The Connection Exercise
Keeping a human connection in Zoom meetings
“How about let’s do an icebreaker?!?” This suggestion is usually met with more cringes than enthusiasm.
However if you frame it as, “How about let’s do a CONNECTION EXERCISE?” then people are into it. They might even wholeheartedly embrace it.
The Connection Exercise is the new icebreaker. We’ve been experimenting with it at Tophatter in the last 10 weeks since shelter-in-place started in San Francisco. Even with all my gung-ho enthusiasm for icebreakers, I have been pleasantly surprised by the positive benefits.
Hopefully this inspires others to try it out and spread positive energy to more people.
God knows we could use more positivity, especially now as we grapple with racial injustice and the pandemic, not to mention each person having their own personal or family struggles.
Social connection is a fundamental human need
It is more important than ever to cultivate and sustain human connection. Our mental health depends on it. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that nearly half (45%) of Americans say the coronavirus pandemic has negatively impacted their mental health.
Another recent global study of over 2,000 employees found that 75% of people say they feel more socially isolated, 67% of people report higher stress, 57% are feeling greater anxiety, and 53% say they feel more emotionally exhausted since the outbreak of the pandemic.
This is where intentionally making space for connection can fulfill our basic human need and on top of that, take our mental well-being to a higher level. Shawn Achors, who researched and taught positive psychology at Harvard, says, “While we might have different definitions of happiness, the triggers for happiness are similar worldwide. It’s a deep social connection. The breadth and depth and the meaning in our relationships is one of the greatest predictors of long-term levels of happiness we have.”
We’re going to be in this quarantine lifestyle for awhile. Zoom meetings and remote work are only going to become a bigger and bigger part of how the world operates.
This new normal made me think about what Brene Brown wrote in her book The Gifts of Imperfection on connection and belonging: “Our innate need for connection makes the consequences of disconnection that much more real and dangerous.”
Our sanity depends on it!
Teamwork is stronger with social connection
It’s not too surprising then that social connection plays a pivotal role in high-performing teamwork. AND even more heartening — you can create the environment and build habits to cultivate it.
Daniel Goleman’s book Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships talks about how we are hardwired for connection. He says, “The more strongly connected we are with someone emotionally, the greater the mutual force.” The greater the mutual force, the more in the flow your team can be, coming up with smarter and more creative solutions.
Ori and Rom Brafman wrote an entire book about what makes us “click” with certain people and become fully engaged in whatever activity we’re involved in, and the levers that positively influence teams in their bonding and performance.
In their book Click: The Magic of Instant Connections, they explain: “Being around others with whom we click can spur us to perform at a higher level. We’re more comfortable, more willing to be ourselves, more willing to be open and express disagreement in a way that can be worked out in a healthy and productive fashion.”
They point out that one lever within your control for building social glue is to overcome adversity together. They gave examples of how people bonded while enduring sweat lodge experiences or outdoor wilderness challenges together. We don’t even need to fabricate adversity right now—we have the pandemic. How great is that??
Their main point: “The big takeaway here is that there are changes we can embrace to create a healthier work environment — and that facing adverse conditions can actually be an opportunity for a company to improve morale and create a closer-knit workforce.” A silver lining!
If you’re happier at work, if your teammates are happier, and everyone’s fundamental human need for connection is supported, your team can accomplish great things together.
In her book The Wisdom of Sundays: Life-Changing Insights from Super Soul Conversations, Oprah Winfrey wisely said, “I understand that strengthening the bond in any situation is impossible if you’re not surrounded by energy that lifts you up.”
So how can you lift yourself up? Enter the Connection Exercise.
Experimenting with the Connection Exercise
We only stumbled upon it thanks to the pandemic. In the past, our product teams did icebreakers approximately once a quarter or whenever we had new team formation. The purpose was to get to know our teammates outside of work in a fun, human way, and build social glue.
