Welcome back to Relationships At Work – A leadership podcast helping you build workplace connection, improve culture, and avoid blind spots. I’m your host Russel Lolacher

I’m a communications and leadership nerd with a couple of decades of experience and a heap of curiosity on how we can make the workplace better.

This mini-episode is a quick and valuable bit of information to help your mindset for the week ahead.

Inspired by our R@W Note Newsletter, I’m passing on to you…

Power of a Xmas Table

One of the achievements I’m most proud of in my career is leading an incredible team that stayed together for nearly 12 years. We had one of the highest (if not the highest) retention rates across the entire greater organization.

What always frustrated me, though, was how others dismissed this accomplishment, calling it a “unicorn” or something “special.” Comments like these diminish the immense effort my team and I invested to make it a success. Worse, it was treated like an anomaly and an excuse not to put in the work for other teams to model. So frustrating.

I want to share an example of what went into achieving this level of retention—and it involves a Christmas table. Yep, you read that right.

Every team in our branch was tasked with decorating a standard folding table with a holiday theme as part of a larger Christmas season initiative. The goal was to bring teams together to celebrate accomplishments and set a positive tone for the year ahead.

And my team hated the idea.

Hated it. While other teams were fully embracing the holiday cheer, my team had zero interest in this seasonal conformity. They wanted to do their own thing. Sensing their resistance, I asked what they would rather do, since we still had to participate in some way.

Their idea? To “Grinch-it.” The plan was to cover the table with bah-humbug, screw-this-joy-thing imagery, topped off with a minimalist Charlie Brown tree—a twig with a single bulb.

And I encouraged the hell out of it.

Would it be different? Yep. Would it irritate my boss? Probably.

Would it cause any harm to let the team stay true to themselves? Absolutely not.

So that’s exactly what we did. We did lose one team member to another table—she respected the team’s decision but still wanted to express her holiday cheer. We fully supported her, and there were no hard feelings about her “moonlighting” with another group.

Allowing the team to showcase their creativity and think outside the box—while listening to their preferences and leading them as they were, not as others wanted them to be—was key to keeping them successful, innovative, and productive for so long.

The Question: How do you create space for your team to stay true to their values, even if it challenges tradition?

The Action(s)

• Listen Actively – We can’t support what you don’t know. Create opportunities for open dialogue where team members feel safe sharing their opinions and preferences, even if those ideas challenge the norm.
• Empower Decision-Making – Once we collectively decided how to approach the table, we owned it, and I, as their leader, took accountability. Support your team in owning their choices by backing ideas that align with their values—even when they break tradition.
• Model Respect for Individuality – It was equally important to support the team member who wanted to express herself differently. Show that diverse approaches are valued by celebrating and respecting differences—whether they conform to the larger intent or go against it.

Know your team. Know them individually. Understand the environment in which you work.

Only with this knowledge can you make the right decisions to support, value, and encourage them.

Now insert some joke about hearts growing 3 sizes too big. (Grinched it)