I really dislike those forced fun exercises

[Photo by Frank Leuderalbert on Unsplash]

I’ve heard this so many times. I really dislike those organized fun games at work and I really don’t want to be a part of it. And at the same time we are all experiencing a massive loss of joy and connection that happened as a result of not seeing our colleagues in person in our office, university or any other place we no longer go to in exchange for working remote.

And I keep getting asked for ideas around how we might combat the loss of this element of fun, joy and surprise that is the result of those joint lunches, the random encounter at the coffee machine, the water cooler or the copy machine or by simply running into somebody in the stairwell or elevator on the way in or out of the office. We so often got that random little nice chat on the way from the subway to the office, or out on the way to the parking lot. We are dearly lacking those unplanned nice social encounters that do wonders for trust building, getting to know our colleagues and feeling seen and appreciated.

A good friend and recently appointed CEO to her organization has just asked me for “some fun online activities for work teams to do to help with team bonding. I’m looking for some. I tend to not like these things … but we need to do some as Canada is still all pretty much in lockdown and we need to find more non-work interaction for our teams.”

If you and your teams are like that as well, and if you have been in a fully or mostly remote setup for a while, you may experience one or more of these challenges:

• a lack of understanding of direction by individuals in the team
• teams rocking as new members join as they don’t have a foundation of trust yet
• deteriorating levels of trust in the team (often in combination with more tension in the team)
• rising levels of problematic behaviors (such as blaming in the face of mistakes, displays of anger when unexpected interpersonal challenges arise, more of a sense of “other team members can’t be trusted”, etc…)
• lack of clarity on how to do things in alignment with other teams
• lack of a building of an internal network as a result of lack of exposure to people from other teams
• team members simply reporting a lack of happiness at work compared to pre-Covid times

All of these are natural issues to arise when people have less of an opportunity to experience the humanity of their colleagues in those random little nice encounters mentioned before. So what can we do? How might we change this dynamic into one of more joy, more fun, more collaboration, more generosity, more curiosity and one that builds trust into the team every day?

I like to think of the kinds of behaviors and experiences we want to have. We want to have fun, we want to have generosity, we want to have laughter, we want to have offers of help, we want to feel seen, we want to feel appreciated, we want to contribute well, we want to share a good time. So let’s have that. There are ways to intentionally build this in. The good news is: there are so many different ways to have those experiences, even in a remote setup, that every team and group can find their way to build in the fun. All it takes is to choose to do it. Here is a list of ideas that I have seen work. But you can easily come up with your ways of experimenting with other things, too. Just think of ways that help us have those desired experiences and how to design an environment making it more likely to see the desired trust building and bonding behaviors in the team.

Easy things to do that require almost no effort except for the intention to start doing it:

• Throw in the good old 2 word check-in at the beginning of any meeting (in a small meeting: let people actually state how they are in front of the entire group; in a larger meeting: let people type it in the chat). If somebody shares something particularly happy or sad, what usually happens is that a colleague (or you) will follow up. That simple act of listening and showing empathy builds trust and connection.
• You can also do a round of show and tell (everyone takes a picture of the most random thing they have on their desk and puts it into a shared whiteboard, then you let people guess what item belongs to which person). This one has endless variations. It can be somebody’s favorite book, favorite piece of art, favorite meal, dream vacation destination, etc…
• You can have everyone share a meaningful moment from their weekend when you start your staff meeting on Monday mornings.
• Start a “no shop talk” chat. Pick a messenger everyone in your team is using, open a group and start using it just for the sharing of only fun and personal things. Like a vacation picture, your favorite cat meme, etc… Give it a fun, slightly dorky name and let the team take it on. This one worked wonders in my teams just to also create some light, positive balanced view into everyone’s life. It kept serving as a great way to see a more personal side of the team members and it definitely added to a sense of “us as a team”.

A little more prep (maybe you can rotate organizing the setup of these through your team):

• A round of broken picture telephone (https://www.brokenpicturephone.com/)
  or Kahoot (https://kahoot.com/academy/study/)
  or Code Names (https://codenames.game/)
  or Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (https://keeptalkinggame.com/)
  These (and there are many more) are all fun online games groups can play and enjoy together. Involve your colleagues in coming up and running a session with their ideas as well. Maybe you have an online board game fanatic on staff who would actually enjoy hosting and organizing one of these games (or another one they feel truly passionate about).
• I also like random coffee chats (Everyone dials into a zoom call, then you place two or three people randomly in a breakout room with a conversation prompt they can, but don’t need to use). You play in 5-6 rounds of 7-8 min each so people get to speak to a number of random colleagues in an hour. If you use Slack you can also use their Donut Chat feature that randomly puts people in a conversation who work in the same organization
• I like the silly hat picture taking, too. Everyone gets to wear a silly hat, or an all black outfit, or their most hideous holiday sweater, or [your fantasy is the limit here] and you take a zoom screenshot of everyone in that outfit. You can collect these images and share them in team meetings along the way (I loved using them in an end of year address, or in any moment that needed a reminder of where we were coming from). They tend to be great for a good laugh and the building of a sense of “we”, because everyone contributed into their creation at the time.
• Gifting some time plus a “treat yourself or somebody else” gift card. You simply block of some time, give everyone a gift card (e.g. USD 20 per person) and ask everyone to take that time to treat themselves or somebody else to something nice. That can be watching a movie, it can be going for a meal, it can be buying a novel they like, it can be the entrance fee to a round of mini golf for them plus one, it could be buying a meal for the homeless person on the corner, it could be randomly gifting somebody flowers, it could be anything that brings that person joy. Their only task is to do it and then share back their experience with the team at the end of it.

Requiring a lot of prep, but worthwhile doing periodically:

• A real life get together is the ideal way to create trust and build relationships in a team. If you can organize this (and in the times of Covid do it safely), by all means go for it! Maybe summertime is a good time to start planning for right now. You can do a lot of things outdoors or with open windows, and with a good combination of vaccinations and daily testing you should be able to do this relatively safely. For any fully remote or hybrid team I would suggest to do this twice a year. There simply is nothing that builds relationships better than spending time together in real life.
• If you can’t do a real life gathering, think about how you can carve out a week every six months (or potentially around your OKR cycles) that you spend focusing the team on a mix of social interactions, visioning and strategic setup work. I usually plan these with about 4h per day for a week and 30% social sessions, 30% visioning and direction setting and 40% time for people to work on something strategic together that usually does not find enough time (running this portion as an open space is a great way to do it!). Resist the temptation to do more than 4h per day. People don’t want to and can’t focus on 8h of social and strategic zoom calls. Doing two hours before lunch, an hour of lunch break plus two hours after lunch with a 10min break each time, turned out to be a good way to think of timing. You should typically calculate at least the same or double the amount of hours of prep time in relationship to the hours of facilitation. Ideally you share the load of this with the more senior members of your team. If you have the luxury to work with agile coaches, they can be an excellent support in planning and delivering these kind of weeks.

In summary:

Intentionally designing fun experiences for your team need not necessarily be stuffy or something you dread. They can actually be just that: really fun if you simply give it a try and see what happens. For remote teams, some version of this is essential. If no attention is given to this, teams will likely not magically find enough trust building moments and opportunities to see their colleagues as the humans they are. And we know that trust, respect and appreciation for each other are the foundation of that magical psychological safety any high performing team is sharing. It’s more than worthwhile to invest in this! Would love to hear from you what worked in your team!