How We Live And Work Together

Corina Roobeck

We are living in an out of the ordinary situation right now, and when the novelty of staying home from school wears off or the latest sibling fight in the background of a work call drives you nuts - what do you do?

As our co-working spaces become our kitchens, bedrooms, and living rooms, how do we manage the needs of each family member and make the most out of (or at least survive!) our time together under the same roof?

Create a Family Charter!

This is the family version of what we create with teams around the world to enhance participation, collaboration, and performance.

It's practical and fun to create. Also: it takes parents out of the bad cop role and becomes the boss! With a review system built-in, run by your ‘new team’ members we can all survive or even thrive in this new context.

The Family Charter is a place for everyone to get clear and explicit about their individual and family needs and make sure everyone is covered. Parents can work and meet deadlines, children are cared for and the family stays sane in such an uncommon situation.

Step 1: Materials

Get your materials ready: a big sheet of paper (or a couple of A4 sheets taped together) with the title “Our Family Charter”, post-it notes, and coloured markers, or just an iPad. Be as creative as you like.

Step 2: Individual Reflection

Everyone takes 5 minutes to write down on post-it notes the key behaviours that will support your household. This is based on the values that are important for your family. Be as specific as you can. Encourage the children to participate and don’t evaluate their ideas at this stage.

Here are some questions to help get you started:

What behaviours will help us live and work/study together?
What behaviours are important to us as a family?

Step 3: Share

Take turns to share what you’ve written, and add the post-it notes to the “Our Family Charter” sheet.

Step 4: Cluster

Once everyone has shared, cluster similar items together.

Step 5: Statement

For each cluster, have a discussion on what makes sense for you as a family, and write it up as a practical statement.

Step 6: Prioritise

If you have too many statements (more than 8), vote for the ones that are the most important for the family this week. Everyone gets 3 ticks to vote for their choice.

And voilá! Here's your completed Family Charter. How does everyone feel about it? Are we committed to bringing it to life every day? Good!

At the end of each week have a review ‘party’. What worked well? What needs to be changed? Anything new to add? Take turns to facilitate this. This is also a great way to bond with your kids and have fun together as a family.

Example:

Here’s an example of a Family Charter created this week, for a family with older school-aged kids and a parent working from home:

We use kind words, we listen to and respect each other.
Quiet time is between 9.30am - 11.00am / 11.30am - 12.30pm / 1.30pm - 3pm / 4.00pm - 5.00pm.
When mum is on a work call she puts up a sign and the kitchen is out of bounds.
We FaceTime family every day.
We go out for a walk together each day.

One of our teammates has very young children and both he and his wife are juggling full- time work and full-time child care. They are starting with a trial of 2 hours focused on work, while the other focuses on the children, and then swap. Work calls are planned around this.

While we all do what we need to do and find new ways to co-create how we work together, it feels like an increase in care and tolerance would also be helpful. Children will walk by in the background of a video call, a cat will cross the desk, a dog will bark. A new context is here and we can choose how we'll relate to it, to survive it or to even thrive.

Now it's your turn! Try it out and let us know how it goes.