Welcome back to the Look and Sound of Leadership, an ongoing series of executive coaching tips

designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the way you want to be perceived.

I'm Tom Henshel, your executive coach, and today we're talking about how to re-engage a team.

Nila loved leading teams.

During our very first coaching conversation, she talked about the various efforts she'd made to build her current team.

Then COVID had hit.

The team's productivity remained steady, but she felt their spirits had withered.

She said, isolation has fried them.

The energy on these calls is deadly, and we won't be back together again for a few more months at least.

I wanted to give them a shot of energy, but I don't know how to do it. Do you have any tricks?

I asked, when you say the energy is deadly, Nila, what do you mean?

People have stopped participating. I'll ask a question, and there's silence. It's like pulling teeth. It didn't use to be that way.

What? Why are you smiling?

I said, well, I don't know what's going on with your team. It could be any number of things, right?

But there is an exercise that I use with teams that generates interesting conversations. You might like to try it.

Will it work on Zoom, she asked? Oh, yeah. Or in person. I've done it both ways. It works in either setting.

Terrific, she said. What's the idea?

It's from a group called liberating structures. It's an exercise they call drawing together.

The purpose of the exercise is to create conversations among people about a shared experience.

The exercise is designed in a way that gets people out of their heads. It taps into a different part of their brains than they're used to,

so the conversations are interesting. Plus, people have fun while they're doing it.

Oh my gosh, she said. That sounds perfect. Can you tell me how to do it?

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