It’s a rainy day in NYC and I’m loving it.
At this very moment I’m sitting in sweatpants on my couch watching the fog roll through the city, cat to my right. It’s a safe, calming, “this is enough” kind of feeling.
This morning I woke up and looked out to a 7am that looked more like a grumpy 5am and wondered how I could arrange to stay in bed all day. But alas there was a child and an animal who both insisted on eating. I did the breakfasting, did the walking to school, did the emails, just didn’t manage to do the showering before the Zoom team meeting.
We started with a finger shoot, as we always do, and in mine I was able to say, “I’m a 4. I haven’t showered but also I don’t care. Thank you for making it okay for me to not care and for accepting me as I am!”
Luckily, my brain works just as well no matter if my hair is freshly washed or a total mess.
(For the record, I do shower if I’m going to see people in 3D. That’s just a good life rule.)
I was able to show up as I did because I love our team. It’s a cozy team. We do amazing work and we get to be humans while we do it. Some other benefits of cozy teams:
Cozy teams help each other in times of need. One person is drowning in work? The team comes to the rescue to pull more weight or redistribute. One person is sick or going through something hard? The team does whatever it can to ease the burden.
Cozy teams say thanks and sorry. Thanks for helping me. Thanks for pushing the work. Thanks for telling me how you were feeling. Thanks for listening. Sorry for making that confusing. Sorry for being a little grumpy. Sorry for not communicating earlier.
Cozy teams share crazy ideas. They’re not bound by some notion of what “normal” work looks like. They’re free to share ridiculous, unreasonable ideas and they try to figure out together how they can make the ridiculous, unreasonable ideas a reality.
Cozy teams have good days. They like hanging around each other, in some part, because collaborating in person is productive. But they also like hanging around each other because they like hanging around each other. All our internal SYP departments kill it day in and day out, but I have to say our talent team members are fucking magicians. They get all these brilliant, ambitious, kind souls who I just want to learn from and be with.
Cozy teams do amazing work. It’s not that there aren’t crises to manage or pivots to make or work to push to the next level. It’s that cozy teams know how to navigate those things together and want each other by their side through the journey.
I guess I probably owe another post at some point on how to make a team cozy, but that same child that wanted breakfast also wants to be picked up from school can you even imagine. So for now I’ll say, you can never go wrong with a finger shoot and some unsolicited gratitude.
Wishing you all cinnamon tea and cozy teams this season.