Building team culture is an often overlooked, yet difficult, aspect of instructional design units. Join us to reflect on the history of our culture building, and learn how our leadership team has wielded the power of an internal book club to maintain and strengthen our culture, even in a pandemic.
A supportive workplace culture has been tied to better job performance, higher job satisfaction, and employee retention. While it is easy to talk about culture and building community, it is a difficult and lengthy process to actually instill in a team. How do you know if you are actually creating a positive community and culture among your team? How do you ensure that everyone on your team is included and feels that their voice is heard? How do you encourage colleagues at all levels to present their ideas and challenge each other? These questions are especially pertinent to teams of instructional designers, who are often working alone on their projects and don’t have regular collaboration built into their workload.
Our team has a strong history of creating an open, supportive workplace. From its inception, we have encouraged team-building by facilitating regular events such as an annual breakfast burrito bar, monthly happy hours, weekly walk and talks, and daily yoga sessions. We have found that having an opportunity to get to know colleagues outside of the demands of the workplace has led to better idea-sharing and more openness with giving and receiving feedback.
When the global pandemic limited our casual workplace interactions, the instructional design leadership team took it upon ourselves to ask how we can build community and a positive workplace culture in virtual spaces. Using a variety of leadership and management books to guide the discussion, the leadership team meets weekly to discuss how the topics of the books are relevant to our teams and how we can use the lessons taught to improve our practices as managers and continue to build a positive and rewarding culture. Books we have read include Radical Candor by Kim Scott and Think Again by Adam Grant. The weekly book club chats have allowed us to reflect on the things we do well and brainstorm ways to improve our practices as leaders and shape the culture of our team. Using guided discussion questions, we are able to take concepts from the books and work together to put them into practice to build a more cohesive team. Come join us as we bring book club to OLC and engage in a lively discussion of community building, managerial practices, and learn how you can help reinforce your team culture.
In this session we will examine the importance of building a positive community among your team and discuss what steps you can take to ensure that you continue to strengthen the culture, grow as leaders, and provide spaces for your team members to grow. We will share our own insights from the books we have read, and how we have changed our own practices as a result.
The goals for this session are:
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Discuss ways to build community on ID teams
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Brainstorm how to improve managerial styles
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Evaluate and reflect on your own practices as a manager
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Develop practices to take back to your team
Level of Participation:
We invite you all to participate in a book club chat and reflect on your own managerial style. This session is structured like one of our weekly book club chats with guided discussion questions and reflection opportunities. The presenters will share examples of how they took lessons from the books and applied them to their own work as team managers. Then participants will get the opportunity to reflect on their own practices and share with each other and the larger group to brainstorm ideas on improving team culture.