Today I focussed on creating a facilitated session on Building Community at my place of work, Rapid Circle. I work for this international company filled with highly competent and technical boffins who love solving problems and working on Microsoft 365 products.
To be honest, a lot of what they talk about flies over my head but when you listen to some of the stories of what they’re doing with clients, it’s actually pretty cool and have wide ranging applications.
However like many companies and people, at times they think that what they do isn’t anything special. There’s people doing brilliant things but they’re working deep in teams I’m not part of, in countries I’ve not been to, in time zones I’m not working in.
Meanwhile I’m like this when the chance does arise for someone (usually a manager or someone else) shares their story ?
One of the things I’m convinced about is that if, as a company, we worked out loud and showed our work-in-progress then they’d actually value their own work and expertise. They’d see how valuable it is to others and how it starts conversations and new ideas for new products and services.
However another part of me thinks it’s a long slog because of some confusion over why this is relevant; if it’s billable work to share these stories; and the overwhelm of systems.
“Why would we use Yammer? It’s just another system I have to use! Followed by how can I mute, unfollow and stop all notifications to those?”
One of the things I did today is to create this facilitated session on Building Community at Rapid Circle for an upcoming event based in the Netherlands and the entire session is just activities.
I started to delve down into the detail and create these slides to present then I realised “what am I doing?” It’s way too much.
Before I talk about how to build community, I’d like to focus on the behaviours that will support it and at least help people recognise that their approach to how they work – whether they:
- Work Under (the radar in emails, DMs only, own drives)
- Work Within (the team, project in Teams channels to do with their project work only)
- Work Across (cross posting ideas, questions posts to other Teams channels in company)
- Work Out (across Yammer communities, External Groups and Social Networks)
So I created an activity to be less about them and more about to be put into “someone else’s shoes”.
I will show a continuum on screen with that above, then people who are say, oversharers will be put into a breakout room with those who prefer to be hidden and private. Then they have to work from point of view of other person.
How is their approach to work impacting the other? Impacting building community?
What impact to the team will someone who just emails others have? Or those who deliberately leave out others from conversations?
What impact to the team will someone who works out loud be to team of those who work under the radar hidden and private?
I guess in some way my session will be about Building Community through Recognition of Self Behaviours in Impacting Community and hopefully allow people to make small concessions in their own behaviours to think more about the bigger picture rather than just how they work individually. To then do ONE little thing every day OPENLY
- To LIKE a post
- To SHARE an article, insight, post, question, story, photo
- To FOLLOW someone in company who they can learn from
- To MENTION someone in their post, acknowledge, credit, support, give thanks to
- To REPLY openly to posts they’re mentioned
Thoughts
At times even I doubt myself when it comes to this stuff and how I create these sessions. I think it’s because I’m constantly surprised to see others who don’t see what I’m seeing and that’s okay as long as they’re not belligérant about their way being the best way.
It made me realise once again that many don’t understand the impact to community and conversation when they close themselves off into silos or work “under the radar” in chats and emails where they do all their work.
They may not realise the value in being they’d open themselves to more opportunities, new ideas, reduce their work especially if it’s been done before somewhere else in the company. Most of all, they don’t realise the power of their own stories!
They also don’t see it’s impact because they’ve never worked that way – or put their own dislikes such as
- I don’t like Yammer (why? Let me show you ways)
- I don’t like to write (well what about video, photo, drawing, a process map?)
- I’m too busy (it takes less than a few minutes)
- I have nothing to say (but you just told me about the couple of projects you’re on and how they’re interesting)
- I don’t want to be like you (yes, I’ve had that meaning they don’t want to be writing stuff and using it to the extent that I do)
- I prefer to follow, read, observe but never interact (this does my head in)
At a time when people are working in silos more than ever, when they’re not seeing others in person, I do believe community is a way for people to get together – in person or online. To have a place (away from their day to day client and project work) to chew the fat, to take a mind break, to ask a question. To pause.
Let’s see how that goes. It could back fire but that’s okay. We are learning.
Feel Free to Share Your Thoughts