San Francisco started lockdown early in the pandemic on March 17, and our company started WFH (Work From Home) earlier than that. On Wednesday March 4, we found out that someone in our office building had been exposed to COVID-19. Suddenly overnight, we were all WFH. We weren’t sure how seriously to take it. A few coworkers were still going to the office, and some even went to a Warriors game (our company had bought tickets but cancelled it as an official company event).
Within that week, life was rapidly changing: stories of friends of friends getting infected, the grocery store suddenly cleared out of eggs, dairy products, bread, cereals, rice, ground beef, and god forbid, toilet paper. Some people wore masks, but most didn’t. We weren’t used to all these closures and cancellations. It felt ominous at first but then you realize the important positive upside of flattening the curve. People were scrambling to figure out whether to hunker down with family or significant others, how to juggle work and kids, and for how long no one knew. There were many unknowns to navigate.
In that moment, Christine Tao’s LinkedIn post randomly showed up in my feed. Her company is globally distributed, and was accustomed to the remote work lifestyle already. She talked about one of their favorite activities called the “Connection Exercise.” She described it as “an exercise designed to connect us on a human level. It’s usually a few simple questions designed to help uncover how we think and our experience and stories.” I LOVED IT.
Woohoo!! Icebreakers, but with a cooler name! This is exactly what we needed! With our sudden shift to only Zoom, that was a brilliant idea to keep up the human connection.
More importantly and much needed at the time, we could boost ourselves with positivity! As multiple studies have shown, positive energy is contagious.
This quote says it best: “When you can’t find the sunshine, be the sunshine.”
So that very next Monday, our team tried out a Connection Exercise in our weekly team meeting and we’ve been doing it ever since. I’ll give examples of how our team does it. As with anything in life, choose what resonates with you and experiment with what works best for you and your team.
How we do the Connection Exercise:
1. Ask any question that boosts positivity or helps you know each other as humans.
The very first time we tried it, it was Monday March 16, the day before San Francisco officially started lockdown. All the uncertainties I previously mentioned were already in motion. Our first Connection Exercise was:
“What is something that you are grateful for or a surprising positive learning for you in this past week?”
2. We make it a weekly ritual.
At the beginning of our weekly team meeting on Mondays, we devote 15 minutes to the Connection Exercise. This is 15 minutes of non-work talk. During the early days of the pandemic when life was changing daily, it was especially helpful to connect on a human level at the start of the week.
3. A different team member leads each time.
That week’s leader shares the Connection Exercise with the team ahead of time and they lead the exercise. Christine Tao also mentioned their team does this as well.
4. Video chat is best, but you can do it written asynchronously.
The point is to add a human connection, so it is ideal to tell each other face-to-face over Zoom. This works well for a team size of say 10 people.
For bigger team meetings with 20+ people, such as our weekly engineering team meeting, you can do it written asynchronously. Our engineering team is spread across offices in San Francisco, Portland, and Bangalore.
Before the meeting, we write the Connection Exercise question in the agenda/meeting minutes doc (we use Notion) and people write their answers. This has worked surprisingly well! A simple, quick bullet point per person is great. People can read it at leisure later. It takes “0 minutes” on the meeting agenda. 🙂
A few things I found surprising:
- People will astound with their creativity. I knew that my colleagues are highly creative, yet I was amazed by how innovative people were with the Connection Exercise questions. Way more creative than I would be! I list some of our real-life examples in the Appendix below, in case it might get your creative juices flowing.
- You will discover unexpected aspects of your teammates that you probably would never see otherwise. One teammate played the ukulele on Zoom for us. We found out another colleague is a rapper, while a different teammate provides beats for rappers. A collaboration! You also find out the hardships that people are enduring, like the stresses of living alone (which turned into joy later in the pandemic), or a teammate who was in hard lockdown due to potential exposure through a relative. Or learning another teammate’s life wisdom to save precious voicemails from your family and loved ones, to retain a piece of their live memories, which she only learned when her mother passed away several years ago.
