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Brrrr: soon you will see your team again in real life!

Long live working online from home! However? The prospect of gradually returning to work “in real life” and meeting your colleagues at the coffee machine makes you shudder. Soon you’ll be back to daily traffic jams; colleagues will be standing at your desk uninvited with their smalltalk; the walls will again be full of 128 post-its and you’ll again be physically training on location. If only things could stay the same. Working from home has brought us nothing but benefits over the past year. All thanks to corona. We desperately needed that as Agile teams. Hosanna!

Or am I ignoring the reality for many Agile teams? To ask the question is to answer it. Because even though corona gave working from home a needed boost, you understand that I somewhat sarcastically caught you off guard in the introductory paragraph. Working from home, in addition to a number of insights and benefits, has mostly done a lot of damage. Business and social. Organizations are divided. Many teams are no longer teams. Team players work solo. We are rock solidly separated from each other. You probably recognize this within your team. Whether that damage is irreparable, you ask, certainly not. It can even be repaired in the short term and sometimes even in a day.

Collateral damage

Retefunctional meetings, tightly organized, completely crammed with essential topics. Scrolled through all the agenda items? Good, then we click with relief on the red button at the bottom right and the pixelated heads of colleagues disappear from view again. There is no time for spontaneous interaction, a personal question or critical remark with a wink. “How are you really doing?”, “Where do you get your energy from today?” or “During lunch, why not catch up on that challenge or success? Small questions with a big effect. But there is no room for precisely those questions that really make us feel like a team again. Not out of reluctance, but because the momentum just isn’t there. It is not relaxed to share personal things about an online connection with your colleagues or team leader. As a result, we lose each other, with the necessary consequences for the value delivered by the team. That has collateral damage to working from home this year.

Detached, is there such a word?

I don’t even think it’s an existing word, yet I’ve been using it more and more lately. Detached. It captures the sounds I’ve been hearing from more and more teams over the past few months; distance has literally and figuratively developed. We may still be ramming the day-to-day work through just fine, but working toward that goal that unites us (and may need to be adjusted) has become almost impossible. Does that resonate? The good news then is: with today’s relaxations, it is once again possible to physically come together with each other (and with appropriate measures). I’d be happy to tell you personally why that’s paying off immediately.

Design your ideal team day

As a leader of your team, it is possible again to organize a team day and really meet again. To have a good conversation with each other right away. About the well-being of each other, but also to make the team strong again. The concentrated kickstart that allows you to dust off the common goal and really hear each other’s opinions again. Come on in: Team Alignment!

The benefits of this day:

  • As a leader, you don’t have to facilitate anything, but very easily put together the ideal team day;
  • As a team member, as part of the group, you can finally engage with your colleagues again in real life;
  • Through our sophisticated working methods, you can very quickly put your finger on the strong and/or sore spot of your team and its needs;
  • Through lots of interactivity in the sessions, team members recapture motivation and energy;
  • And it’s also just super fun to get back together in real life.

Call it a restart, call it a refill, call it meeting, call it deepening. It’s all in there. Curious? Leave your details here and we’ll get in touch with you.

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