With our teams working from home and not having an opportunity to attend meetings face to face, team members can lose a little bit of connection to things that you’re not directly a part of.
People can start to feel separation anxiety. The sense that if they’re not in a room, they’re not allowed or welcome and they can start to feel unstuck or disconnected.
Enter Cameos, a way to counteract this creeping feeling.
This is when we invite an employee as a ‘guest’ or ‘cameo’ to a meeting that perhaps they would not otherwise have attended to increase their level of understanding and build relationships and connection.
The best bit about virtual meetings is that budget and time constraints of meetings that involve travel are no longer an issue!
Consider using ‘cameo appearances’ to increase the visibility of your team in the following scenarios:
Attending a different team/department meeting
Attending a meeting with external stakeholders
Being a guest at different department offsite/strategy day
Attending aspects of an executive meeting or offsite
All of these are great ways of increasing understanding, transparency and visibility, whilst creating connection, with other people and the organisation.
How cameo’s work.
There are two ways you can offer cameo appearances:
The individual can request to make a ‘cameo’ at a particular meeting, as part of their development.
Senior managers can nominate people they think would do a great job not only being observant, but also proactively participating in the relevant meeting or offsite.
The real kicker though is getting the ‘cameo’ to share their experience, learnings and insights with the rest of their team at a meeting or via internal blog or newsletter. This is an imperative aspect of the cameo, to maximise learnings and visibility.
Keep smiling, look after yourself and your team!
Building Sticky Virtual Relationships
Download the first of the seven-part 'Stickiness Hacks'. Spend five minutes to reflect on how you are tracking on building sticky relationships within your team. Brainstorm one action that you commit to improving the level of trust and team connection.
It's time to check, reflect and plan your actions!
BLYTHE ROWE & Her Life on Heels.
The founder and director of Human Incite, is widely recognised for her passion, energy and her ability to shake things up. Blythe is brilliant at revving-up productivity and performance in organisations. She is on a mission to rid our workplaces of toxic behaviours, build meaningful relationships, personally and professionally and create workplaces worth belonging. Her enthusiasm simply is infectious!