A little goes a long way
I just got back to Princeton from a week in NYC. Some of my east coast team and I had the opportunity to invest in ourselves this week. We spent a few days learning, some evenings networking, and a few days bonding. I reflected on the week on my train ride back this morning and I feel full. Full of excitement and full of energy. I feel alive.
Spending time with my team this week only solidified how important it is to find and hire the right people. What type of recruiter would I be, if I couldn’t recruit my own #dreamteam ?! I am so excited to see what this team will accomplish and the impact they will make on people’s lives. Every person on the team is different but the sum of all the differences makes us one amazing, impactful team. Being primarily a remote team, I also realized how important the face time and bonding time is. We spent hours talking about things are important to us, what we want out of life both personally and professionally. We filled each other’s cups with knowledge, sharing, collaboration, emotion, and passion.
It was only a few days, but the quality time and ability to be present with each other went a long way for all of us. Creating a culture within a remote working model is challenging, but it can be done. One of the things that helps us is a quarterly offsite. The last few offsites have been at my home in New Jersey. Honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I think back to some of the offsites I’ve gone to throughout my career and in the early days when I was in corporate America, we likely ended up in a beige conference room with no windows at a hotel in some random location. Offsites like that didn’t allow for anyone to be their true selves, they were often still the “work” version of themselves. We still had to dress “corporate” and act “corporate”. It didn’t feel natural. At my last offsite in February, there was one day where we all worked in our PJ’s. It was really nice. One night, we had a random dance party and one of the Recruiters made up a rap about DotConnect. It was amazing. We were feeding of the energy of each other and creating something special that could carry through the days where we may feel like a lone ranger.
At the end of that trip, we all left feeling more connected and closer than before. That was the goal. Building relationships that are real with each other, beyond the digital chit chat on slack or text. This increased our collaboration and the team felt like a “real team”, not just a bunch of random people on the other side of a Zoom meeting.
