What’s in it for me? Learn how workplace rituals can increase your firm’s productivity.
What could boost your company’s productivity?
A new set of workflows?
Better computers and software?
Or maybe even a different way to arrange office furniture?
While all these hacks could certainly help, there’s something people often overlook: the power of rituals.
Rituals help us find meaning during uncertain times, they ground us, they offer us security – but they’re also fun and great for business.
Rituals allow your team members to feel like part of a family, rather than cogs in a machine.
These blinks will give you the tools to create your own rituals that can guide your employees toward increased health and happiness – and, of course, higher performance.
In these blinks, you’ll learn how to use rituals to kickstart your day; techniques for upping engagement during meetings; and the importance of giving your team recognition.
Workplace rituals make business sense.
Being a journalist with the New York Times may sound glamorous – but, just like most of us, newsroom workers also have to contend with repetitive tasks like answering emails and attending meetings.
For years, a beloved tradition at the newspaper helped break up the monotony.
At exactly 4 p.
m.
, a snack cart used to roll through the newsroom.
Journalists rose and stretched, then headed over for some afternoon caffeine and conversation.
The 4 p.
m.
snack cart was a perfect workplace ritual – but why, exactly?
And what do the words “workplace ritual” even mean?
Well, the author believes all rituals tick a few very specific boxes.
The key message here is: Workplace rituals make business sense.
What makes rituals work?
First, they need to rise beyond the practical.
Let’s face it: Staff at the New York Times don’t really need a coffee cart – they can grab a coffee whenever they want.
But gathering around that cart gave their coffee breaks greater purpose.
Then there’s also something the author calls the Three Ps.
One stands for purpose: as we’ve already seen, rituals make us feel part of something bigger.
The other P is for psychological safety.
And finally, the combination of purpose and psychological safety brings about greater performance.
Last but not least, you can always tell a good ritual by the fact that people miss it once it’s gone.
A few years ago, the Times decided to get rid of the snack cart – and many journalists still regret that decision.
Creating rituals certainly requires psychological and emotional investment.
But financially, they don’t really have to cost that much.
For instance, the nonprofit organization DoSomething passes around a stuffed penguin toy at meetings.
And Microsoft celebrates work anniversaries with M&Ms.
These little ceremonies are very affordable – but they are also priceless.
They create social cohesion and engagement; they take away stress and reduce anxiety.
These aren’t just lofty words: rituals make great business sense.
The American Psychological Association found that workplace stress costs American companies $500 billion and 550 million workdays each year.
So simply by offering your employees a ritual, you can meet their need for belonging and purpose.
And that creates a more human and engaging workplace.
To have a successful day, turn your morning routine into a ritual.
One of the best-known ceremonies in the world is the Olympic torch relay.
It starts in Greece, and dozens of athletes take turns carrying the torch to whichever city is hosting the games.
This ritual brings participants together in a shared celebration of fair sportsmanship.
It elevates the event and gives it greater philosophical meaning.
You can do something very similar with your workday.
No, don’t run into the office with a torch in hand!
But add a morning ritual to your routine and you can elevate even the most mundane of activities.
Rituals help us shift mindsets – and that’s the perfect way to start the day.
Here’s the key message: To have a successful day, turn your morning routine into a ritual.
How do you add a ritual to your working day?
Well, instead of just walking into the office and plopping down at your desk with a coffee, maybe you could create a new pre-work activity.
For example, you could imitate Sara Blakely, the CEO of the underwear maker Spanx.
Sara lives close to the office, but every morning she takes a long, circuitous drive to work.
The time spent in the car helps her get her thoughts in order and prepares her for the day ahead.
For those of us working from home – and who isn’t these days?
– differentiating between work and home is even more important.
So consider inventing your own commuting ritual, even if it’s just a quick walk around the block.
Another great morning ritual comes from Georgetown University professor Cal Newport.
He begins each day with what he calls Monk Mode Morning.
From the start of the workday until 11 a.
m.
, Newport doesn’t answer emails or pick up the phone, and he certainly isn’t available for meetings.
Rich Pierson, the CEO of Headspace, does something similar: he starts each day with an hour of meditation.
Both Newport and Pierson have done something that’s truly magical.
They’ve created rituals that honor the relationship with the self – and that gives focus to their working days.
When creating your own morning ritual, try to find something enjoyable that you already do before work.
Then consider how you can imbue that action with a specific purpose.
One way to approach this task is to ask yourself this question: In what mindset do you want to start your day?
If you get the answer right, it’ll make all the difference as you face a packed day full of meetings.
Transform meetings into gatherings by instilling presence and purpose.
Look at your calendar for the day.
How many meetings are on it?
Nancy Koehn, a professor at Harvard Business School, estimates that roughly 11 million work meetings happen in the US every day.
Unfortunately, too often these meetings are, at best, unproductive – and, at worst, lead to lost revenue.
According to Doodle, an online meeting tool, in 2019 the value of productivity lost due to meetings was close to $400 billion.
