One of the common threads I’ve noticed among the founders and changemakers I coach is a sense of loneliness and isolation in their roles. It’s a feeling I know well, not only during the early, chaotic years of launching my social enterprises but also in the quieter moments when they began to flourish.
There are many ways to reduce isolation, but when you’re building something from scratch and juggling endless demands, staying connected can feel like a luxury, or not even cross your mind at all. At the startup stage, time is scarce, and connection often drops to the bottom of the list.
And yet, connection is exactly what’s needed.
In my experience, founders and purpose-driven people can ease isolation by paying attention to different types of connection and where they can get it from. In this blog, I’ll explore five ways to stay connected with your team and why this is important to every professional and especially social entrepreneurs.
At the end of this blog you will also find the usual “Sebastian’s Coffee Cup Coaching Corner” where I offer some prompts for reflection and action.
5 Ways of Staying Connected with Your Team
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us have shifted to more remote ways of working, some entirely from home. Depending on how your organisation is set up, you might also face geographical barriers, especially if, like in my case, your team is spread across different locations.
Staying connected with colleagues is important for everyone, not just for founders. Yet it becomes increasingly challenging when there’s little or no physical interaction. However, being physically together does not guarantee connection either. You can be in the same room and still miss the opportunity to connect.
- Connect during meetings (both online or face-to-face)
We spend so many hours each week in meetings with colleagues: these are golden opportunities to build connection. We can turn the usual and almost uncaring “how are you” into a moment of authenticity. There are many ways to do that and what they have in common is dedicated time: time to listen, to answer without rushing, time for bearing witness.
At Micro Rainbow for example, we begin our weekly team meetings with a check-in and end with a check-out. Its is a practice that helps us tune in to where we are emotionally and energetically. It is not something we did from day one so if you think it could work for your organisation, give it a try! It is never too late. This process works well both online and in-person, in groups or one-to-one meetings.
Here are a few examples of check-ins:
– What emotion or feeling are you bringing to this meeting?
– If you were a weather condition, what would you be and why?
– (You can get creative: “If you were a kitchen utensil…?” works too!)
Check-out prompts might include:
– What will you do to take care of yourself today?
– Where will you seek support this week?
– When is your next planned time off?
- Connect during board meetings
I’ve always treated board meetings as serious, structured, and as professional as possible, because that’s what I learned from past experiences. But do they really have to be? As I write this blog, I realise I haven’t yet tried the approach described above, which we use as a team, at the board level. Creating more space for connection during board meetings doesn’t make them less professional. In fact, it could open doors, build loyalty, and foster more collaborative energy.
In the past, I didn’t ask the board for enough support, and looking back, that was a missed opportunity. Do you mainly see your board members only during meetings? That might be another one. Most people join the board of a social enterprise because they genuinely want to give back and they connect with the cause. Creating opportunities for them to connect to the cause, the team and contribute beyond formal meetings is part of the job of the CEO and the senior leadership team. After all, we’re the ones who know where the real gaps are and where help is needed most.
So… are you ready to try the check-in/check-out process with your board? I’ll be honest, it feels a little uncomfortable at first, especially in a space we’ve been conditioned to keep strictly formal. But I’m going to give it a go at our next meeting. If we’re serious about deepening connection at all levels of the organisation, then the boardroom shouldn’t be the exception.
- Connect over a (virtual) coffee
As a CEO, founder, or director, you don’t always get the chance to work closely with everyone, which can make connecting with some colleagues more difficult. My own way of “closing the connection gap” is to occasionally schedule a 30-minute virtual coffee with colleagues I don’t usually interact with. There’s no agenda, we don’t have to talk about work, and the time is counted as part of our working hours. We start with the question “What is working well for you right now?“. The answer can be about any area of our lives and we see where that takes us.
Curiosity is the mindset that helps me connect. I’m genuinely interested in how my colleagues are doing—both personally and professionally—and I’m happy to invest time in those conversations. Actively listening and sharing a moment of vulnerability can be surprisingly energising. These virtual coffees are an equal exchange: when someone asks how I am, I go beyond “all is well” and try to share a bit of the good, the bad, and the messy parts of the week.
I don’t do this as often as I’d like, maybe once a year with each person, but I’ve found that when the connection is authentic, frequency matters less. Even one genuine conversation can leave a lasting impact.
- Connect with quality time together
The power of face-to-face connection is fresh in my mind. As I write this blog, I’ve just returned from a two-day away day with all my colleagues. It was energising. It was inspiring. We focused on self-care, got to know each other better, and celebrated our strengths and achievements (with no PowerPoints in sight!).
