Pairing people across the team: community is built by shared work, not socials.
The Engage item is “a sense of community is present where I work”. Managers reach for away days. The cheaper and more reliable route is two people on one real task.
On this page
One real task, two people who do not usually work together, a reason each, and the result shown to the team. Twelve pairs a year.
A team of twelve has sixty-six pairs in it. Most never work together. Those pairs are where cliques form, where “the day shift” and “the office” start, and where help does not flow because nobody knows what the other person is good at. You can change that one pair a month.
How to pair
- Pick two people who do not normally work together. Not the two who are at odds; start with two who are simply strangers.
- Give them one real task with a visible result inside a month. Small is fine: a process to fix, a handover to redesign, a problem one of them has and the other has solved before.
- Tell both why you paired them, in one sentence each: what the other person will learn from them. People work harder for someone who has been told they have something to offer.
- Ask them to show the result to the team when it is done. Thank them in front of everyone, specifically.
Over a year
Twelve pairs. Keep a list so nobody is left out and no pair happens twice. By month six you will see who has become a bridge, and the quiet people will have been seen doing something by someone who did not know them.
What not to do
Do not pair as a punishment, do not pair the two who are in conflict until the friction has been dealt with, and do not pair two people on a task that only one of them can do. The result must be something they could only have done together.
The clearest thirty minutes in your week.
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