In this episode Julia and Andrew look at to re-engage your teams as they start to return to work after furlough or a long period of home working.

Julia introduces a seven step pyramid model on how  to start the process of rebuilding  relationships based on what she learned from a  horse trainer in America. The trainer observed horse rituals at a waterholes and how the horses interacted with each other to build relationships within the herd.

Horses are good at hanging out together doing something and doing nothing. And in the workplace, when we were actually physically in the workplace, the doing nothing would be the bit for Julia and Andrew,  which is the water cooler talk, when we were hanging out. They pick up on the importance of reestablishing and developing good connections.

Andrew picks up on the importance of being self-aware about oneself and others and putting yourself into other people’s shoes and introduces a technique called Johari’s Window created by two American professors, Joe Luft and Harry Ingham, in the 1950s. So how do we press the connection reset button? What should we all be thinking about? It includes getting our body language right and knowing our own personal stories and how to use them in the reconnecting

Podcast Show Notes

00:48 How do we get back to re-engaging in the workplace.

01:20 Waterhole rituals and the human water cooler conversations

01:48 Horses are good at hanging out together doing something and doing nothing

03:10 The magic of relationships comes in that time when we just hang out.

04:55 The importance of the self-awareness dial

06:10 Johari’s Window – devised in the 1950s by and they were two psychology professors in California.

09:07 Horses are always asking each other questions when they meet each other, which are: Who are you? What do you do and how do you operate?

10:00 It’s about listening and body language, right, to find out how we’re now operating in the New World.

11:03 Pressing the reset button on all of our relationships.

11:06 A powerful exercise to do, is  to get people to share a time that they went through some adversity or some challenge.

11:40 Sharing their experience and their storytelling

15:04 Horses feel great respect for each other. And so the foundations are building trust, and creating respect.

17:09 Effective listening.

18:00 Body language, the non-verbals, making sure we get the words right.

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