Blog Archives - Drum Cafe North America

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Timely and effective collaboration between employees is crucial for the success of any business. But, this is only possible through the creation of sound internal communication processes with the help of technology such as a CMS tool, messaging applications, and more. Additionally, managers need to develop strong relationships with employees as well to empower them to promote bottom-up communication and make everyone in the organization feel heard and valued.

In this article from Drum Cafe North America, we’ll explore a host of actionable tips business owners and leaders can utilize to foster communication and collaboration in their organizations.

Create a Culture of Open Communication and Automation

Creating a culture of open communication doesn’t just mean encouraging employees to share their opinions, it also involves updating business processes based on their suggestions to make them feel valued. One of the best ways managers can instill a culture of open communication is to practice an open-door policy. Understandably, employees will be wary at the start to approach managers, hence initially, managers should take the lead by organizing regular team and one-on-one meetings to develop trust and rapport with team members.

Another way to foster open communication is to assign regular cross-team projects, providing employees the ability to interact with their co-workers, especially if your business is predominantly remote. Applications such as Slack or Microsoft teams are great mediums making it simple for employees to collaborate on projects and share files, opinions, and suggestions in real time.

You can also use an automation success platform and tools to automate your communication processes. Such a platform also improves workflows for optimal efficiency and productivity. This technology combines advanced process automation, data integration, and business intelligence to help organizations streamline operations, reduce costs, and improve overall business outcomes to meet the goals that have been set.

Promote Team Building Activities

In today’s fast-paced business environment, where deadlines come thick and fast, employees solemnly get time during work hours to bond to discuss topics beyond the purview of work, as discussed by Enterprise League. Hence, management and experts in the human resources department need to organize regular team-building activities both within and beyond the office to bring employees closer and develop healthy work and personal relationships.

Planning a weekend retreat is a tried and tested way of fostering better work relationships. Allowing employees a relaxing and fun environment makes for a much better setting, allowing them to interact with each other beyond the confines of work projects or deadlines. Additionally, planning team activities such as hiking influence employees to work as a team and develop stronger personal bonds. Other relaxing activities to consider include periodic office lunches or happy hour events at local establishments.

Invest in a CMS

A content management system (CMS) serves as a great addition to messaging tools mentioned at the start of the article. In addition to fostering real-time communication, these tools provide complete clarity regarding content generation, editing, and publishing down to the individual level and provide all employees a bird’s eye view of document iteration and status, as well as with different departments, especially in ones with whom they have dependencies.

For instance, if the marketing team needs content for a landing page for a new campaign, they don’t need to waste time setting up a call with the document owner or others. Rather, they can review the progress on the CMS and prepare for publication accordingly. Additionally, such CMS solutions can be used by managers to distribute tasks among team members, set individual deadlines, and track performance, all through a single dashboard.

Embrace Diversity and Inclusion

Diversity and inclusion are popular themes in today’s work environment, and rightly so. According to research by Insight Global, diverse companies are 70% more likely to capture new markets and be successful compared to those who aren’t. The reason for this is simple, embracing diversity and inclusion can promote the creation and sharing of new ideas and perspectives. For instance, younger employees will be more open to undertaking risks and providing out-of-the-box ideas for challenging problems.

Moreover, creating a diverse workplace helps to make everyone feel welcome and valued, increasing their comfort level to share ideas, mingle with co-workers and develop a healthy and productive work environment.

By creating a culture of open communication, investing in a project management platform, encouraging team-building activities, and fostering a diverse work environment, business owners and leaders can improve collaboration among team members and drive business growth.

Drum Cafe North America presents a unique, hands-on approach to team building, learning and leadership development. Connect with us today to learn more! (858) 583-1960

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Photo Credit: Pavel Danilyuk via Pexels

Remote work is here to stay. It’s clear that many employees prefer working remotely, and it’s good for business too! Remote work leads to reductions in business expenses, greater access to top talent, increased employee productivity, and better disaster preparedness. Plus, your employees will be happier, meaning greater retention rates and fewer frustrating days spent looking for new hires.

