The work
The class is its own first partner
Before anyone touches a partner organization, every cohort spends two weeks designing a ritual for the class's own culture. It is the fastest way to learn that culture is built out of small, repeatable moments — and the students have to live inside whatever they design.
01
Musical Stories
Getting to know a team through what they listen to
Trigger moment
The start of a weekly team meeting
Intention
Build rapport between teammates who do not yet know each other well, without the forced quality of a traditional icebreaker.
Prop
A shared playlist the team keeps adding to
- 01Every new team member adds ten songs that mean something to them.
- 02At the start of each weekly session, the playlist shuffles and plays roughly thirty seconds.
- 03The team guesses whose song it is.
- 04The owner explains the memory or feeling attached to it.
Music is unusually personal and hard to fake, so it gets a team past small talk faster than asking people to describe themselves.
PracticesStories
02
Spin the Bottle
Building team culture with a twist
Trigger moment
The beginning of a class, meeting, or gathering
Intention
Give a group a fast, repeatable way to surface something personal at the top of a meeting.
Prop
A bottle filled with written prompts
- 01Set a timer for two minutes; split groups larger than five.
- 02Team members write prompts and load them into the bottle.
- 03Spin it — whoever it lands on picks a prompt for the group.
- 04Everyone answers in turn around the circle.
- 05Close with snaps and claps, then whoever pulled the prompt replaces it with a new one.
PracticesNorms
03
The Magic Pencil
A ritual for giving hard feedback to a friend
Trigger moment
When someone has feedback to deliver
Intention
Take the sting out of critical feedback between people who are close, by separating the work from the relationship.
Prop
An everyday object that stands in for the workplace — a pencil
- 01The person with feedback picks up the magic object.
- 02Holding it means the conversation is about the work, not the person.
- 03Remotely, saying “pencil” does the same job.
- 04They open with something the recipient did well, then give the critique.
- 05Putting the object down ends the work frame and returns the friendship.
The prop is doing the emotional work — it gives both people a shared, external signal for a shift that would otherwise be awkward to announce.
NormsBehaviors
04
Toss the Gratitude
An appreciation ritual
Trigger moment
The beginning of each team meeting
Intention
Head off conflict by building camaraderie, so appreciation is routine rather than something that only appears when it is needed.
Prop
An object passed hand to hand around the circle
- 01The group stands in a circle.
- 02A volunteer starts and tosses the object to someone who has not gone yet.
- 03They name a specific thing that person did well.
- 04The chain continues until everyone has been complimented.
PracticesBehaviors
Described in the class's own mechanics rather than reproduced from the students' original posters, which carry their names. The framework explains the forces each ritual moves.
