A Closer Look at Strengthening Bonds with Your Colleagues

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” ― Dale Carnegie,

How to Win Friends and Influence People Recently, Macey, our communications manager and I both played one of my favorite team-building games that I made up, “Hire me or date me!” It was during this quick session that we had a chance to understand each other better as colleagues and as people. Let’s take a quick overview of how the game works and the reasoning behind it. How to play “Hire me or date me!” - A game for two or more players

1. This is a game that is a mix of speed dating, elevator pitches, and job interviews.

2. Each person writes down three questions. At least one of these questions will be asked and answered by everyone else, including the person asking the question.

3. The questions are open-ended, with an emphasis on fun (examples provided later)

4. In clockwise order, the first person asks one question he or she or they choose from their list, and the next person answers until it returns to the original person asking the question. After everyone has answered, the next person asks one of the questions they’ve come up with and goes in a circle again.

5. Oversharing when you answer is encouraged!

6. Limit everyone’s answer to five minutes so that nobody monopolizes the conversation.

7. At the end when everyone has asked and answered at least one of each question of those submitted, everyone takes a 5-10 minute break and decides together if you’ll go another round.

8. If you decide to conclude the game, everyone ends by sharing what they enjoyed about that session in general, and highlights something that really stuck out to them about someone else that they learned, how they felt, and how it may have changed how they previously felt about a person.

9. Common words and characteristics that come up can be written down optionally and brought up by a volunteer who analyzes another volunteer (or analyzes everyone) and highlights a hidden talent that neither they nor the person being discussed knows that they have.

10.These hidden talents and hidden depths can later be used to help everyone encourage and develop them further into professional skills for everyone’s benefit, especially the one who just discovered that they had them.

Here are some of the questions that Macey and I asked each other:

1) If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would it be and why?

2) What would your superpower be if you could have one?

3) What is your favorite book?

4) What music video or videos best characterizes who you are (up to 3)?

5) What kind of food would you serve a) your best friend, b) your boss, c) your worst enemy?

6) Which character or combination of characters in film television describe a) how you see yourself, b) how others see you, c) how you really are?

The result of our game led to us appreciating each other more after having known each other for a couple weeks. The things that were very easy to notice was a shared set of skills of empathy, which is very, very underappreciated and overlooked by many, great compassion, openness, analysis, problem-solving, spontaneity, and creativity.

These skills mean that getting a team together and more importantly, keeping them together can be done when we pool together our talents. Whenever a game of “Hire me or date me!” concludes, you will usually find at least one other person you feel a greater appreciation for, and the same can be said about another player for you too.

In a future post, we will talk about the importance of storytelling and people in greater detail. For the purpose of playing this game, this is a chance for new colleagues to get to know their peers and old colleagues to discover something that was right next to them the entire time. This is important because we work with people, not lists of skills, and people like stories, whether they tell them or hear them. There is a barrier that is created between professionals to create boundaries that dictate the limits of how you interact with your colleagues and what is appropriate to ask and expect of each other–lest there be a lawsuit for unbecoming conduct. These boundaries do not mean that those you work with are not people too, nor does it mean that your feelings and your story don’t matter–you all deserve to exist and your feelings matter too.

Whether you play games like “Hire me or date me!” or not, every moment is an opportunity to explore and discover. The more you know about another person whom you work with, the greater the potential to understand where you may have difficulties–especially communicating–and how to work together to resolve those problems, or whomever else may be able to offer further insights.

We aren’t cookies where one batch has one or two bad ones that can be discarded and replaced, we are people who may have something hidden beneath the surface–much like an imperfectly shaped cookie may hide more chocolate inside than the others! Next week: More games! More storytelling!