Kelsie Brunick
Building Community
For Rosewood, it started with listening to our people and welcoming the feedback, good or bad, to the table. It started with leaders being vulnerable with where we’d missed the mark and where our teams were thriving. It started with baby steps.
As we built, we focused on three key pillars to ensure we grew our community in a genuine and scalable way.
If we don’t get this right — everything that follows cannot be absorbed and appreciated.
We must create an environment of trust and safety. This comes from listening to each other, creating opportunities to share positive and tough news with each other without judgment or punishment, and engaging in difficult conversations with respect.
We must build ongoing connections. As a team scales, each individual requires a different approach and opportunity to develop cross-departmental relationships.
✲ Connection happens socially. At beach club, a virtual game night on Discord, or seeing their teammates in person at a team party or happy hour.
✲ Connection happens through shared experiences: manager training, relevant slack channel communities, the IDEA Committee, and more.
✲ Connection happens through listening. This happens in weekly 1x1’s, team surveys, informal get togethers, and events.
When we get this right—when people feel safe and supported by their manager and/or team, when they feel connected to and trusted by their organization, and they are truly empowered to do the work they were brought to this team to do… incredible work, magical creative, and true impact begins.
Brené Brown said that true belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are — it requires you to be who you are. Rosewood hires incredibly smart, kind, and talented people. We want them to show us that version of themselves as often as they can.
While we know our talented people can produce great work, that’s not the entire story. We aren’t robots churning out widgets. We are humans who live life in and outside of work. That means life happens — if your kid gets sick, your dog has to go to the vet, or you are just having an ‘off’ day, we get it!
There isn’t a switch we can turn off when we re-open our computers at 9 am that erases what may have impacted us from the evening/morning leading up to it. Likewise, our experience in our personal communities and the events around the world informs and influences how we show up at work.
Our goal is that everyone feels safe enough to show up on an ‘off’ day knowing they have a teammate, a manager, and Rosewood Community who will give them space and support to just be.
This starts with honest communication and caring for the whole human. It means being transparent and clear when something is or is not working.
It continues in having awareness and compassion around the different struggles we come to work with and partnering alongside our teammates to discover, support or solve.