What’s that operating agreement, competency or habit your team committed to in a recent off-site but got lost in the deluge of day-to-day meetings, slack and emails? How do you dust off your shared commitment to “listening to understand” or “effective feedback” and get it back in motion, serving the team culture you’re working to build?
No need to let go of that new practice just because it hasn’t yet made it from the team retreat to your standing one-on-ones. New practices take hold with small, consistent nudges – ideally from multiple directions. It’s not too late to set those in motion.
I love to see a nudge that is both vulnerable and prompts shared learning. Here are some of the that I’ve seen work –
Reflection Nudge
This can be an end of week email that names the new habit or practice you’ve committed to as a team, describes how you’re doing on that habit this week and invites shared learning.
Something like, “We committed to listening-to-understand in our off-site. And then we got back to our day-to-day and I slipped back into listening-to-fix mode. So…I’m calling myself on dropping the ball AND I used this week to practice listening-to-understand. Here’s what I tried… Anyone else up for sharing – when did you listen-to-understand this week? What was the impact?”
Planning Nudge
This is an invitation to look at the day or week ahead and make note of where you’ll proactively integrate your new practice. A Monday call is a great place to nudge colleagues to look at calendars and anticipate conversations where you can use your new practice.
Integration Nudge
This is that varsity move of integrating your new practice into existing meetings and structures – and name what you’re doing – to bring the practice to life in the day-to-day.
This might sounds like…
“We all committed to surfacing different points of view so within each discussion item on our agenda today, I’ve embedded a question, “what’s an alternative point of view we’ve not yet considered?”
What’s a new habit, practice or operating agreement your team is working to put in place? Or something you committed to awhile back that’s been sitting on the shelf but remains important? How can you nudge that practice into action?
Three other things from me this week. Good read on sharing failure. Great prompt, “don’t worry about being the noun, do the verb (don’t worry about being the “leader”, lead.). What meaningful compliments sound like.
-KBD