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Speaker 1: Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the New Corner Office,

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Speaker 1: the podcast where we share strategies for thriving in the

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Speaker 1: new world of work, where location and hours are more

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Speaker 1: flexible than in the past. Today's tip is about how

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Speaker 1: to have virtual get togethers. The basic rule is that

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Speaker 1: any virtual social occasion needs to be facilitated. In other words,

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Speaker 1: book clubs beat happy hours, So the zoom happy hour

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Speaker 1: became a bit of a pandemic cliche over the past

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Speaker 1: few months. Back in March, when people suddenly started working

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Speaker 1: from home, teams tried to replicate what they could of

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Speaker 1: office culture. So if you all would have gone out

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Speaker 1: for drinks, you all instead would make yourself a drink

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Speaker 1: and then drink it in front of your laptop screen

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Speaker 1: with ten boxes of other people staring at you. Needless

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Speaker 1: to say, this is not terrible fun and is one

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Speaker 1: reason why people talk about zoom fatigue. In a bar,

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Speaker 1: you can separate out into two to three person conversations

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Speaker 1: and move fluidly between them. The same number of people

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Speaker 1: on zoom are generally trying to have one conversation, which

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Speaker 1: works about as well as if you get ten people

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Speaker 1: at a dinner table. It's bad Thanksgiving, someone always dominates

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Speaker 1: whether you want that person to do so or not.

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Speaker 1: Other people get bored and hope it is all over soon.

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Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean you can't socialize virtually. The key

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Speaker 1: is that it has to be facilitated. Someone has to

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Speaker 1: be in charge, and someone has to organize the conversation

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Speaker 1: so it feels like the conversation has a purpose and

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Speaker 1: everyone feels included. The organizer can ask people questions. In turn,

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Speaker 1: the questions can have a specific point to them rather

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Speaker 1: than the just a general how are you doing? Or

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Speaker 1: if you're doing an activity, someone has to direct to

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Speaker 1: that activity rather than just allowing things to go free form.

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Speaker 1: Now that might sound like work or in any case,

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Speaker 1: a lot of work for something that is supposed to

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Speaker 1: be fun, But done well, the socializing can be both

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Speaker 1: enjoyable and edifying. A book club means you're talking about

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Speaker 1: the ideas in a book. Or you could all take

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Speaker 1: an art lesson together by shipping paints in a canvas

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Speaker 1: to all team members and then have a teacher show

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Speaker 1: you what to do. You could do a Q and

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Speaker 1: A with a thought leader that your team has brought

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Speaker 1: on for an hour. You could hire a performer to

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Speaker 1: sing or play an instrument for you, and then teach

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Speaker 1: a bit about what she does. You can't just put

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Speaker 1: a dozen people together and hope it goes well. This

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Speaker 1: is absolutely critical for virtual get togethers, though honestly it's

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Speaker 1: true for real life ones too. The team happy hour

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Speaker 1: is often a missed opportunity. I've been in some fairly

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Speaker 1: boring happy hours where I got stuck talking to someone

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Speaker 1: who was stuck on a single subject, or really not

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Speaker 1: feeling like I was getting to know people with small talk.

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Speaker 1: I'm guessing you've had this experience too. In person, we

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Speaker 1: sometimes get lazy about socializing, but facilitated social interactions can

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Speaker 1: be really profound if we're willing to put in the effort.

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Speaker 1: That's true in person and true with virtual get togethers too.

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Speaker 1: In the meantime, this is Laura, Thanks for listening, and

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Speaker 1: here's to succeeding in the New Corner Office. The New

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Speaker 1: Corner Office is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts,

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Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

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Speaker 1: your favorite shows.