- The Connection Exercise might sound cheesy but it works! It doesn’t feel as “forced” as an icebreaker, even though it’s essentially the same thing. It helps to keep a regular habit, that a different teammate leads each time (not just project or team leads!), and that everyone innately recognizes the value of making space for human connection in this Zoom life.
- It provides a positive routine and gives some semblance of normalcy. Ironically we wouldn’t even be doing this Connection Exercise habit if we were still living our Pre-Corona Life working in the office, yet it makes our New Normal feel more normal.
In the office, there are more chances to build social glue. In this new remote world, we lose the informal in-person interactions you might have at your colleague’s desk or in the hallway or kitchen, or in the before and after moments of a meeting in a conference room.
It’s easy to lose the human touch. Many Zoom meetings jump straight into business. INSEAD professor J. Stewart Black recently wrote in Harvard Business Review on the importance of laughter in keeping the team connected:
“Most leaders feel that they need to make every virtual interaction as fast and efficient as possible. When virtual interaction is all people have, this is a mistake. In these times of isolation, an important part of a leader’s job is to socially, psychologically, and emotionally connect and reconnect the team and not just get work done.”
The Connection Exercise brings laughter AND a human connection to Zoom meetings.
No one ever complains about having too much positive energy in their life. If this is going to be our New Normal, let’s make it a positive one!
Shoutout to our awesome teammates for bringing the sunshine with the Connection Exercise! Adam Mosharrafa, Brett Davis, Edward Cheng, Kailash Suresh, Lindsay Anchors, Matt Rubens, Sean McDonnell, Shannon Nolan, Sheng Chu, Wayne Huang.
Additional footnotes:
Shawn Achors quote from The Wisdom of Sundays: Life Changing Insights from Super Soul Conversations by Oprah Winfrey.
Daniel Goleman reference from The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown.
APPENDIX
Connection Exercise examples from our team:
From Sheng Chu: “It’s a good time to reflect and rethink our priorities in life — if you had to delete all but three apps from your smartphone, which ones would you keep and why?”
From Kailash Suresh: “When you get a chance, send me (DM) an image of something you value. This can be an object/a person/an animal etc. (get creative).
Part 1: Guess which item belongs to whom.
Part 2: Share why we value this.
P.S.: If I don’t get an image, then I will take the liberty of adding an image and you get to talk about it.”
From Wayne Huang: “Let’s talk about food! What’s the most memorable/interesting meal (or thing you’ve eaten)? Where were you and why is it so memorable?”
From Adam Mosharrafa: “For today we will be doing a talent show! Each person gets 1 minute to explain/put on display/show a video/etc. a talent they have (unrelated to work!). This is not a competition, just a chance to show off some cool things we can do!”
From Lindsay James: “Tell us about a time in your life that you think back to as a time of pure joy and contentment (a moment, a day, or longer). Where were you? Were you with someone? What made it so great?”
From Shannon Nolan: “What is your favorite family tradition?”
From Edward Cheng: “What are 2 things on your bucket list?”
From Sean McDonnell: “Let’s talk — Advice. What is one piece of advice that has resonated with you? Something that you’d like to pass along to the team. This advice can apply specifically to work, or it can be part of a larger philosophy. GIMME SOME OF YOUR WISDOM!”
From Lindsay James: “Tell us about something interesting, enlightening or fun you’ve read recently (could be a book, blog, article, notion doc, but hopefully more than a tweet. If you haven’t read anything more than a tweet, you have the weekend to do some reading).”
Connection Exercises written asynchronously (large team meetings):
From Shannon Nolan and me: “Put up a fun Zoom background for this meeting and write one bullet point below on why it’s meaningful to you (since we won’t have time for everyone to verbally explain in the meeting).”
From Brett Davis: “When you were young, what did you want to be when you grow up?”
