Values Week 2022 - The Wrap-up 🎀

[Elena]

Hey folks!

Hope you've had as much of a good time these past 7 days as we had with our Values Week. As we know all good things must come to an end to make the space for some even better things, so we won't be too sad it's over 😄 

Before we move on to our next adventure, we'd love to do a quick wrap-up of all the activities we had this past week and thank everyone who participated!

Day one - Teamwork!

On the first day we kicked things off by re-introducing Values Week with a short and sweet Blog that you can find here in case you missed it. We also added badges for all Community members to commemorate the start of another week where we show our appreciation for the Stars and all users adopting our forum's values. 

As a most important celebration of our team spirit we had a call hosted by the lovely @Noah, in which we discussed some of age old questions, like - finally deciding which is better Tea 🍵 or Coffee☕ or if maybe we should look beyond the question and include a third option 😄 And yes, desserts 🍰 turned out to be the best, no surprises there!

Of course, no good teambuilding call can go without a commemorative playlist  - you can find ours below here!

Best enjoyed with side of cake and a beverage of choice 😉

Day Two - Respect!

On the second day we took some time to think about what respect means for us in our Star Program, as well as outside of it. A Community can only go far if all the members have respect for each other, so we always stay mindful of that and try to lead by example.

On this day we had a call with a special guest from one of the internal Spotify teams. Our host's name was Diana and she works on improving the content on the support site - a useful resource for users and Stars alike. 

She spoke about how the feedback provided by our Stars and all Spotify CS teams is actioned by her squad and some of the practices they use to keep the info up to date and as accurate as possible in all 23 languages the site offers. 

Day three - Responsibility!

As Mods and Stars, we understand that our words and actions represent Spotify and the Stars Program, and we want to set the best example with our actions.

With this, we want to mention that a tweet with an image representing our values was posted from the @AskSpotifyStars Twitter handle, so our celebrations were reaching multi-platform leves 😄

Day Four - Support!

We're happy to say that for day 4 we had a returning speaker from last year - the super kind Kirsty, from PUSH. We learned a lot from her in the last Values Week edition and this time around she spoke to us about how to feel motivated and engaged against the odds. We're not going to give away all of her secrets but sharing is caring, so here are the main takeaways we noted down:

• When you feel stressed, try to slow down! - As humans we’re very complex creatures and in those moments when you slow down, your brain gets to that good idea or that memory that you’d been trying to reach. There is no real feasible way to force productivity, so taking a step back might just be what you need!
• Try to engage in active listening - Not only will this help you better understand the person you're talking to, but it's scientifically proven that when someone feels heard the levels of their stress hormone cortisol are lowered. How cool is that?
• Try multitasking a bit less - Avoid getting overstimulated by taking on too many tasks at one time. This, of course, is simpler said than done, but small steps forward still lead you in the right direction, so there is no harm in trying.
• Be mindful of the language that you use around your tasks - what gets celebrated gets repeated, so try and motivate yourself by using positive words to describe your tasks. You might just feel that much better about getting to do them!
  

 Day Five - Inclusion!

On the fifth day we got to learn about Music Psychology: How Music Brings Us Together by @Noah! We're not going to spoil too much, but we can say that the blog brings up very interesting points about the human nature to seek ways to connect with others backed up by solid research.

One of more fastinating points in my opinion is: ''Shared musical preferences have also been shown to create bonds between people, as we have an inclination to affiliate musical taste with our values.'' Go give his Blog a read if you haven't already, you will not regret it!

Day Six - Fun!

In a way, having fun is what gives meaning to sticking with all other values that we'd celebrated so far! For day 6 we'd love to bring your attention to the recurring threads we have where we try to socialize and get to know each other better.

You can check out:

• One of our Question of the Week threads

or maybe

• Our Introductory thread

or why not try 

• Winning in this thread?

⭐⭐⭐

And that was it, folks! We hope you enjoyed participating or got to learn something new from this blog if you're new to the forum. See you around!

[Hubo]

Awesome blog Elena 😄

thanks for this lovely summary!

[geovanebento]

I really enjoyed it, it was really cool to participate