Leave the training sessions or behaviour-change interventions (trying to make people better at sales?) for another time. Behaviour doesn’t change in a single session, and there are plenty of other ways to train. If you’re bringing people together in person, don’t waste that time and money on things that could be done online. Instead, focus on connection. On authenticity. On vulnerability. On building resilience. That’s what a couple of days together can actually shift.
These kinds of opportunities are rare for social enterprises, we don’t have endless financial resources. At Micro Rainbow, we aim to meet face to face once a year. But when these gatherings are organised with care, curiosity, and openness, rather than just to tick a box, their impact is powerful. It can last months, even years.
During in-person away days, the connections people build often last forever. Some of the joy we experience as a group settles in our bodies somewhere, and we can recall it when we need it most. The chance to practise collective care is rare, and it’s so needed in any business for good. Face-to-face meetings are beautiful opportunities to make that happen.
- Connect by celebrating small wins
This a crosscutting theme that should be applied to all of the situations mentioned above.
A simple question like “What are you proud of this week?” often opens the door to meaningful reflection. As Whitney Johnson wrote in the Harvard Business Review’s “Celebrate to Win,” celebrating small wins releases dopamine, the feel-good chemical that helps us feel closer to others. Celebration is an experience, not a tick-box exercise, it needs to be authentic and, ideally, shared in a team or community setting.
For a social driven business success is not often connected with money. A corporate celebrates people hitting targets with bonuses, announcing a growth in profits or sale, or a merger that makes them more powerful. For a business for good, success is differently defined depending on the type of work you do. For Micro Rainbow success is every time we place a homeless person in our safe houses; it is every time someone wins the right to live in the UK and be free; it is every time one of our beneficiaries finds a job. Micro Rainbow’s success does not make the news like Tesco’s quarterly financial reports do. We do need money to achieve all of this of course, and more money means more lives changes, but money is not the only focus of our success and it is sad that type of success is not in the news more often.
However, social enterprises are also victims of the same pattern: we do not celebrate our wins enough or at all. There is a very good reason for that: in the case of Micro Rainbow, for every homeless person that enters our safe houses, there is another one waiting and sleeping rough. Our focus immediately shifts to that person in need. I believe we need to get better in managing those transitions. The urgency of some situation does not allow the time for immediate celebration sometimes. But that does not mean that we cannot create them.
In addition, connection becomes a vital source of strength during challenging times—it fosters hope. At Micro Rainbow, for example, we operate in a hostile environment where migrants and LGBTQI people are often scapegoated, and their struggles are manipulated for political gain and cheap votes. Many other social enterprises work in equally tough spaces – unemployment, child poverty, the prison system, disability rights, and more.
In this kind of work, we all need hope: to keep ourselves going, to keep our work going, and to keep our vision alive. If connection gives us that hope, then surely it deserves the care, attention, and time investment described in this blog.
On a personal level, the process of celebrating small wins also helps me to pause, to slow down and connect with my inner self. It helps me feed my calling in life and gives me joy.
Why is connection important to you as a social entrepreneur or changemaker?
Before I share why connection matters to me, I invite you to pause and reflect:
- What does connection mean in your own journey?
- When was the last time you truly felt seen, heard, or understood at work?
- What shifted in you, and around you, when that happened?
For me, there is so much power in feeling truly connected to your team. Knowing that a group of people is working toward the same goal, sharing the same vision, is not only inspiring, it’s energising. It gives you that sense that you’re doing the right thing, at the right time, with the right people. And it brings hope.
The practices we explored above, from boardroom check-ins to celebrating quiet wins, are more than just must haves. They are real ways to build resilience, trust, and to make it easier to lead with authenticity.
Connection also means sharing the weight and the success of the work. Progress is never the achievement of one person, it’s always the result of collective effort. When we acknowledge this, we’re better able to celebrate it and connect.
Because the truth is: life is better with connection.
So to all founders and changemakers: let’s release the “God complex,” honour our human needs, and allow ourselves to thrive. Connection isn’t just a survival tool, it’s how we stay aligned with our higher purpose. And maybe, just maybe, that kind of alignment deserves its own blog post one day.
Sebastian’s Coffee Cup Coaching Corner
Grab a coffee. Take 10 minutes. Reflect with these prompts:
- On a scale from 1-10 how connected do you feel with your team?
- If it is not 10/10, what could you do to increase your score by one point? And by two points?
- When was the last time you celebrated your wins as a team?
- How can you create more opportunities for celebrating success?
- What fuels your hope?
I hope this post offers a moment to pause and reflect. I’d love to hear from you: share in the comments, on LinkedIn, or drop me a message. Let’s stay connected.
With solidarity and hope,
Sebastian
P.S. If you enjoyed this post, check out the Thriving Changemakers Blog for more practical insights and stories.