But these benefits aren’t guaranteed. Keeping your remote workers happy and engaged is vital to the success of your remote team! Check out the following tips to ensure high employee satisfaction among your remote team.

1. Enforce Accountability With Performance Monitoring

Did you know that monitoring employee performance can improve job satisfaction? Monitoring your staff will motivate them to try their best. When your employees know that their work matters, they’re more likely to put in the effort. Make sure your employees feel accountable for their own performance.

Introduce your team members to a monitoring strategy and let them know which work-related activities you’ll be tracking. Task management and time tracking are two easy ways to do this. Incentivize your team with team goals to encourage everyone to do their part. This will help unify your remote workers as a cohesive team!

2. Use Technology to Keep Everyone Connected

Technology makes it easy for remote work teams to communicate and collaborate in real time. Make sure you use these tools! For example, project management tools like Trello and Asana will let your teams take ownership of their work while reducing the amount of micromanagement you need to do. Similarly, instant messaging apps like Slack are great for remote work teams who need to communicate throughout the day. Consider the communication challenges your team struggles with the most, then look for apps that aim to solve these issues.

3. Provide the Necessary Hardware

Your remote employees rely on hardware like laptops, tablets, and mobile phones to get their work done. While office employees may have access to high-quality equipment, your remote workers have to rely on their own devices. NoHQ suggests supporting their work by providing your team with all the equipment they need. Alternatively, you could offer discounts or compensation to help your employees purchase the tools they need to work efficiently.

Let your employees know that there are great free resources for troubleshooting their home equipment, including camera systems, that they may be using. Instead of having to bother your remote IT department and potentially lose valuable work time, they can go through some basic troubleshooting steps themselves before getting the professionals involved.

4. Encourage Interaction Between Team Members

Loneliness is one of the main drawbacks of remote work. If your team members feel like they’re working alone most of the time, set up opportunities for social interaction. Schedule social hours, video chats, and virtual team-building events. When you hire a new remote employee, assign them a mentor who can answer their questions and help them feel comfortable in the remote work environment. You could even plan some occasional company meet-ups so everyone can interact in person!

Consider opening virtual groups that support your team’s personal interests, like reading or sewing or cycling. Each group can figure out if they just want to share tips and stories or if they want to keep each other accountable. For instance, those who enjoy working out can set up a regular virtual workout session together.

5. Offer Additional Perks and Benefits

There are many kinds of benefits that employers are implementing for their teams. Many people don’t realize that paid holidays and vacation days aren’t required in many states. So adding these along with retirement plans and health insurance can go a long way in making employees feel valued.

Wellness programs are also great for showing your team that you appreciate all their hard work. Plus, promoting the health and wellness of your employees will reduce absenteeism and keep those productivity levels high. There are a number of ways to offer wellness programs to your remote workers. For example, you could offer free online yoga classes or meditation sessions, virtual counseling services, or online fitness programs.

Tuition reimbursement is another very popular option which has also been shown to increase employee retention, despite what you might think. Plus, there are many accredited universities that offer online programs, which means that your employees can build up their skills while staying on top of their work responsibilities. Check out the many business-related degrees your team could pursue, from accounting and finance to communications and marketing.

Offering your employees employer-provided housing can be a valuable benefit that can help attract and retain talent. Before offering to pay for housing, view local apartment listings to determine potential costs.

Help Your Remote Teams Succeed

By keeping your remote workers happy, you can ensure they do their best, work hard for your business, and stick around for the long run. Use tried-and-true strategies to improve employee satisfaction among your remote work teams. Monitor performance to boost motivation, invest in helpful technology, provide solutions for work-from-home loneliness, and offer wellness programs to show your team you care!

Drum Cafe North America music and education programs are perfect for team building and leadership development. Learn more!

Drum Cafe North America founder, Natalie Spiro, was recently featured in a Go Solo story by Subkit.

“We demonstrate the power of creating a global community through the concept of UBUNTU – I am who I am because of those around me. As human beings, we cannot live/work in isolation. We are all interconnected. And when we truly live in this spirit of ubuntu, we are open and affirming to all – not threatened by our diversity of thought and beingness.”

