Table Talks
For those who don't know, our office has a beautiful and wonderful kitchen which is a favourite space for many of us and where, pretty much every day, we had lunch together.
- "Well, it's time, isn't it?"
- "How many are we today?"
Until the unpleasant surprise of March, it was the same every day at lunch: one of us announced that the stomach was already rumbling, one or the other followed the signal, others were dragged away later with the famous "Let's go to the kitchen".
We privilege lunches, like other moments of pause, to do and talk about whatever we feel like, to strengthen ties, to get to know each other better. That's what all lunches were like!
And in those conversations, sometimes there would be references to articles or books that one of us found funny. The others were curious and eager to know and talk more about that article or book but, as we all know, the difficulty of finding that availability to do so can be (and is!) more than many. Often the "I have to read..." was lost somewhere between routine and other choices.
What have we done?
So we decided to turn one lunch a month into a space we called "ConversActions at the Table". Beforehand, one of us would send an article (which may or may not be directly related to business), indicate a book chapter/excerpt that we would invite everyone to read and so that on day X of the month Y part of the lunch conversation would be about sharing and different points of view on the theme(s) of the reading carried out.
Our purpose was to share ideas, interests, doubts, curiosities with each other, in a moment created specifically for that purpose. At the same time, we contributed to the team members' continuous development in critical aspects for us (critical thinking; capacity to transform information into knowledge; conversation; integrating different points of view; among others).
What did we find out?
Some not so good things:
"Ouch I haven't had time to read!"
Time was almost always short OR We found it difficult to prioritise these moments and their preparation
Sometimes more than a month passed between "Table Talks
Some ideas are still to come out of orality onto digital paper
But, above all, several good things:
Sometimes lunch was not enough for all the things we wanted to talk about
Like the cherries, the conversations often had connections with ideas, interests, doubts and curiosities from another article that another one of us had read and would share on "ConversActions at the Table" because it was "just in time"
The conversations always resulted in new ways of looking at, questioning and relating to the theme(s).
Some of the articles we shared and discussed gave us ideas to use with our team and to work with clients!
Did you like the initiative "Conversations at the Table"?
Set one day a month to talk about an article/chapter or book excerpt you liked
A couple of weeks beforehand, send it to your team and invite them to read it for a chat on the "Conversations at the Table" day
Talk!
Repeat as often as you like! Talking does not harm your health or the health of those around you
If you like, write to us to tell us what you found out! And share with us suggestions on how to improve this initiative.
