Coming back is not the same as being back
September has something curious about it. We come back, we open our emails, we reschedule meetings, we ask how the vacation was, and within hours, it seems everything should work exactly where we left it. But we've come back. The team, maybe not yet.
From a work psychology perspective, this makes a lot of sense.
The vacation effect exists. And it also ends.
Vacations work as a recovery period. They allow us to temporarily step away from work demands, rest, and reduce some of the accumulated stress.
Research shows positive effects of vacations on our wellbeing. The problem is that some of those benefits tend to disappear when we're exposed again to the same demands.
It's called the fade-out effect.
In less academic terms: you can come back tanned, well-rested, and with 847 photos on your phone… and it takes surprisingly little time to start thinking you need a vacation again.
But there's another issue that interests us especially: it's not just individuals who come back. Teams come back.
A team also needs to come back
For several weeks, routines, conversations, and shared dynamics are interrupted.
Moreover, we don't all come back at the same time or in the same way. One person has been away for three weeks, another for just one. Someone has completely disconnected while another has been answering emails from the beach.
And suddenly we expect the system to work at 100% again.
Maybe the first goal shouldn't be to speed up. Maybe it should be to resynchronize.
And here we see three especially interesting needs:
1. Reconnect
Before recovering tasks, we can recover relationships.
And we're not just talking about the classic "how was your vacation?" before starting the meeting.
We're talking about creating situations where people interact again, collaborate, laugh, make decisions together, and break out of their usual routines.
Feel like a team again.
2. Refocus
After several weeks away, it's very easy to jump straight back into what's urgent.
Emails. Meetings. Pending tasks. And that project someone strategically parked on July 31st at 5:43 PM.
But recovering activity doesn't mean recovering focus.
September can be a good time to ask ourselves what's a priority, what we need from each other, and how we want to work over the coming months.
Not just what we have to do. But also why and how we want to do it together.
3. Relaunch
And finally, there's direction.
Sharing where we're headed, what challenges lie ahead, and what role each person plays.
Because coming back can be more than just returning to work. It can be a fresh start.
There's no need to "fix" the team
We think this part is important.
We don't believe a two-hour team building activity magically transforms a team.
But a well-designed experience can generate in just a few hours interactions, conversations, and discoveries that would hardly emerge in front of a PowerPoint.
And September is an especially interesting time to spark them.
Not because teams come back broken.
But because coming back is an opportunity to decide how we want to come back.
At elmeetingpoint we've called this idea RETURNS.
Reconnect. Refocus. Relaunch.
Because maybe September's question shouldn't just be:
"Are we all here?"
But:
"Now that we're back… how do we want to come back as a team?"