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW

Some pandemic inspired research has turned up some fascinating data with very hopeful implications that we are excited to share with you.

A team of social neuroscience researchers from Bar-Ilan University in Israel and University of Chicago, took a look at what happens in the brain when we listen to music socially and were able to determine that music provides brain-to-brain social connections and underlines that music isn’t mere entertainment.

Inspired by the collective music-making while social distancing that transpired during the COVID-19 pandemic: singing in unison, balcony to balcony, group singing and live living room concerts via video conferencing software like Zoom.

Out of the research emerged a new model of the brain that sheds light on the social functions and brain mechanisms that underlie the musical adaptations used for human connection.

Using a fusion of the latest advances in social neuroscience and the field of music, including evolutionary theory, researchers were able to highlight five key functions and mechanisms of the brain that contribute to social connection through music.

empathy circuits are improved through interpersonal musical coordination and help us tune into what others are thinking and feeling.
oxytocin is secreted when people sing together, even when the singing is improvised. It contributes to our sense of feeling socially bonded with others.
dopamine – a neurotransmitter that is pivotal for our sense of reward and motivation, produces a sense of pleasure and is released during musical anticipation and expectation.
language structures were activated in back-and-forth musical dialogue also known as “call & response”.5) cortisol – the stress hormone is decreased when people make music or listen to music together in groups.

These findings demonstrate that through music we can connect and interact with others and signal that music-making in groups helps improve social bonding.

These are exciting implications for the application of group music making for the world at large, AND team environments.

Concerts, flash-mobs, kirtan, drum circles, choirs, sing-alongs, marching bands, karaoke.

How exciting to get scientific confirmation that fun and joy are the way to come together, reconnect our humanity after this collective trauma we all experienced.

The results of this new research have inspired us to put together an offering to help your team leverage this science for your benefit as well!

Most teams have been working remotely for more than a year. Thankfully Covid cases continue to decline in the US and restrictions have eased in many regions. Conditions are right and folks are ready to come together!

Drumming is an ideal activity to reinvigorate your team’s bond and when integrated into a team building session has the capacity to generate deep resonance through the connective power of music.

Our drumming events use call and response – for that language center activation – are suitable for any skill level, and we can confidently say that there is an extra decrease in cortisol that comes from beating on a drum. Relief from frustration + music making = great energy.

For the next four months – or while supplies last – a booking of a drumming-based team event* will come with the opportunity to purchase the drums at 50% off regular price.

Own your very own set of djembe drums to use in building and fostering connection anytime!

Human sociality is rooted in our biological makeup and while team environments are not always smooth sailing, music will always be a tool we can utilize to reconnect with each other – the brain science now confirms it.

A tool kit of drums for your team is both at the cutting edge of scientific discovery and rooted in millenia of human wisdom around connection.

And with the unprecedented time we’ve all just lived through there has never been a better time to invest in connection.

We hope you’ll take us up on this unique offer – we’ll only be able to offer it as long as supply lasts.

Reply to this email today to schedule a discovery call to craft an event uniquely tailored to the needs of your team.

*Events limited to Southern California, Las Vegas or Phoenix.

For areas outside this geography ask us about Team-Can-Jam-Cajon, another great drumming event where participants keep the drums.

We’ve all been there, we’ve attended traditional conferences with traditional speakers who, you guessed it, give their presentations from a traditional PowerPoint. And all of this is fine! But it’s just that.

As companies we want our presentations to be life-changing and extraordinary and for the teams to take away tools to be more productive.

In this podcast, I chat with Angela Proffitt all about interactive team building, unity and engagement through use of rhythm and the value of offering an experience for your team.

People don’t always remember what you say but they will always remember how you make them feel.

How exactly does a group event work when participants are separated by distance?

Drumming the Distance is not new to us – here’s how we did it in six remote sites simultaneously.

The Federal Reserve approached us because they wanted to do an all-hands meeting and that had 200 participants in the Atlanta Federal Reserve Office plus five other smaller offices in a variety of other places including Florida & North Carolina.

