How to create team rituals your co-workers will love

If you're interested in building a solid, unified team that works well together, you've probably already heard about the importance of team-building activities and rituals. But what does that actually mean? How do you encourage your employees to bond and strengthen ties?

Why Team Rituals Matter

Team rituals are a great way to build a sense of belonging to a group and foster trust within your team. They help you develop a bond that can make your team feel like they're part of something special. Team members will appreciate the time you take to create these rituals, as well as their inclusion in them. 

Congratulations on making the first step toward building an engaging workplace!

If you look deeper at team rituals you will see that they give your team an opportunity to interact outside of work too. This will help build true connections or even friendships between coworkers.

How To Know If Your Team Rituals Are Working – And What To Do If They Aren’t

A team ritual should be fun and energizing, but it also needs to be good for your employees’ mental health and well-being. The best way to ensure that your rituals are having the desired effect? A little trial and error.

Here are some of the questions you should ask yourself when deciding if a particular ritual is working:

• Are people looking forward to this activity?
• Is there more energy in the team (e.g. more emojis, gifs, chat messages used) after we take part in the ritual? 
• Do people feel better about themselves after participating in a ritual?

If you answer yes to these questions, chances are you’re on the right track! If not, maybe it’s time for an adjustment or two.

If your answers are mostly no instead of mostly yes, then it might be time for a change. Maybe some tweaks could help make the activity more interesting or exciting—or maybe it's just not working well with your team's personality type or skill set (e.g., introverts vs extroverts).

Good Types Of Team Rituals To Build Into Your Weekly Schedule

Team rituals should be focused on bringing people together to have fun and interact in a way that does not allow for work topics. They should give the team something to look forward to, and they should be flexible enough that they can work with your schedule. You want them to be consistent, so everyone knows what's expected of them and when things are going down.

7 Team Rituals Examples You Should Try

1. Morning coffee (or tea) together: A classic team ritual that gets people talking about their days. It can even be async by sending an image of the beverage with voice message
2. Morning gif check-in: Let your team members describe their current mood with one Gif (or emoji)
3. What’s your weather like?: Let teams post their current weather if they live in different places
4. Monday-funday: Start the week by playing engaging games together instead of boring meetings that no one wants
5. Celebrate with music: Every time a team member has something to celebrate post your favorite song
6. Mindfulness rituals: Start off meetings with a little breathing exercise, or meditation
7. Break the ice with icebreakers: Use icebreaker questions before every meeting, to get to know your team members even better

Design Team Rituals With The Power Of Leaderboards

Leaderboards are a great way to track progress. Your co-workers will love the opportunity to see how they're doing compared to their peers, and this can be especially motivating for individuals who might otherwise struggle with self-improvement or setting goals. Especially when it comes to the field of team rituals which are designed to be fun, your team will see leaderboards as a way of showing them you care about their wellbeing. This in turn strengthens trust and a positive team culture. We just recently released the leaderboard feature of doozy, you should have a look at it and see how easy you can show your team you care.

Concluding Thoughts

As you can see, team rituals work best when everyone is on board. They help you to build a strong team culture and keep everyone motivated. But if your team isn’t engaged or doesn’t feel like they have a voice in these rituals, then it won’t be as effective. 

So before starting a team ritual, make sure that all of your team members understand what it is and why they should take part in it! A good way to do this is by having an open discussion with them so that they can share ideas on what types of things would benefit them most from doing weekly.

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