So here’s the question: How do you make meetings more useful, more engaging?
Well, one way is to remember that every meeting is a gathering.
And nothing holds a gathering together better than a shared sense of purpose.
The key message is this: Transform meetings into gatherings by instilling presence and purpose.
You can begin this transformation by opening every meeting with one key question.
Ask your team: Why are we gathering here in the first place?
In other words, how is this meeting different from any other?
Priya Parker, the author of The Art of Gathering, refers to this as the “Passover Principle.
” According to Parker, meetings with a narrow focus lead to greater engagement.
By answering this question, you create purpose.
That sets you off to a great start.
Your next step should be to make sure that everybody in your meeting is truly present, in body, mind, and spirit.
Even a meeting with a healthy purpose can go nowhere if all people do is mindlessly scroll through stuff on their phones under the desk.
So before getting into the day’s business, try a “chiming in” ritual.
It sends the signal that it’s time to focus.
The fashion designer Eileen Fisher does this quite literally – she rings a bell to start a minute of silent meditation before her meetings.
Workplace strategist Daisy Auger-Dominguez believes that chiming in helps to build a culture of trust.
Her meetings are run by a rotating cast taken from her leadership team – a strategy that requires everyone to participate.
So if you want to add rituals to your meetings, start by trying to create a sense of purpose and presence.
And then figure out a way to remind everyone why you are gathered and what you want to achieve.
Teams that eat together, stick together.
We all know that water coolers are magical.
They create conversations that give employees new strength and a sense of purpose.
As MIT professor Alex Pentland wrote in his well-known essay “The Water Cooler Effect,” this kind of informal workplace socializing bonds groups and ultimately increases productivity.
How can your company leverage this magic?
Well, a 2015 study from the Cornell School of Management showed one easy solution: a communal workplace lunch.
Eating together is quintessentially human – after all, most modern rituals do revolve around food.
So far, however, the corporate environment has been slow to catch up.
Lunch is often seen as something mundane – just an hour off, nothing to do with business.
But the Cornell research shows that shared meals are actually good for the bottom line.
Scientists spent 15 months tracking communal meals at firehouses.
The result proved that firefighters who routinely sat down together to eat had significantly better team performance.
The key message here is: Teams that eat together, stick together.
There are plenty of other examples of great meal-based rituals.
Think about Horizon Media, for instance.
Every Friday, the CEO, Bill Koenigsberg, buys bagels for all 3,000 of his employees.
And lunches don’t have to come from top management.
At KIND Snacks, an employee named Neil shows gratitude to his team by whipping up Belgian waffles every Wednesday.
At the restaurant chain Chipotle, 10:15 a.
m.
is the communal lunch hour for all staff who have been prepping the line since six in the morning.
They refer to this as the “grace period” before the first customers walk through the door.
Companies who offer their employees a chance to share meals strengthen the relationships within their teams and inspire staff to bring greater energy to work.
Before you rush off to order your team’s first shared lunch, though, think about these two caveats.
First, you can’t mandate a ritual.
The firehouse meal is not a requirement or a protocol laid out by the fire department.
And second, eating together as a ritual only really works if the workplace values live up to the Three P’s.
You may remember them from an earlier blink – they stand for psychological safety, a shared sense of purpose, and improved performance.
Use rituals to celebrate your employees’ efforts.
In 2013, TIME Magazine ran a cover feature on millennials.
The title was scathing: “The Me Me Me Generation.
” Older people often feel that millennials require a lot of handholding and recognition.
But really, millennials just want to be seen.
And the generation that came after the Millennials – so-called Generation Z – is not dissimilar.
Recent studies show that 40 percent of Gen-Zers prefer daily interactions with their boss.
Sixty percent want multiple weekly check-ins with their team leader.
Ninety-seven percent expect feedback after completing a major project.
Taken together, this all shows that workers do not want to be seen just as cogs in the machine.
Instead, millennials and Gen-Zers want appreciation for all the effort that they put in.
And here again, rituals can come to the rescue.
They offer a great way to reward outstanding performance, celebrate milestones, or make team members feel seen and appreciated.
Here’s the key message: Use rituals to celebrate your employees’ efforts.
The author refers to these kinds of rituals as “the soft stuff” – as opposed to the hard stuff that goes straight to the bottom line.
But these days, the soft stuff is crucial to making a workplace truly human.
This means creating the sort of environment in which team members really do want to put it all on the line for the company.
One great example of a recognition ritual comes from Ketchum PR, where on top of a Person of the Month Award, managers also hand out the Shittiest Moment Award.
It comes in the form of a golden toilet and celebrates team members who had to work through – well – a particularly shitty moment.
This unconventional award helps transform a workplace crisis into an inspirational story.
Work anniversaries offer another great opportunity for rituals.
At Black Sheep, a marketing and design agency, all 18 employees celebrate a colleague’s first anniversary by an outing that’s all just about them.
