Have you ever noticed how the smallest routines can quietly hold a team together? A shared coffee break, a standing Friday chat, even a run to the local chippy. These simple moments aren’t just habits, they’re rituals that create rhythm, connection, and belonging. This week, “Chippy Tuesday” got me thinking about the power of these everyday behaviours, how they shape culture, build trust, and keep us feeling part of something bigger, even when we’re working apart. Grab a coffee (or a bag of chips!) and join me in exploring how rituals, big and small, can help us build stronger, more human teams.
Looking forward to joining you on your learning journey!
Chippy Tuesday got me thinking.
My husband has a small team and over time, they’ve established rituals that, regardless of what they’re doing and where they are, they come together to join in. On Tuesday, they get chips from the chippy - hence Chippy Tuesday. On Fridays, they have something from the kebab shop. At 10.30am most days they stop for coffee. And yes, on reflection, everything does revolve around food, but that’s their thing!! Being that food is recognised as a primary brain reward, when someone makes you a coffee or it’s someone else’s turn to pop to the chippy, a foodie-interlude is a pretty nice way to connect.
This got me thinking about rituals and how different organisations and teams instigate and implement different kinds of rituals. How remote, hybrid and on-site teams establish rituals will be quite different.
It’s interesting how we create a sense of team. It’s both in the behaviour we encourage and in the rituals we establish. When I spoke with culture expert Chris Dyer in episode 55 of The Knowing Self Knowing Others Podcast, one thing he said really stuck with me: “The biggest place where culture occurs is in meetings.” And of course, there are ‘meetings’ and then there are simply instances where we meet up!
Meetings can be the formal work situations which we’ve created, but meet up happens over the dinner table, in the kitchen at coffee time and even in the smoking area when people go on their breaks. Meetings and meeting up are same same but different. They create opportunities for team cohesion, inter-personal connection, new relationships and friendships.
It’s such a simple idea, but it makes complete sense. In remote and hybrid teams, where those quick chats in the corridor don’t happen, meetings become the main way we connect, and the perfect space to build culture.
Chris views meetings not as chores but as team rituals - those regular, structured moments that bring rhythm and meaning to the working week. I love the way he’s given his meetings animal names, things like: cockroach, ostrich and tiger. Cockroach meetings are short and focused, ostrich meetings help people learn and “get their heads out of the sand”, and tiger meetings tackle the big challenges. The names make them memorable, but it’s the routine and clarity that make them powerful. When everyone knows what to expect, they dig in, contribute and connect.
Chris also shared how he’s replaced endless one-to-ones with a weekly team catch-up, where everyone discusses what’s going well, what’s tricky and how they can help each other. Now, I’m not sure that getting rid of one-to-ones is a good idea, because one-one-one are two way conversations. Just because the manager doesn’t think they’re worthwhile any more, has anyone asked the direct report??
Chris also weaves company values into everyday stories, encouraging people to share how a value shaped their response to a situation. Add to that his practice of opening and closing meetings with quick human check-ins, “Start with the person, end with the employee”, and you’ve got a set of rituals that quietly build connection.
As Chris puts it,
“Culture doesn’t live in the office anymore. It lives in what we repeat.”
What rituals can you point to in your team or organisation? For me, over the years, there have been different instances that i can recall that brought people together
Fortnightly 30 minute virtual team meetings.
Designated on-site days for hybrid teams.
Bi-monthly off-site work and wellbeing meet-up days.
Celebratory buffets where everyone brought a plate. Often around Christmas, but sometimes to celebrate an event like an award, retirement or big birthday.
Weekly face-to-face management meetings starting at 8.30am and often still going at 1pm! These were ritualistic, but I think more to do with manager ego than actually getting anything constructive done!! When I took over, these became weekly 9am - 10am meetings!
In a Forbes article from Dec ‘24, by Scott Hutcheson, the author of Biohacking Leadership that talks about biology, behaviour and leadership, talks about celebrations as different kinds of rituals. He says,
From an evolutionary perspective, celebrations have always played a critical role in group cohesion and survival. Early humans relied on rituals to strengthen social bonds and build trust within their communities. These gatherings often involved shared meals, storytelling, and physical activities, all of which triggered the release of oxytocin—the “bonding hormone”—and dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward.
Modern celebrations echo these ancient rituals.
There are different rituals for different purposes. Here are different ways that I’ve observed, read about and considered as different rituals for different reasons that you might want to consider as a way of developing connection in your organisation:
1. Rituals that Build Belonging
Start-of-week pulse check: Begin Monday meetings with “what’s one thing you’re looking forward to this week?” to humanise the start of the week.
Team Tea: Once a month, create a time and space for people to come together for tea, coffee, cake and biscuits paid for by the company - healthy options should also be available!!
Value-in-action moments: Encourage everyone to share one example of how a company value showed up in their work that week. This echoes what Chris Dyer does.
2. Rituals that Strengthen Routine and Trust
Consistent check-ins: Keep weekly meetings at a set time, same rhythm, same structure, humans like predictability! It builds psychological safety.
Chippy Tuesday: Or whatever day works for you. Create a weekly lunchtime pause where people can meet and eat, get to know each other and value the pause.
Gratitude circles: End Friday meetings with each person recognising a colleague’s effort. Small dopamine boosts create big impact on trust.
3. Rituals that Celebrate and Recognise Achievements
Mini-celebrations: Celebrate small wins like a project milestone, a new person joining the team or even just surviving the quarter
Digital celebrations: For remote teams, use GIFs, virtual high-fives, or quick 5-minute celebration huddles. I like the praise function in Teams! They sound small but carry the same oxytocin-triggering power as in-person celebrations.
Seasonal or cultural moments: Recognise shared experiences like Diwali, Pride Month, International Happiness at Work week, not for the optics, but to learn and do together.
4. Rituals that Humanise Work
Human check-ins: Borrow Chris’s line, “Start with the person, end with the employee.”
Virtual walk-and-talks: Replace one video meeting a week with a walking phone chat, movement and informality change energy and openness and changing environment also help to change perspective - literally!
Blood-Sugar Booster: recognise that stopping and eating is fundamental to human wellbeing. Create time for people to stop and eat. Actively strive to prevent your organisational culture being one where people feel guilty for stopping to eat.
5. Rituals that Create Shared Meaning
Team playlists, books, or photo walls: Shared cultural artefacts build identity. I was in an office in Prague and desks and office spaces are encouraged to be personalised.
Naming rituals: Like Chris’s animal-named meetings, why not create naming conventions for projects or meetings to foster ownership?
Reflection rituals: End each quarter with a short “what worked / what we learned / what we’ll repeat” reflection. Culture, after all, “lives in what we repeat.”
The Last Word
When someone ask you, how do you connect and ensure cohesion between remote and hybrid teams, rituals are a great place to start!
Whether it’s chips on a Tuesday or a two-minute check-in at the start of a meeting, rituals remind us that connection doesn’t need to be grand, it just needs to be regular, meaningful, and human.
Nia is an expert leader who talks the talk and walks the walk. She is an academically awarded thought leader in self-aware leadership and practices self-aware leadership every single day in her role as a strategy and operations leader.
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Great coverage of the opportunities most leaders overlook. I will pass this along. Thanks.