OK, we got our fun, fun teams up there now. So let's get started. What is fun? So that's something you just kind of think, you know, when you see it. Um But is that really true? Sometimes we have dramatically different ideas of what fun is.So in a team setting, it's really important to define it the right way. So fun creates a shared experience that lifts everybody's spirits, its enjoyment, its amusement and its lighthearted pleasure. So why fun? Well, who doesn't want to work in a fun workplace? Organizations that integrate fun into their work have lower levels of absenteeism, greater job satisfaction, increased productivity and less downtime. So let's talk about creating fun teams. So we want to fun that's built into your culture. Should include your entire team, young and old parents and single people, introverts and extroverts. That's really important. Not every activity needs to include everybody, but everybody needs to have activities that they can enjoy. And part of doing that is creating the timing of the events.

Look at your team schedules, both work and personal to see what works best for them. And remember that the best type of fun at work, helps people bond and understand each other. So consider how empathy plays a role in the fun that you create a good example of this is doing cultural exchanges, a networking group that I'm part of did a Bollywood dance class um which was fun and funny if you watched me dancing and informative. At the time, we also learned about the folk traditions that went along with the dance steps. So we got to learn a little bit more about the member who gave us the class, which was great, consider celebrating those silent heroes in your group, those people that may go unsung. But whose work is critical to your success? You can do this in a slack channel and email in a newsletter and a shout out at a team meeting um and allow people to nominate each other for kudos or, or silent heroes, make sure to spread the success about throughout your whole group, your whole team and catch people doing the right thing both in and outside of work.

Let's talk about getting imaginative and incorporating work into a play into your work. So how can you do that? What can you do to promote imaginative and innovative thinking? Can you make a boring assignment? Maybe a little more interesting. So you have to give presentation on, you know, some kind of dry training material. Can you turn it into a jeopardy game or possibly a bingo for key phrases? I've actually done the jeopardy game myself. It was a lot of fun uh consider having an internal hackathon or an innovation contest, embrace divergent thinking. So if you don't know what divergent thinking is, it's going outward, it's a quantity of ideas, crazy ideas. It doesn't matter how realistic they are. Convergent thinking is the opposite and starts to bring in reality and say what can you actually do and both are really important. But if you bring convergent thinking in too soon into the process, it actually diminishes the brain activity the same way that fear does research has shown this. So make sure that there's time that we have no restrictions and no criticisms and people can come up with crazy things.

So that includes allowing safe spaces to experiment, allow for times where people can fail and learn from that fail without any shame, think about creating a ministry of fun. So um a company that I worked for for many years, we had a ministry of fun there and their goal was to incorporate fun into the work life. And it was very simple things that they did, but it really pulled everybody together at a team and we were a hybrid team, some people in the office, some people remote. I was both um make sure that the makeup of whatever group is planning, the fun is inclusive of the group itself and reflective of whatever your team is, allow for asynchronous contributions. So those who might not feel comfortable speaking up in a group or don't have time to go to the meetings, have open meetings. Let allow anybody to pitch any ideas that they have. Let's talk about some ideas, some tools that you can use. And I do wanna let you know that the tools that I have here are almost all female founders. So you can support women in tech at the same time that you find some, some fun tools to use.

So one of the important things I think in really connecting teams together is having spontaneous connections across teams within teams, virtual and in person. So some ways you can do this are having lunch, buddies or coffee chats or virtual cafes or something that I like to call a take out Tuesday where everybody gets take out paid for by the company and you lunch together and you can do this virtually as well as in person. Um I believe that this these connections really drive culture change in a very sustainable and natural way. Lulu is an app that actually helps create these both in person and remote collisions as he as a call. So another thing that I want to tell you about is empathy and failure toys. There's a company called 21 Toys that facilitates discussion about a team's ability um to think about things in diverse ways or what their appetite for risk is. And they not only have the toys they have the facilitation tools as well. There's, um, a company called Patchwork Adventures that has Escape Rooms and scavenger Hunts that lets you have fun and work together as a team and also get to know each other better. They have both on site and remote options for this. So, collaborative playlists, if people like music in your group, which a lot of people do, you can actually collaborate on playlists together and have people contribute songs and then vote on the song that they like the best.

Whoever wins can maybe pick the next theme. Um A boombox music league app is a great way to do this. Oh My slide is stuck. OK. Um Sorry about that guys. That's very strange. It's not letting me, it's not letting me share the slide. I'm really sorry. Um OK. Let me try maybe sharing the window instead. You know what, I'm just gonna start over. OK. Let's try this. I'm really sorry. You missed all my fun graphics. OK. This is where we're at. Sorry about that. Um Can you see it now? OK. Good. Sorry. All right. Let me get back to where I was. So, um I was on collaborative playlist. I'm so sorry about that. So let's go to team building activities. Um So I'm gonna do a little mass check in next. Uh So team building activities are a really good way to like learn about each other and connect and have fun. The Kori app has some great ideas. If you don't know any of these yourself, some ice breakers, team builders, problem solvers. Um So just so, you know, and let's do a little math symbol check in. So I want you to choose the symbol from the, the chart and check in with me in the chat. Um And if you want to tell me why you chose the symbol, like what, what are you feeling right now? Is do any of these symbols reflect something that you're feeling? Yes. The slides will be available later in the in the link tree.

