation to the team.  I didn’t know that we were also going on a scavenger hunt.  As it turns out, not a single one of us could find all the ingredients we needed in our regular grocery store, including Jack who lives in Monterey Park which is known for being the city with the highest majority of Chinese Americans in the United States.  It took us an average of 2-3 stores to find everything we needed for our cooking class.  And, not a single one of us had every piece of recommended equipment for the class.  Most of us have a stand mixer, but not all of us.  A couple of us have parchment paper.  Only Jack has a wok.  I think I am the only one who has a spider.  The pre-class debrief was incredibly valuable.  I asked the team:  What was your experience getting all the ingredients and prepping for class?  That took us an hour to discuss.  Some of the highlights:

• In the time of Covid, is it socially responsible or worth the risk of exposure to go on a grocery shopping scavenger hunt?
• It is a privilege to have all the ingredients for the foods we normally eat available at our local grocery stores.
• It is a privilege to be able to afford to buy all the ingredients and have most of the equipment needed for this cooking class.
• Lindsay was cooking in her parent’s kitchen and worried about the whole thing being a complete disaster.
• Ken was angry, cranky, and outraged but not focused enough to say about what specifically.
• Jack was anxious about baking and worried that he was going to mess it up and look stupid in front of the team.
• I was worried that everyone expected me to be especially competent in the kitchen and that I might screw up and embarrass myself in front of the team.
• Carolina was underwhelmed by the recipe for 12 cookies and figured she could manage doubling or quadrupling the recipe.

We paused our pre-class debrief to go to the actual class.  We all donned our aprons and moved our computers into our kitchens.  Chef Rose introduced herself and did a quick round of introductions with us, then proceeded to cook like a pro for the next two hours.  We frantically followed and had experiences ranging from the Muppet’s Swedish Chef to I Love Lucy at the chocolate factory.

It was truly chaotic.  I have never made such a huge mess in my kitchen—including when making Thanksgiving dinner for 30 people or hosting a side by side Beef Wellington competition between two of my sons on New Year’s Eve.

Jack was a nervous wreck until the cookies were successfully out of the oven.  Then he was in his zone as the wok master.   Lindsay read the instructions and recipes three times each and diligently prepped in advance and did great.  Harte gave up on following the chef and just followed the recipes.  Carolina’s highlight was giving up on the artistically arranged almond cookies and just throwing balls of almond dough on a sheet pan every 15 minutes for two hours while trying to keep up with the rest of the class.  Harte had her two daughters providing unsolicited feedback on the soup, helping her wrap wontons, and asking, “Is it done yet?” every 15 minutes.  Ken prepped everything in advance and was not excited about our class but kept up and was doing great until one of his daughter’s called from drive through high school registration needing his immediate assistance.  He managed to finish his almond cookies but had to leave halfway through wontons.  And, my computer crashed while we were assembling our soup, which put me about 10 minutes behind for the rest of class.

We were completely relieved when our class was over, and Chef Rose said goodbye.  We ate lunch and did as much damage control as we could in our kitchens and regrouped for a debrief.  We all agreed that cooking classes at a cooking school where they do all the prep and all the dishes is a much more luxurious and fun experience.  Preparation matters and having a support team makes things much nicer.  Our food was varying degrees of delicious.  It turns out the quality of your ingredients matters and not all stock is equally yummy.  I make my own stock and it varies wildly, but the batch I used for our soup was especially good.  None of our cookies looked as much like almond cookies as they did like small to large scones.  We had deep philosophical discussions about parchment paper, stand mixers, spiders, tofu, mirin, and black bean paste.  We all agreed that the pace was entirely too fast.  We thought that there was way too much content for the amount of time we had.  We are very often guilty of this as trainers and facilitators.  We realized that we all lacked specific equipment, knowledge, expertise, and experience to keep the pace of our leader.  We see that on teams all the time.  Leaders need to pace their teams, especially when they don’t have the resources or skill to keep up.  We got to the end of class and had two of the hard to find ingredients unopened and untouched.  The chef said, “Oh, those are optional. You could add the bean paste somewhere? (I missed it) and the sambal oelek can be added to the soup for extra heat.”  Several heads exploded over that.  We really, really would have appreciated knowing that those were extra credit ingredients on the grocery scavenger hunt.  We also realized we sometimes do some version of this when we’re teaching.  We might assign a case study that we don’t have time to debrief or discuss and we just move past it as if it’s no big deal.  It might have been a very big deal for someone to make time to read that case study.  We need to be more conscientious about making sure all the pre-work we ask participants to do will be relevant and useful in class.  At the end of the day, we all had some version of some good to delicious food to eat and share with our families and a complete and total disaster in our kitchens.  So, we got the desired outcome, but there were some huge messes to clean up.  We also see this on teams all the time.

It was a good time and we now have a shared experience that anchors our team in the time of Covid.  I think they’re not all looking forward to the next random team building surprise and some of them (Ken especially) are planning their revenge.

The post An Experiment in Virtual Team Building appeared first on CultureSync.

Pre-Covid, I was the captain of a hockey team. In my role as captain, I was privileged to provide opportunity for other players. Each week, I asked substitute players to join the team I captained. As much as I value inclusion and equity, when I reviewed my choices over time, it was clear that my biases for white players and extroverts systematically influenced who I asked to sub. This was true despite the fact that I am aware that I have these unconscious biases. But, awareness isn’t enough. I need to follow a process to make sure my biases don’t show up in my behavior.

The process I now use before asking anybody to sub is to refer to the list of all available players. I am repeatedly surprised by how often Asian players and introverts (our league is primarily white and Asian) were simply “out of sight, out of mind” for me, no matter how talented they were. Admitting this isn’t comfortable. And yet, if my personal discomfort is the price for creating more equity in my league, then I can allow myself to be uncomfortable.

Remote working arrangements intensify this “out of sight, out mind” bias, especially for underrepresented groups, and especially in organizations that have relied heavily on co-location to create team bonds. Fortunately, there are simple steps you can take to make sure you assign work and growth opportunities in a fair way.

• Refer to your org chart when assigning work to be sure that everyone is receiving equitable opportunities.
• Think not only about who can do the work, but who would like an opportunity to learn a new skill. Provide development opportunities to them.
• Keep lists of the projects your reports are working on and periodically review them to make sure that glamorous work that leads to visibility and the non-glamorous housekeeping work that keeps the organization running are equally distributed across the team.
• Build relationships with all your reports in your 1:1 meetings. Ask open-ended questions about their interests and their career goals so you really get to know them on an individual level.

If you are suddenly noticing patterns of bias that you were not previously aware of, these steps are making a difference. Stick with them. Be willing to risk your own discomfort in pursuit of the behaviors that create inclusion and equity for your team.

Even better, advocate for wider adoption of equitable processes in your organization.  If you want any coaching or support on developing your processes, let us know.

Kai Stowers is an LGBTQ leader and inclusion builder with expertise in transformational change.  He is a partner and guest blogger in CultureSync’s diversity, equity, and inclusion work.

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