Design and all kinds of creative work is a way to help people develop skills to navigate the kind of uncertainty that we are currently in.  If possible, try to run a short creative project or any project at all that can make people come up with new ideas that focus on the end user which also includes collaborative engagement. These kinds of projects gives folks a chance to practice building resilience and trying multiple different directions.

What leaders should do to help colleagues and organizations thrive

Water cooler magic is best described as the serendipituous interactions between people in hallways between meetings in the office which some say is the key to innovation and creativity and organizational culture. However, even with remote and hybrid teams, there's a little bit of magic if you have a positive and healthy work culture where people are excited to interact and engage with each other.

Water cooler magic

There are some managers who love having video meetings with a document open but there are many who hate it.  If you are the one leading the meeting, you should have someone else to monitor the chat who'll be able to respond because it's quite dificult to focus on projecting, sharing, and facilitating while also monitoring the chat box. To mitigate this, deputize people with different roles. In hybrid meetings, make sure that there is someone who can run the online experience because they can empathize and identify with attendees.

Having an open document in parallel to a video meeting

Everyone is tired and trying to find ways to stay inspired is challenging for both the leader and the team members.  However, as leaders we have to make space for deeper emotions to emerge. We cannot pretend that everything is normal therefore it is important to set reflection practices that have to do with understanding, processing, and digesting everything that's happened. Prosocial motivation is what we call the process of developing empathy for somebody and having the urgency to help them meet their needs.

Handling Emotional and Mental Trauma, and Burnout

With a hybrid team, interactions and relationships across cultures -- even at a significant distance -- is important because it can spur your own creativity, and in order to do so team members must have a meaningful relationship with each other. They can try the exercise of 'wordless conversation'. You pair up with somebody from the team that you don't know very well and for a whole day you take pictures or short videos as you go through your day. The goal is to send photos where they can relate to what you sent them.

Approaches to kick-start creativity for remote & hybrid teams

<ol><li>Start with small pairings -- so that they can have a little bit of psychological safety with the other person</li><li>Give them a small project that they both can work on </li><li>Eventually, try to merge the small pairing with another pair to collaborate on ideas and enhance what they've done so far</li></ol>The way to have heightened trust is to start with having a deep interpersonal connection first.

Building trust and collaboration 

<ol><li>It is a combination of acknowledging the challenges of the moment while continuing to focus on what you're trying to achieve as a group.</li><li>In order to have a long lasting feeling of inspiration, the team must feel like they're a part of something bigger and to do this, you can try the ff:</li></ol>        - Intentionally create moments where you can tell each other stories or try to collect stories that demonstrate the human impact rather than just the business impact.

What allows remote and hybrid teams to thrive and do their best work

Many people worry that creativity and collaboration suffer when teams are working remotely or in hybrid flexible configurations, and sure, there's a challenge of having a lack of in-person vitality but if you're creative enough about the formats that you're using for these interactions, there would be more engagement from the team members.

Creativity and Collaboration for Remote Teams

Curated sources for managers to improve the engagement and productivity of remote employees