Creating space for authentic connection within your UX team
The past year has been tough for all of us. And one of the many impacts has been the physical distance that has wedged itself between us. This has affected all of us not only on a personal level, but in the workplace as well. The magic of team connection that once came naturally, has required intentional design in new and unique ways.
I work on designing the consumer-facing YouTube ads experience, and I am fortunate enough to work with an incredibly talented team of warm, kind, and caring humans.
Together, we have cultivated a culture of humility and compassion — a culture where our consideration for each other comes before all else.
Although our team has always been distributed across the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, we’ve consistently been able to foster deep connection, even across geographical boundaries. Working remotely has always been commonplace for us too. So one would think that the transition during the pandemic would have been somewhat seamless. But it proved harder than any of us could have imagined.
A combination of societal shock, personal grief, and global instability rocked all of us to the core in 2020. Almost overnight, the COVID-19 pandemic jolted us from our day-to-day routines and suddenly isolated in our homes. And immediately, the ways of working that were once second-nature to us, no longer applied. Our entire team is monumentally grateful to have had work during this time. And part of our work has been determining not only how to stay productive, but also how to stay whole.
In collectively navigating this time, we have learned some valuable lessons. I would like to share a few of them with you, along with some tools and techniques that have helped us stay whole and discover the magic of virtual team connection.
Creating Space for Authentic Connection
As we transitioned into fully working remotely, one thing that became apparent almost immediately was that we no longer had organic moments of authentic connection. Connecting with others on a human level is much easier in person. Normally, when we would collide in the micro-kitchen or sit beside each in conference rooms, it was much more natural to have sparks of connection that went beyond project-speak.
But with geographical distance and laptop screens between us, it was much harder to open up spontaneously about life, friendship, and feelings.
Our initial approach was to create a forum for this. We set up a weekly virtual “team coffee time”, which helped significantly and provided us much-needed connection and support during the earlier days of the pandemic. But with time, it became yet another video meeting within a sea of back-to-back video meetings, quickly losing its magic touch. An alternative that has worked well for us is creating occasional sessions completely dedicated to authentic connection.
Sweet Farm is an animal sanctuary that offers virtual tours. During the summer, we were fortunate enough to have a Sweet Farm ambassador join us for a team meeting, introducing us to their beautiful rescued farm animals, and sharing stories of animal friendship. It was not only an educational session for a good cause, but all of our feelings were completely overflowing, creating a beautiful team bonding moment. These were the emojis that flooded our session: 💖💖💖💖💖
More recently, as part of a virtual holiday gathering, we created space for team reflection on the past year. It’s been such a difficult year, but we all took some individual time to think about the things we are grateful for, and what we will take forward with us into 2021. We added our thoughts to a virtual gratitude board and also sent private gratitude notes to each other offline. As we went around and shared our stories one by one, several of us were brought to tears in hearing about each other’s 2020 journeys, our lives, our growth, and our losses.
Nothing has brought us closer as humans, not even the many in-person team building activities we’ve done in the past. Intentionally designing space to connect authentically has helped us get through this year while growing closer as a team. And we have been surprised at how doing this virtually, though challenging at first, has ultimately created an even stronger bond between us.
Building and Learning Together
Another technique that we have found very helpful, is actively learning and co-creating things together. There is a certain bonding and collective gratification that comes from solving something as a team, or gaining a new skillset together. And there is fun, laughter, and joy that comes from stumbling through the learning process jointly. Building something together also results in a final product or artifact that serves as a memoir for times to come.
After gathering input from the team, we were able to narrow down to a few topics that folks were especially interested in learning together. We recently conducted a virtual drawing class in which the facilitator shared his favorite portrait techniques with us as we drew alongside on a video call. We shared our drawings with each other along the way and drew inspiration from each other’s techniques. We’ve collected photographs of all our drawings so we can look back and smile in the future.
There are many other things that teams can learn together. A few other things we have tried this year include learning how to knit chunky blankets, and also strengthening our Figma skills together as a team. Finding areas which the team is interesting in exploring and conducting externally or self facilitated training sessions can provide valuable team growth and a sense of collective accomplishment.
Bridging the Offline Void
In addition to creating online moments and activities for connection, we also recognized that being fully remote means there is a lot of void in between those rich online moments. There are large chasms of offline dead space where it is difficult to maintain the thread of connection and bonding. And so another technique that we have found helpful is filling that space with meaningful offline connection.
Earlier this year, we created a “get to know the team” survey. It contained 12 questions of fun loving goodness, and covered everything from swag sizes, to favorite movies & music, to detailed descriptions of favorite food. These are details that we seldom tell each other in conversation, but are mostly observed in person. Whether a team member likes chocolate syrup and sprinkles on their morning latte is rarely something they will mention, but many times something we notice about them in person. We not only had a lot of fun sharing these delightful details with each other via the survey, but it was incredible reading about others later. It also gave us ideas on how we could surprise team members with special deliveries on birthdays.
Over the months we’ve also experimented with offline team co-creation including multiple team music playlists. Gathering our music has been a great way to share our favorites with others, and watch a beautiful playlist come together and evolve offline. There has also been something almost magical about listening to others’ favorite music. It has made us feel as if we are immersing ourselves in our team mates’ worlds, and has reinforced that we are really in this together.
Finally, we’ve also created several slide decks for offline fun. Recently for the holidays, we created a team Santa list where we filled in fun requests offline. We also used Figma to co-create a team holiday card for each other titled “Goodbye 2020, a Team Snuggie holiday”. 🎄
Co-creating together offline has helped us bridge the gap between the online bonding moments and has maintained our thread of connection across distance. It’s also given rise to magical team artifacts that keep growing and evolving and further add to our expanding repository of team memoirs.
These are just a few tools and techniques that have helped us navigate this year. Not only by helping us stay productive, but most importantly by helping us stay healthy, whole, and united. We’ve tried so many things — some have worked, while others haven’t really clicked. But what’s key is that we’ve tried and iterated together as a team. And in this way we have been able to not only maintain our connection through adversity and across geographical distance, but also spark new magical connections.
“There is magic in long-distance friendships. They let you relate to other human beings in a way that goes beyond being physically together and is often more profound.”
Diana Coretes
I don’t think any of us have fully processed what’s happened this year. This is likely because we’re still experiencing it and haven’t yet come out the other side. But as I reflect on this past year and the things that have brought us closer, I wonder… maybe it’s the fact the we’re going through something this tragic as a global community, maybe it’s because we put more thought and intentional design into connection, or maybe it’s because distance really makes the heart grow fonder. Whatever it is, we’ve connected in ways that we never had before, and we likely never would have had the universe not pushed us out of our comfort zone. And for that I will always be grateful.
What has worked for you and your teams? Please share in the comments! Wishing you all health, wellness, and love. ❤️
⭐️ Here is a link to our holiday slide deck template with our gratitude and other activities. Feel free to leverage and adapt to your needs.
🙏🏻 Credit original holiday template design to SlidesGo.
