Dear leaders,
Summer often gives teams something the rest of the year rarely does: space. Perhaps you've just wrapped up your last CODIR meeting before the holidays. Maybe you've shared an offsite, a team lunch, or simply enjoyed conversations that reminded everyone how good it feels to connect beyond day-to-day tasks.
As September approaches, new projects, fresh priorities, and renewed energy come into focus. Before you close your laptop for the summer, take a moment to think about the habits that will help your team start the next season with confidence. Sometimes, a few well-designed rituals are all it takes.
This month, at The Laughing Willow, we're exploring team rituals: simple, intentional moments that build trust, encourage collaboration, and create the conditions for teams to thrive.
Rituals do more than organise work. They create meaning. Like family traditions or cultural ceremonies, they signal what truly matters. Over time, they become part of a team's identity and shape the way people work together.
Which ritual will you try first with your team this month?
Start one meeting differently
Instead of jumping straight into the agenda, begin with one simple question:
"what's one win or one challenge you've experienced since we last met?"Five minutes is enough. This small ritual gives everyone a voice, and often surfaces valuable information that would otherwise stay unspoken.
Celebrate what moves the team forward
At the end of your next team meeting, invite everyone to share: "what's one thing someone in the team did this week that helped us move forward?"
Making appreciation a habit strengthens trust, reinforces positive behaviours, and reminds people that collaboration is noticed.
Create one moment to learn together
Once this month, replace ten minutes of updates with one question: "what's one lesson we've learned recently that could help the rest of the team?"
Successes, mistakes, experiments; everything is useful. Teams that regularly learn together improve faster than teams that simply work harder.
A great place to start is with one question: « what behaviour do we want to develop in our team?"
From there, the right rituals emerge naturally. The most effective rituals reinforce culture, bring values to life, and strengthen the habits that support collective performance.
Here are three principles that guide our work.
1- Leaders lead by example
Leadership behaviour sets the tone. When leaders acknowledge a mistake, ask for feedback, or share a challenge, they create the conditions for openness, trust, and learning. Every ritual is an opportunity to model the culture they want their team to build.
2- Every ritual has a purpose
The strongest rituals are designed with intention. Whether the goal is stronger alignment, closer collaboration, greater recognition, or continuous learning, a clear purpose gives each ritual meaning and makes it part of the team's way of working.
3- Rituals strengthen performance
Teams that communicate openly, recognise contributions, learn together, and regularly reflect on how they work become more agile, more engaged, and more effective. Well-designed rituals create the conditions for people and performance to grow together.
Ready for September?
Our Process Communication Model® (PCM) workshops help teams better understand themselves and each other, strengthening communication, trust, and collaboration in just a few hours.
🎁 Back-to-school offer
Book a PCM workshop in September and we'll offer your team a ClueZ Paris experience: an urban escape game designed to extend the learning, strengthen relationships, and bring collaboration to life in a fun and memorable way.
If you'd like to give your team fresh momentum after the summer break, I'd be delighted to explore the experience that best fits your objectives.
I hope this summer gives you time to disconnect. Spend time outside. Enjoy conversations that aren't about work. Slow down.
For me, reading is one of the best ways to do that.
This year, I'd like to recommend Avec moi, l'embrasement, the new novel by my former colleague Françoise Bresson.
Through the lives of Margot, her grandmother Jeanne, and her mother Angèle, the novel explores family secrets, forgiveness, and what travels from one generation to the next. Set in Brittany, it spans the 1960s to today with warmth and depth.
It's a book I'd happily recommend to a friend.
Have a wonderful summer!
Anita
