I love the rhythms of summer.

Slower days at home.

Days spent escaping the heat near some water.

A flood of out-of-office emails as colleagues head away on vacation...

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, June is around the corner, and the summer change of pace feels imminent.

On the podcast this week, I’m talking with Hera Hussain of CHAYN. We cover how team leaders can take advantage of these seasonal rhythms and how to set the pace of work through consistent rituals that fuel connection and collaboration.

A quick note. Though Hera and I talk a lot in the episode about the rituals she’s created for her team around the end of the year, I think these takeaways from our conversation are equally important for this mid-year moment.

What we cover: The rhythms and rituals of remote with Hera Hussain

1️. You set the beat

As a team leader, it’s your job to establish the pace for your team. Through the rituals you establish for meetings, retreats, and other annual milestones, you set the beat upon which your staff does their work. These repeatable rituals don’t constrict work or limit individual creativity. They fuel it by giving staff members a predictable beat upon which they can build their own working rhythms.

Pace-setting is particularly critical in remote work, where we lack the contextual clues of hallway meetings and in-person debriefs. In this vacuum, everything feels urgent, so it’s important for team leaders to step in when needed to adjust the pace of work.

2️. Reflective work has to be intentionally scheduled

If you’re feeling ‘on’ more often than not, it’s so easy to push reflective work to the back burner. Hera and her team carve out intentional time for this critical work in December through what she calls the “Winter Wind Down,” three weeks at the end of the year for uninterrupted documentation, learning, and reflection. In addition, Hera and her team are experimenting with a summer reading week in which normal work and regular meetings are paused, and team members spend time reading and reflecting together on recent research in the field.

Even if your team can’t yet dedicate a week (or three) to slowing down for reflective work, what might a dedicated documentation day look like? Or even a few hours to read an article and reflect together? Intentionally slowing down (even for a small amount of time) can do wonders to energise a team, especially at this midway point of the year.

3️. Rituals don’t have to be big

Dedicated reflection time is amazing, but not all rituals have to be big. In fact, there are some beloved rituals at Hera’s organisation that don’t take much time at all: a fun icebreaker question at the start of each meeting and a shared appreciation exercise at the end of every year.

Want to learn more about these small rituals and be inspired by Hera’s big ones?

Listen to the episode in full here.