Springtime is a season for refreshed outlooks, regrowth, and renewal. Work teams have gone through a lot these past few months with sudden and abrupt changes and challenges brought on by the pandemic. This also intensified a lack of trust, increased anxiety, and a feeling of detachment especially in teams who work remotely. 

“Your mind is a garden from which everything from your happiness to your success grows,” said Nadalie Bardo. 

Spring cleaning your team’s minds doesn’t have to be a dreaded “list of chores”. Rather see it as a chance to redefine them, change their expectations, and to remind them why it’s the best team and place to work for. 

5 Quick and easy tips to spring clean your remote team’s minds:

• Have an open discussion. Get everything out. Encourage the team to talk freely and openly, but not in a hurtful or sarcastic manner. Get them to lay all the previous issues they might have had with one another on the table. This way you can foster discussions without judgement and the team can make peace with it and move on.
• Focus on the team’s mental health. Even if you think it is not the case, your team is feeling stressed, overwhelmed, anxious, maybe even burned out. Their morale might be low at this stage. Make sure you know exactly how they feel, and what they are thinking. Then look at ways to remotivate your staff by fulfilling what their minds or heart need. For example, give them a personal day, or inspire a social event.
• Declutter the team’s Cyber Space. When working remotely one often ignores things like computer or software updates, decluttering email boxes, organising your computer’s files and folders. Persuade them to clean up their computer storage, organise their folders, and do the updates necessary to function at optimal level again. 
• Propose a new timetable to promote a healthier routine. Set up a scheduled routine sample. Bring in healthy things like, when to go out for a walk around the block, or when to take breaks etc. Promote healthy eating and exercise by working in healthy meal plans and quick and easy office exercises.  
• Motivate team members. If possible, do some proper physical team building again. Something unique and enjoyable. Consider something like an escape room adventure or solving a murder mystery together or, because the weather is more pleasant this time of the year, something like an amazing race. Your team will appreciate the fresh air and the break from their “remote office” and computer screens. Something like this just might breathe some new life into them.

Spring cleaning team issues might take some time and effort, but in the end, you’ll develop a more efficient and effective team. 

Marie Kondo said: “The objective of cleaning is not just to clean, but to feel happiness living within that environment.” 

This can be said of a spring-cleaned-mind as well. If you declutter your team’s negative thoughts, ease tension and anxiety and help them work in a healthier, decluttered and more organised environment you will increase their productivity and establish a brighter future for working together.