The other day in my team weekly spot for talks and team building stuff I run an exercise to improve our team relationship and build trust, which is key when working together.

I would say this is even more important nowadays with the current setup of remote work, where as happens in other companies we have team members that do not known other because they started in the last two years, where we have barely meet and not always the whole group.

For doing that, I used what is called the Johari window.

Basically, this model defines four areas. If we made a similarity with a house:

• The living room: this is what is known by others and by ourselves. For instance, my colleagues know how I work in the team and that I like running.

• The aroma of the house: this is what others know but you do not know. In other words, this is feedback.

• My bedroom: this is what I know but others do not. Things that one has not spoken about or has not shown yet.

• The attic: this is the unknown, things one does not know neither others. We could say these are characteristics, skills, hobbies… pending to be discovered yet.

In the activity, each member of the team started speaking about the bedroom. This way the others can know more about the speaker. After that, the other members spoke about things they have seen about the speaker (as I said, feedback). I started the activity in order to break the ice, and also I was steering aiming to make if fluent. For five team members, we spent roughly half an hour, which I would say was more than expected. We know better our colleagues, about their hobbies, their life history or what they have done in the company. Also we disclosure characteristics we like about our colleagues and also others that they could improve. People were kind and polite, and there were no conflicts during the activity. I would say the outcome was positive after the time spend together and we could repeat in the future.