Ashish Kothari shares three ways to build team fun beyond happy hours: run asynchronous competitions like monthly photography contests, celebrate personal and professional milestones, and create custom traditions like a McKinsey partner's signature happy dance.
This week's tip on flourishing at work. I invite you to up your fun factor. Now, there are several ways in which you can do that beyond just the traditional happy hours and social gatherings that, trust me, for many of your team members, are not that fun. So, three other ways in which you can do this. Number one, try for some asynchronous fun. You can think about organizing some friendly competitions, contests, scavenger hunts. One of the teams I worked with organized this photography contest where every month we submitted photos for what captured the best theme of the month. It was around gratitude or nature or things that made us laugh. They were small little things, but they really seeing each other bring out their creativity made it a lot of fun. Second, let's celebrate successes that people are experiencing, milestones in their lives, personally and professionally. Lots of different ways in which we can celebrate with our colleagues together. Finally, create some really funny custom traditions that are truly special to your team. So at McKinsey, one of the partners I worked with used to have this tradition of a happy dance every time we had a success steering committee. Now, trust me, it felt really hokey at the beginning, but we all got into it and had so much fun.
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