Ritual to Welcome a New Team Member
In her book, Eat, Pray, Love Elizabeth Gilbert offers the following insight about the necessity of ritual:
“We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safekeeping. And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn't have the specific ritual you are craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own devising, fixing your own broken-down emotional systems with all the do-it-yourself resourcefulness of a generous plumber/poet.”
Many hospice and palliative care teams use rituals to remember patient’s who have died or to honor team-member life transitions.
Another opportunity for ritual appears when we welcome a new team member into our team. Rather than only focusing on credentialing or onboarding, pausing to recognize this moment of transition, for both the new team member and the current team, is a way to further clarify and fortify our team raison d’etre.
The following is one way to ritualize a new team member’s arrival:
Welcoming Ritual for a New Team Member
Team history
Begin by having each member of the current team describe how they came to this work and specifically to this team.
Questions for a new team member
Invite the new team member to answer the following questions. Share the questions with the new team member prior to the welcoming ritual so they have time to reflect on their responses.
Current team member asks: What brings you to this work?
Current team member asks: What brings you to this team?
Current team member asks: What are you hoping for?
Current team member asks: What are your dreams?
Team vision
The team leader(s) describe the team’s vision including the team’s values (what is most important at the end of the day), the team’s philosophy (why they do the work the way they do it), and goals for the future (where they hope to be one, two, five years from now).
Reading
Current team members take turns reading the following poem in parts.
How to Tell the Truth by Paul Williams
Current team member:
When you just have to talk,
try being silent.
When you feel reluctant to say anything,
make the effort
to put what you’re feeling into words.
This is a place to begin.
Current team member:
Pushing gently
against the current
of your own impulses
is an effective technique
for dislodging
and discovering
your truth.
Current team member:
How to tell the truth?
Taste it
and remember the taste in your heart.
Risk it
from the bottom of your love.
Take the risk
of telling the truth
about what you’re feeling
Take the risk
of telling your loved one
your secrets.
Current team member:
It’s true
you might be misunderstood.
Look and see
if you’re willing to trust
yourselves
to misunderstand each other
and go on from there.
Current team member:
When someone speaks to you
and you feel yourself not wanting to hear it
try letting it in.
You don’t have to agree that they’re right.
Just take the risk
of listening as if they could possibly be speaking
some truth—
and see what happens.
Current team member:
Listen as if.
Listen as if you can’t always tell
what the truth is.
Listen as if you might be wrong,
especially when you know you’re right.
Listen as if
you were willing to take the risk
of growing beyond
your righteousness.
All:
Listen as if
love mattered.
Closing blessing
Current team member: May you be blessed with the courage to be silent
Current team member: May you be blessed with the strength to dislodge your own truth
Current team member: May you be blessed with the stamina to tell the truth with love
(Add additional blessings to make sure each current team member is included)
All: Welcome to this work, welcome to this team.