We began by coordinating drums to be sent to all locations and arranging AV connections between the six locations. A person in each location was in charge of the video conferencing equipment and was there to make sure that the AV ran smoothly, and the sound worked and the visuals worked.

We took all the 200 people who were in the Federal Reserve Building and we put them in the canteen. We had set up the canteen with a drum on every chair.

At the back of the room was a large video screen and on that video screen, there were five different blocks. Each block represented one of the other offices.

We started the event in Atlanta and all the other locations started at exactly the same time, so we had a rhythmic connected, real-time opening.

Each one of them heard me perfectly clearly, heard my team, and the music coming from the Atlanta office perfectly clearly.

I engaged with each one of those five offices by going into the audience and speaking directly to them via the screen because they could all see me and I could see them.

I would integrate each group with a drum roll welcome for each office, bringing them into the engagement so that they felt completely part of the engagement, as did those people who were sitting in Atlanta.

Corporate social responsibility has been defined in numerous ways. Typically when people are searching for corporate responsibility programs they bump into words such as “Sustainability”; “Customer Relationship Management”; “Corporate Governance” and “Ethics”, to name a few.

Forbes has defined it as a type of international private business self-regulation that aims to contribute to societal goals of a philanthropic, activist, or charitable nature or by engage in or support volunteering or ethically-oriented practices.

Susan McPherson has said that a company’s approach to impact is a reflection of that company’s values — and the values of its customers, employees and (increasingly) investors. It’s a shift that has been accelerated by the current political climate, in which companies have had to publicly stand up — both individually and collaboratively — for values like inclusion, empathy and environmental preservation in the face of questionable policy decisions. The result? Responsibility, humanity and impact are now more entrenched than ever in the corporate sector — and I am confident that this is not a passing trend.

At Drum Café North America, soon to be re-branded “THE RHYTHM AGENDA”, we have created a program that helps companies GIVE BACK to communities in need of the ability to “Humanize through Harmony”. The Rhythm Agenda will be offering a range of such programs that fit directly with the companies core values.

Our First – Team-Can-Jam-Cajon, recently contracted in by the IT division at Dropbox was a HUGE success. See for yourselves.

Bring us into one of your company divisions and BE a PART of the SOLUTION.

Let’s humanize through harmony.

“Diversity” and “inclusion” are two of the top buzzwords in many organizations as part of an initiative to broaden horizons and create a more supportive and positive corporate culture and environment.

“Diversity and Inclusion” means so much more than having multiple ethnicities, nationalities, and languages present within an organization – while representing the different tribes of the world certainly is one aspect of diversity, the key element to the inclusion part of the equation is recognizing the benefits of having unique perspectives and input to pull from. The organization that acknowledges having differing opinions, voices, and styles as an asset will be more effective at vetting ideas and strategies than a company too fearful to deviate from the norm. Transform your organization and make your team more effective with these simple steps:

Re-define diversity. In today’s rapidly changing and interconnected world, it’s important to realize that the concept of diversity in the workplace extends beyond the traditional sense of gender, socio-economic background, race, and age–having a smorgasbord of ideas, skill sets, languages, ideas, and styles is very important to an organization. Not every person’s wheelhouse should or needs to be the same; in fact, it’s better if there are a variety of different strengths, adaptable to the endless possibilities of situations and challenges that may arise at any given moment.
Be self-aware. Think honestly of what is informing any negative preconceptions or assumptions of others–more likely than not it is individual fear and vulnerability. The first step to embracing diversity and becoming a more inclusive and supportive organization is for each member to overcome those fears by recognizing their importance within the team, and then making the conscious choice to be open rather afraid of newness and difference.
Champion change. Change and flux within an organization are often perceived as negative, when they should be viewed as agents of positive transformation—an opportunity for personal and collective growth. Innovation does not thrive in environments that support sameness and groupthink. Innovation is born from a respectful exchange of ideas among individuals whose contributions are informed by their unique experiences and backgrounds.

