This holiday season, I’m seeing clients and others attending to four C’s of The Leadership Gift™ Program during tough times.

Here are four ideas to keep in mind as you celebrate the season with your team:

CONVENE. More than ever, leaders and managers are pulling teams together even if their budgets can’t support big do’s. Many teams have been torn apart. Most teams that are still together have been through a lot of changes together in the last months.

This is the time to pause from the work and gather together. Give people a chance to relate “off-line” about their lives together at work.

And here is a special word for budget conscious managers: never let the lack of a budget stand in your way of gathering team members together.

Most businesses in the hospitality and service industries are accommodating obliterated budgets this season, so a team could have a great time at a bowling alley, a museum, a roller rink, a video arcade, or a city park.

Perhaps your best bet is to give your team the budget and let them plan the event. The only requirement is that it be a gathering for all members.

CONNECT. The requirement is to demonstrate the human touch in whatever you do. Materialism is out. Humanness is in.

I expect teammates to share more heartfelt conversations and exchange intimate momentos with each other at holiday parties this year. Gifts of comfort and sentiment are in while gifts of excess and indulgence are clearly out.

For instance, my clients are exchanging cards, hand-made ornaments, and gifts of homemade food. One of the best cards I’ve seen states that a small contribution is being made to a charity in that person’s name.

CELEBRATE. Survival might be the No. 1 theme of celebrations this year among teams. While weathering the economic swings and other uncertainties, teams that are still together are smart to acknowledge their good fortune.

As a client told me, “In order to be a great place to work, we first have to have a place to work, and for that, we are thankful.”

Find ways to acknowledge each other for “making it through”, whatever “it” is.

The most meaningful celebrations this year will find people telling stories about how someone else on the team made his or her life and work easier or better because of something they did.

A leader can start this by acknowledging the team as a whole as well as sub-teams and individuals. No special plaques or awards are necessary, just heartfelt words and examples. Then the leader can open up the floor for others to offer thanks, acknowledgments, and congratulations to one another either publicly or privately.

COMMIT. For many, our values and priorities were clarified for us this year. Sometimes, clarity leads to the power to choose and even to become resolved that things will change.

Resolutions that team leaders and members will be making to each other this year include:

• To take responsibility for one’s own actions, communication, and responses.
• To take ownership for making the team more successful and stronger so the team can stay together.
• To honor differences and approach confrontations with more light and less heat.
• To make the work place a more respectful place to spend one’shours than ever it has been.

Get Started With This 5-Minute Practice Tip:

Take a moment now and think of how you will put the four C’s into practice at a holiday gathering.

Leaders and coaches: Get Christopher’s best team building and leadership strategies collected over two-plus decades of solving teamwork problems for smart people. Attend the acclaimed Creating Results-Based Teams workshop, or get this FREE Special Report while it lasts: The Five Flawless Steps to Building a Strong Executive Leadership Team.

Christopher Avery, PhD, is a recognized authority on how individual and shared responsibility works in the mind and an advisor to leaders worldwide.