Um I'm gonna provide a link tree. I think there's al it was already in the chat, but I'm gonna provide it again at the end. So you'll be all set with that. OK. So excellent calmness. That's a great way to, to show calmness. I love that inspired. Thank you. OK. Anybody else? There's always some star balance security. I love these mix mood. OK? All right. So one of the things that's really important is to when doing something like this is to learn and reflect and facilitate that reflection with your team. So you can say, why did you choose the symbol? Who else chose it? Did they choose it for the same reason? A different reason, it really gives you insight into your team. So I can see some of the people chose the same symbol, but for different reasons. So that's why the facilitation piece is really important. So we're gonna jump into talking about purpose. So um why purpose with the great resignation we talked to a little bit about earlier comes down to culture and purpose. Daniel Pink talks about the pandemic as the great unmasking because it's given people time to reflect. Am I making a contribution? And they start to look for a sense of purpose. A recent New York Times article. So one of the most important dimensions of job satisfaction is how you feel about your employer's mission. So what is purpose? Purpose is a reason for being something bigger than ourselves. It's both meaning and impact.

That means that I have to feel as an employee like I'm contributing to my team purpose. And my favorite description is a North star, a guiding light, Finn's North Star is to be a force for positive change in the way that companies view their commitment to social impact. A clear purpose like this motivates people and helps guide them through change and, and stress. But it has to be genuine because culture is both value and behavior. You can't just state a value. You have to show the behavior that goes along with it. People change jobs frequently because they realize sometimes it's just a lot of words and a lot less action. So how can we put this into action? So I love this quote by Simon Cynic and I highly recommend anything by him um in particular the infinite game So he talks about three responsibilities of a company, one to advance a purpose value beyond the physical work that people are doing. Two to protect people, to protect employees, to protect customers, to protect the environment that they live in. And three to generate profit because money is fuel that you need in order to advance those first two priorities. So it's being for good and for profit. So this is a growing movement that you see in B Corp you hear talked about as conscious capitalism and triple bottom line. And I'll have some resources for this for you um in the link tree as well. So you can learn more about it.

So how do you create purposeful teams? So um you start, you just start, start small, take small steps. What's one thing that you can do today to incorporate purpose and passion into the DNA of your company? Use a lens of purpose with every decision that you make. You can hold up that guiding light that North Star and say is what I'm doing today, helping reach that goal, care, care about what your team cares about. Find out what they care about. Brainstorm include everybody, use tools like Nero or jam board or random word generators. They all help get the ideas flowing, make it personal for each team member. What excites them. What frustrates them, what do they value most in life and make sure to give choices if your team doesn't all focus on one specific thing that they all love. Make sure that what you're supporting, supports the interests of your team and the varied interests of your team and make sure that they can connect with something that you're doing. Speaking of connecting, you wanna make sure that you can connect your employee purpose with your team purpose, your team purpose with your company purpose. Those concentric circles have to line up, that's really important because purpose becomes personal when somebody is doing the thing that they do best to further the thing that they care about the most. So connect with your causes and with your community have regular interactions with them.

Not one big donation at the end of the year, work with them all year and find out what it is that they need. That'll give you real insights into ways that you can help them as a group. Um Something sometimes as simple as providing a conference room for a meeting that they need to have could be really helpful. So volunteering as a group helps you, you know, learn more about your causes and connect with your community and make sure that your things like this, the activities that the company values are done on company time and that there's room in your schedule to do them. And it's not expected that people add this on to their regular responsibilities. And the last thing I would say on purpose is to find your type of good others want to make a difference. So, sharing ideas and having more impact is a great way to, to do that. Um Good con percent pledge 1% for the planet sustainable brands. There's a lot of great things out there. So I've got just about a minute but I'm gonna talk about quickly bringing fun and purpose together because that's the most, the most impactful of all you can create for a cause. You can do a hackathon for a local organization.

You can do pictures with purpose, a photo contest like hometown pictures where the prize for entering is winning a sponsored donation for something that the employee chooses. You can use that spark time we mentioned earlier and donate to local food banks and community centers.

When people connect, you can participate in a walkathon and a road race together for a cause. You can reward healthy habits like meditation and yoga with donations to maybe mental health causes. You can grow a team and a tree together. You can have co-working sessions that work in a virtual space to get work done individually. Without distractions. You can use a Primo Dora method of five minute breaks and 25 minutes of work and use flora an app. At the same time that if you don't use your phone for 25 minutes, it will grow a tree so it'll be a win, win. So thanks so much. You guys have been great. Thanks for participating in everything. Feel free to follow me on linkedin. Reach out with questions and I'll leave you with this quote connected employees not only feel cared for, understood and valued, but are demonstrably more productive, creative, engaged, and innovative. And here's the QR code for the link tree for the resources that were shown. Thanks so much, everybody.

I really appreciate it. Thank you for being here.