Start Your Next Meeting with This
I still remember the first time I planned a team retreat as a new manager. I had been to enough retreats to know what I didn’t want to include. Plus, I was cognizant of asking high-achieving fundraisers and development professionals to dedicate a day in the office, so I wanted it to be worth their time. My primary goals were to include learning and joy. The retreat turned out to be quite memorable: It was the first time I implemented the Letter to Yourself, a self-reflection exercise about your progress, goals, and growth that became an annual activity with all the teams I led over time. (The full exercise can be found in One Bold Move a Day.) And Adam Grant was our featured speaker. (Yes, the Adam Grant! It set a very high bar for all the retreats I planned after that.) Now I’m not suggesting you need to include one of the top leadership thinkers of all time to have a successful retreat. Over time, I’ve led many retreats, workshops, and meetings, and I want to show you that you have the power to create meaningful moments each time you gather your team. Whenever you bring people together for retreats, learning days, and team meetings in a distributed work environment, it has significant implications for strengthening culture and retaining employees. This means it’s especially important to create meaningful gatherings for your team.
It all comes down to this: How you start a team gathering directly influences the outcomes. As you prepare the agenda for your next retreat, professional development session, or all-staff meeting, I encourage you to start your next gathering with what I call a Connection Moment.
A Connection Moment helps team members feel connected to their purpose and each other.
Here’s why the Connection Moment is so important: Research shows that starting a meeting with positive language influences mindset and behavior of the participants, which can lead to better communication and collaboration during the conversation. The Connection Moment intentionally builds on optimism and has the added benefit of creating community. Think about the power of doing this before important pipeline discussions, strategic plans, and annual goals. In addition to positively affecting the meeting outcomes, it can also have lasting effects for your team well after the meeting ends.
Here are two of my favorite Connection Moment exercises that I’ve relied on as a team leader for many years and now as a facilitator of retreats and workshops. Whether you lead a team of five, fifty, or five hundred, these can work for you, too.
Connection Moment #1: What Are Your Superpowers?
Provide each team member with a notepad to write a personal reflection on their superpowers, the gifts that make them who they are. It can feel uncomfortable, or even overwhelming, at first for people to determine their personal strengths, because many people have been taught to be modest. Encourage team members to think through the compliments they frequently receive at work, what colleagues ask them for advice about, and what comes naturally to them. You may invite each person to share one of their strengths or call for volunteers to share if they’re comfortable. Even if you don’t share, your team members will have the list to keep them in mind for the rest of the retreat. In one of the workshops we offer, we work with teams to recognize each other’s strengths and then leverage their individual strengths to advance the overall team.
Why is this Connection Moment Important? Recognizing a team member’s strengths at work helps them feel valued. The research is clear: recognition and appreciation are essential to team morale and employee retention. Further, research shows using the team’s collective strengths fosters overall team performance.
Connection Moment #2: Who Is One of Your Most Influential Mentors?
Invite team members to share about their most influential mentor and one of the traits they admire most in that person. If you have enough time, you can ask them to share a specific story about their mentor. This exercise works in groups of two or with an entire team. You may choose to write out a list of the traits that the team admires most and keep it as a visual reminder for your meeting or use it as a springboard for a more in-depth conversation about the qualities valued in your organization.
Why is this Connection Moment important? Asking someone to share who they admire gives you a sense of what they value. It may also give insight into what their own strengths are. Some people suggest that these esteemed traits you appreciate in others are your own strengths, because you have to understand them in order to notice them in others.
A Connection Moment is especially valuable for the start of a retreat or team learning activities, and there are benefits even for day-to-day meetings.
If you’re limited on time, you can try one of these Connection Questions:
1. What is something great that happened to you over the last week, personally or professionally?
2. What is your favorite book and why?
3. What’s your favorite time management hack for the office?
4. What was your first (or most recent) concert?
In an already-packed agenda, it can be challenging to figure out how to add “one more thing.” Remember, how you begin predicts the level of success that will follow. Investing these few minutes for a Connection Moment (or Connection Question) at the start of your next retreat, learning day, or all-staff meeting can lead to increased productivity, creativity, collaboration, and inclusion—all of which are the foundations of your organizational success.