The entire team goes out to do whatever that person likes best – whether it’s fancy food or baseball.
Ketchum’s golden toilet only costs $14.
99.
Black Sheep’s sumptuous dinners can be far more expensive.
But whatever the cost, the rewards of these rituals are priceless.
They make employees feel seen and appreciated, and that tells everyone at the company that they matter.
Ultimately, such simple gestures and fun rituals make everybody feel valued.
Rituals make endings meaningful.
One ritual that has really permeated the culture these days comes from Marie Kondo.
It’s useful when you want to tidy up your home.
Kondo says that you should hold up an object you own and ask yourself whether it sparks joy.
If not, thank the item for trying – and then get rid of it.
The takeaway here is that rituals help us say goodbye.
A similar approach can also work in your professional life.
Whether you’re ending a big project, a work position, a long day, or a stressful quarter, a parting ritual can help you find closure and set you off on the right foot for your next endeavor.
The key message is this: Rituals make endings meaningful.
One great example of such a parting ritual comes from GoHealth Urgent Care.
At each of their healthcare centers, a medical assistant or technician sends out an end-of-day email, which recounts what happened that day.
Every night, emails from the company’s 145 care centers go to the whole leadership team, including the CEO.
Typically, one in three of these emails gets a direct response.
This ritual is about more than praise, though.
It helps the leadership team and their frontline workers feel connected.
Fridays are another great time for rituals: they do, after all, signal the end to a busy week.
It is a great time to set a more relaxed tone – something that’s been perfected by Glamsquad, a hair and beauty service whose team celebrates Fridays with pedicures.
So whenever rituals happen – on busy workday mornings or chilled-out Friday afternoons – they offer huge benefits to the entire team.
But how do you create a new ritual?
How do you harness this power?
Well, the first step is to remember that the best rituals come from the bottom up.
So ask your employees to throw out some ideas.
And if a ritual feels monotonous or mundane, scrap it.
You need something that’s authentic and human – something that would be met with protests if it went away.
And remember that your rituals should always adhere to the Three P’s: psychological safety, greater purpose, and improved performance.
A great ritual is something that can change a person’s whole day and improve the spirits of your entire team.
In normal times, that’d be the end of the story.
But these times are anything but normal.
So in the final blink, we’ll take a look at how rituals can help us cope with crisis and change.
Rituals are crucial tools for turbulent times.
In the previous blinks, you’ve read a lot about how simple rituals can improve everyday life in the office.
But the coronavirus pandemic has changed our lives dramatically.
It’s blurred the line between work and home.
So have rituals died off with morning commutes?
Far from it.
Instead, they’ve stepped in to help us deal with the new normal.
In New York City, residents began a daily banging of pots and pans outside their windows to salute their healthcare workers.
Families across the world began doing Zoom trivia nights, and a lot of people started to experiment with mindfulness.
When there’s so much uncertainty in our day-to-day lives, rituals help us restore balance.
They give us a sense of control, and add value, purpose, and meaning to everything we do.
Now that there’s so little separation between work and home, we all could use a little more meaning in our lives.
The key message here is: Rituals are crucial tools for turbulent times.
One thing the author has noticed during the pandemic is the rise of “mullet meetings” – that is, business in the front, party in the back.
In other words, meetings have become a little more playful and fun.
This is kind of unavoidable, since meetings take place over Zoom and the professionalism of the conversation gets mixed up with the informality of home.
But a lot of companies have embraced this inconsistency and turned it into ritual.
At Udemy, a global learning platform, Friday mornings are spent at an informal coffee chat with the CEO.
Quite often, his dog shows up to join him at the kitchen table.
And – while we’re on the subject of animals – remember that penguin toy at DoSomething?
Well, these days it’s passed around virtually.
And whoever wields the penguin gets to pick the music for that week’s “Power Hour” meeting.
Such work-from-home rituals are an exercise in empathy.
During these turbulent times, we’re all away from our teams, so we’re all going through similar struggles.
By uniting us in a common ceremony, rituals help alleviate that loneliness.
They tell us that though we may be separated, we aren’t actually alone.
Rituals have become the best way to spread love and kindness, paving the way for better communication.
Final summary
The key message in these blinks: For a busy, dynamic, human workplace, rituals are fundamental.
That’s because they’re an all-purpose tool that can instill team spirit, drive up employee engagement, and get everyone into a mindset that helps get things done.
When a ritual harnesses the Three P’s, everyone in the company feels connected to a greater purpose, while also feeling psychologically safe and comfortable.
And this kind of positive atmosphere will surely lead to greater performance.
Actionable advice: Create a folder with all your accomplishments.
The author calls this her “Attagirl folder.
” Fill a manila folder with all your big wins – accolades, awards, and accomplishments.
Did you get any especially praiseworthy notes?
Any super-glowing emails?
Pop them all in there.
And on days when you’re lacking confidence, open up the folder and read through it.
When the tough times come, it will be your dependable cheerleader.
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