The Power of Coming Together Whilst Being Parted

Togetherness. One word, infinite importance.

We are forty-four Tailifyers coming together at 48 Hoxton Square, each day living and breathing our culture and core values. We consistently go above and beyond to reach new heights and pioneer the industry together. ?Togetherness? is at the heart of our culture. Because it?s our people who have enabled Tailify to get where we are today. Likewise, it?s our people that will enable Tailify to realise its full potential.

To feel a sense of togetherness is commonly known to have a positive influence on individual performance, as this is psychologically proven to boost intrinsic motivation and a sense of purpose. Equally as important, being a part of a community stimulates a sense of belonging and social connection, both of which are absolutely necessary for emotional well-being and mental health.

Having that said, no matter what, our sense of togetherness must be kept bulletproof. So how do we stay together whilst being apart?

Rewire your mindset

In 1892 the famous Oscar Wilde reflected upon the phenomenon of perception and claimed that ?We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars?. His 128-year-old argument truly came to inspire me on a Friday night nine weeks ago when I last closed the door to the office for the foreseeable future. I was feeling disoriented and quite frankly, heartbroken. Until I came to realise that it is all about perception. Indeed, it is all about the lens through which your brain views the world that shapes your reality.

We got served lemons. But together, we decided to make lemonade. We rewired our mindset and chose not to perceive distance as an obstacle for togetherness. Instead, we decided to perceive it as an opportunity to soldier up from afar and become closer than ever before.

Infuse Psychological Safety

A central building block for team togetherness is trust. A pivotal component of efficient team togetherness that pushes through the current turmoil, however, is psychological safety. The understanding that your self-image or job won?t suffer negative consequences from making a mistake stimulates this psychological safety. Feeling psychological safety will enable our team members to take risks, step into their growth zone and be vulnerable together. The cherry on top is that a sense of psychological safety triggers oxytocin levels in our brains to rise, further eliciting trust and trust-making behaviour.

As a consequence of the current turmoil, we quickly came to realise that there was an underlying fear amongst the team members. Fear is known to hijack our higher brain centres and signal a fight-or-flight response that provokes our creativity and analytical thinking to collapse. Now more than ever, we need Tailifyers to feel psychologically safe to explore their strengths, experiment with innovations and step out of their comfort zone. So we did what we could to infuse a sense of safety in the sandbox.

We restructured teams to allow employees to explore new areas of the business and acquire new skills. The ?Are You Crazy Committee? was born to push wild ideas into implementation of innovating projects. Each Tailfyer is working on their individual ?One Big Thing? to improve in order to realise their full potential. Because we believe in the Tailfyers? coming together and making the impossible, possible.

Come together

Changing the world during a pandemic is hard work! It is important not to take ourselves too seriously and laugh along the way. So how do we stay together whilst being apart?

  • Each morning at 9am we kick off the day with ‘Improving with Tailify’. All Tailifyers tune in to a group chat to a) discuss a specific article relevant for our improvement as a business and how to make it Tailify specific and b) decide how we can implement this at Tailify.
  • Rolled out ?Training with Tailify?, a twice-weekly zoom workout held by the team, for the team.
  • Meditation sessions are coached by a professional every Thursday.
  • Bi-weekly Lunch & Learns from inspiring thought leaders such as Eric Partaker (CEO of the year, 2019).
  • Explored hidden talents through our own virtual ?Tailify got Talent? judged by a jury of macro-influencers.
  • Brought our inner children to life through weird and wonderful TikTok Challenges with prizes up for grabs, of course.
  • Emphasising the importance of transparency by giving regular updates on Tailify?s financial health and action plans, as well as opening up for anonymously sending in burning questions.
  • Ending the week with praising colleagues who have put in some extraordinary efforts!
  • Did I mention live virtual Cocktail Mixology classes learning how to make the famous Swedish Hotshot and home-made ?Quarantinis??


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