It’s Monday morning. You receive an email. Invitation: Morning Call. In some cases, the most probable outcome is that you’d roll your eyes and roll on the floor like a baby, screaming “I don’t wanna!” and we get you. However, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Before you call us crazy, hear us out! It is possible to look forward to and not dread a zoom call! At Bloom, we always experiment. We have found ways to keep our team excited, engaged, and even happy to hop on a call and get to (virtual) work through trial and error. Heck, they’ll even keep their videos on!
Here’s our secret: every week, we spin the wheel and pick out a facilitator that will lead the five calls each morning. The facilitator will prepare a prompt or a question for the team members, and each one would get one minute to answer, talk about their day, their wins and their struggles. That’s one way to your team members, even when they’re on different sides of the globe.
As this week ends, we are looking back at a productive facilitation that was warm, honest, open-hearted and left us with happy tears, and feeling closer as a team. It was created by our openly vulnerable Community Manager and mental health advocate, Nour. Check it out!
We’re constantly looking for ways to take advantage of disadvantage and to share what we learn. We hope you benefit from this facilitation structure in your meetings. If you use it, we’d love to learn how it went, do you have any ideas for improvements?
Nour’s 20 min Morning Heart Opening Facilitation
Start off by inviting everyone to the meeting, add it to their calendar. Start promptly and end promptly, so people know they should come on time. Believe me, they won’t want to miss this!
Begin by with showing vulnerability first to set the tone and demonstrate the kinds of behaviors that are safe here. Basically, be yourself, be open, be welcoming, be warm, be honest, be raw! Your colleagues want to know who they’re opening up to, so it would be great if you do so first.
Introduce the question, and pick the first person to ask. You’ll be timing them, each person has one minute. However, with loving themes like these, if some members of the group take a bit more time, let them. As you’ll be answering that question too, make sure that when you do, you do it a bit faster if you need to.
During these types of calls, avoid multitasking. They’re baring their souls, so make sure they feel heard and seen. Send love, send hearts, send smiles. Let them all send loving comments and reactions in the chat section if they want to.
Monday
Q: Can you think of one thing you’re proudest of yourself for today?
Later, to reflect upon by yourself: Can you think of one thing you’ve overcome recently that you weren’t sure you’d be able to?
Tuesday
Q: Say something you like about yourself.
Later, to reflect upon by yourself: what belief about yourself no longer serves you?
Wednesday
Q: What small act of kindness was once shown to you that you will never forget?
Later, to reflect upon by yourself: If you could talk to my teenage self, what would you tell him/her?
Thursday
Q: You obviously didn’t expect to be in this situation today… but what is something that positively surprised you this year?
While each person talks, feel free to send, in the chat, some compliments and kind things their way.
Later, to reflect upon by yourself: What have you tolerated in the past that you no longer have space for?
Friday
Q: What is something that brought a smile to your face this week?
Later, to reflect upon by yourself: Make a list of 30 things that make you smile, and try to incorporate as many of them in your weekend.
This was this week, and we can’t wait to see what the next ones have in store for us.
Feel free to share this with your colleagues if you think this could be helpful for you or people you know! Oh, and one last thing, if you like this kind of work environment, we have openings!