Having good friends at work predicts a lot about engagement and performance. But in this new, work-from-anywhere, world, building friendships among teammates looks a lot different. You can’t just rely on sharing the same space to be the conversation starter that leads to finding shared interests. Instead, team leaders have to be much more deliberate. In this episode, we’ll offer five ways you can recreate that space—and those conversations—on a remote team:
Virtual Watercooler
Icebreakers
Buffer Time
Fika
Work Sprint
What all of these methods have in common is that they’re actually not about forcing friendships or planning “fun-idtory” activities. Instead, they’re simply about making space. They’re about finding ways to deliberately plan for the unstructured interactions that happen organically in an office. Because when you make space for people to have nonwork discussions and disclose more about themselves, they almost always find more commonalities with each other than they originally expected. And as the research shows, those commonalities become the beginning of friendships and those friendship become the beginning of a much more productive team.
//ABOUT DAVID
One of the world’s leading business thinkers, David Burkus’ forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are helping leaders and teams do their best work ever.
He is the best-selling author of four books about business and leadership. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into dozens of languages. His insights on leadership and teamwork have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, USAToday, Fast Company, the Financial Times, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and CBS This Morning. Since 2017, Burkus has been ranked as one of the world’s top business thought leaders by Thinkers50. As a sought-after international speaker, his TED Talk has been viewed over 2 million times. He’s worked with leaders from organizations across all industries including Google, Stryker, Fidelity, Viacom, and even the US Naval Academy.
A former business school professor, Burkus holds a master’s degree in organizational psychology from the University of Oklahoma, and a doctorate in strategic leadership from Regent University.
//DO YOUR BEST WORK EVER
If you liked this video and you want to help your team do their best work ever, check out the free resources we've compiled at https://davidburkus.com/resources
//SPEAKING
Like what you heard? Find more on David's speaking page (and find out about bringing him to your company or event) at https://davidburkus.com/keynote-speaker/
//CONNECT
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