The final and most important characteristic of being a diverse and inclusive team is celebrating and showing appreciation and respect for the differences that make your group unique. This is the ingredient that will elevate your organization to the next level and allow you to truly work together without walls. The Drum Cafe North America team often references the word UBUNTU, meaning, “I am because you are,” and it perfectly embodies this concept. UBUNTU honors the beauty of difference and shows gratitude for others’ contributions and the part they play in shaping our own experience.

If you are ready to break down the barriers that may be hindering your team, incorporate UBUNTU into your company philosophy and champion the change you wish to see in your organization. Fast forward to February 2020 where we will be celebrating Black History Month—it’s the perfect time to kick things off with one of Drum Cafe North America’s custom Diversity and Inclusion programs.

The power of drumming to reinforce a message is rooted in the non-verbal, experiential, immersive journey taken by each drumming participant. The barriers of language and culture are by-passed and the ancient physical human form is embraced, awakening the senses so often dulled by modern workstation life. At our team building events, just passing out the percussion instruments sparks a sense of wonder and play. But then, of course, the real learning begins.

Here are Drum Cafe North America’s 3 Benefits of Drumming as a Team Building Solution:

Fosters a sense of community and belonging

In this way, we use drumming and rhythm as a means to create bonds between us, to build trust incrementally and to demonstrate kinesthetically, that every member of every team or division has a unique contribution to make in achieving overall success. All our corporate and educational programming is designed to spark unity and engagement – to enhance and harness the POWER of ONE team.

Increases & encourages awareness/ active listening

Each participant is given their own distinct rhythm – their own voice. Performed separately at first, each group declares themselves, distinguishing the tone and groove of their sound. The sounds are all so different and the challenge is to create both sonic and rhythmic harmony.

Ears are fully engaged. Deep listening is required to enter the exchange of balanced play that creates true complementary integration. The room vibrates within minutes. Anyone who doubted that they could fully participate in a complex system of collaboration was persuaded otherwise. Making music together encourages us to be sensitive and intuitive of all “voices” around us.

Decreases stress

Many of our clients bring our programs in because they recognize that stress is a shared burden. They understand that stress reduces our ability to work effectively with other people and thus affects productivity. But even beyond impacting productivity, stress breeds imbalance. And when there’s an imbalance, progress is severely compromised.

Drum Café North America’s programs might just last an hour or two each time we visit, but what’s remarkable about drumming is its uncanny ability to stay with us long after we play. Again, it goes back to our bodies as resonators, deeply connecting to the drum itself and to the sound of many people drumming together.

For more information on the team building programs we offer, contact us here!

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Find the latest Drum Cafe news here

How Business Owners and Leaders Can Unlock the Power of Collaboration for Their Organization

5 Creative Ways to Keep Your Remote Workers Happy and Engaged

1. Enforce Accountability With Performance Monitoring

2. Use Technology to Keep Everyone Connected

3. Provide the Necessary Hardware

4. Encourage Interaction Between Team Members

5. Offer Additional Perks and Benefits

Help Your Remote Teams Succeed

Go Solo Story with Natalie Spiro

The Power of Music: A Pandemic Case Study

PODCAST: Rhythmic Drumming: Drumming Your Way To Success With Natalie Spiro

A Little Rhythm Goes a Long Way

Drumming the Distance: Livestream Drumming for Team Building

Corporate Social Responsibility & Our New Team-Can-Jam Cajon Program

Championing Change in the Workplace through Diversity & Inclusion

3 Benefits of Drumming as a Team Building Solution

How Business Owners and Leaders Can Unlock the Power of Collaboration for Their Organization

5 Creative Ways to Keep Your Remote Workers Happy and Engaged

Go Solo Story with Natalie Spiro

The Power of Music: A Pandemic Case Study

PODCAST: Rhythmic Drumming: Drumming Your Way To Success With Natalie Spiro

How Business Owners and Leaders Can Unlock the Power of Collaboration for Their Organization

5 Creative Ways to Keep Your Remote Workers Happy and Engaged

Go Solo Story with Natalie Spiro