Building a high-performance team culture

I often talk about? the importance of creating a work culture that is authentic and encourages people to bring their whole selves to work.

When team members feel safe to speak up and express themselves at work, they are more engaged. Belonging—even more than DEI—is at the core of building a high performance team culture.?

So how does a leader or company build a culture of belonging??

I think one of the easiest and most effective ways to build a culture of belonging is to incorporate? lightweight rituals into your team’s or company’s operating flow. In other words, don’t just cram culture building into an operations review or town hall or company meeting. Create a specific ritual that is focused on fostering a culture of belonging at work.

At Fable, we use a fun ritual called “Fable Fika,” based on a simple Swedish tradition. At the most basic level, Fika is something anyone in the world would identify with: a coffee or tea break. But the philosophy of the Fable Fika sets it apart from your standard Starbucks run.?

“Fika isn’t just a coffee break; it’s a moment to slow down and appreciate the good things in life,” says Anna Brones, who literally wrote the book on the subject. The platonic ideal of Fika would include a nice cup of tea or coffee, a pastry, and some light chit chat with friends or coworkers. Ultimately, though, what makes Fika unique is that it’s a dedicated opportunity to slow down and appreciate the simple things.

The Fable Fika is an innovative culture building ritual built on this idea. Our team members at Fable are distributed across the world, and not everyone is going to want coffee at the same time :-). Instead, we focus on bringing the team together for a dedicated break every Friday where we can get to know one another while discussing a fun topic. Every week a different member of the team chooses a topic for discussion posed as a simple question. I’m always surprised by how creative and interesting the questions are. From telling entertaining stories about miscommunication while traveling to sharing clips from favorite movies and TV shows from childhood, it’s a fun way to get to know everyone at the company at a more human level than a work setting typically allows. Given that we’re a distributed team, the opportunity to form deep human connections through weekly Fable Fika sessions are especially valuable in building a culture of belonging.

Here are some of my favorite topics that we all discussed at Fable Fika:

• If you could be any fictional character, who would you be and why?
• What is one thing you strongly believe that your friends or family think is outrageous?
• If you could travel to any time period, past or future, where would you go and why?
• Ocean or outer space—discuss.
• What are you hoarding in your pantry and what does that say about you :-)?

So you see the point is not to just grab a coffee, tea, wine, beer, or snacks. The point is to talk about something “not work” and bond as human beings. The most important thing about Fable Fika is that it offers us a dedicated hour each week to appreciate our teammates for the unique individuals they are. No matter how busy we are, it’s so important to take time to slow down and appreciate the world around us.

How do you foster a culture of belonging at work?