Coffee is a key ingredient at Leaf, we select the beans depending on the time of the day, grind them depending on the brew method of choice and pour the coffee for us, visitors and others in the team, just in time. At Leaf whoever wants a coffee, offers everyone else one and that’s a key part of our culture.
In the early days of Leaf, when it was just four of us, working out of our home in Costa Rica, we created the routine that once a week one of us would prepare lunch for the other three. On Fridays, we would go out to have lunch to a nearby kebab place.
Once a week one of us will plate, prepare and do the dishes for the rest.
Having lunch together and the act of being of service to the other team members meant that no matter what would happen before lunch, we would have to be in good terms before we ate. No excuses.
As we grew as a team and moved to a proper office, our ritual shifted to the second best thing to food, coffee.
Servicing others is part of our culture, is part of making everyone feel welcome, special and inclusive. It also means that we take the time from our daily grind to prepare something with our hands, in an artisan type of way, focused on the process, a moment to reflect, in full conscious.
Every company has its rituals, those things that make them special, different and unique. Good rituals are also the foundations to good habits; same can be said the other way around, which is why as leaders of high performant teams and companies we need to be mindful and intentional about the rituals we build, constantly pruning those that weed out and nurturing those that elevate us forward.
Salud!
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