How can you fast track connection among a group of strangers?

I’m not sure if it’s the start of the holiday season, or the fact that this is my 6th blog, but something told me it was time to do things a little differently.

On today’s Insight, I’ll be taking a break from the typical model of cohort question + cohort responses, and lead you on a little journey into my own mind.

A huge reason I was motivated and inspired to start (+ogether) is my passion for and deep curiosity in the keys to unlocking human connection. Of course, I’ve encountered this through my work as a director on sets with a variety of disconnected and disparate people who all happen to be brought together to work towards a common goal for a short period of time.

Like a frenzied fancier, I’ve stowed away little tips, tricks, and anecdotes from well-known directors, eagerly extracting learnings from how they may approach the task of creating connection among their cast and crew.

I’ve learned of things as extreme as group yoga classes on set from the Daniels, and as simple as requiring each person to wear a name tag during the production from Greta Gerwig.

While I’ll admit I’ve never quite gone so far as the yoga class, I have tried a number of things to get that special feeling of friendship among my crew. For me, this curiosity for connection extends well into my personal life, too.

I’ve prepared philosophical questions for family dinners, hosted intentional parties with a theme of seasonal reflection in NYC, and even opened up a pop-up cafe out of my apartment window just to see how people may respond and feel some new excitement or inspiration as they encountered the unexpected. Sometimes things work better than expected and sometimes things freeze up, but those moments of real KNOWING are, for me, prizes that are worth the potential pain.

So, how does this connect to (+ogether)?

As a reminder, these (+ogether) cohorts are built on 16-week cohorts, made up of 8 bi-weekly virtual calls where the group comes together to discuss challenges and tackle them together.

However, at the start of the cohort, these people are generally complete strangers. And, I don’t know what your experience has been like meeting people over a video call, but I’d imagine it’s been pretty poor.

So, as I began constructing (+ogether), I began to wonder…

As I sat with my notebook and pen, free associating and writing as I normally do when working on ideas, I began to think about an experience I had while attending a transformative one-day acting workshop in NYC. After a full day of a variety of drama exercises, improvisations, and acting techniques as a group, our final exercise was this:

Stand in front of the entire group of students and instructors, and deliver a two minute spontaneous monologue, without stopping, following this simple prompt:

“What works about me is…”

At first, I didn’t quite know how to imagine or understand what this may look like. But, without hesitation, our main instructor calmed us and told us that she, in fact, would be going first.

She took her place in front of the room, and launched into a beautifully disarming stream of thoughts, feelings, and self-proclamations that smelled of bravery, beauty, and a spot of bashfulness.

At the end of her two minutes, the room sat smiling and applauding, feeling as if we were just witness to something akin to a sacred or secret moment.

After listening, our task was this - simply repeat back to the speech-giver what we hear while they spoke.

While remarkably simple, this experience moved me in a profound way, and I will never forget my own moment, baring myself nervously in front of the room, and then hearing the ways that people understood and accepted me.

At the end of the day, we walked away having been transformed into a real group of friends. I believed that exercise had a great deal to do with that.

And so, as I’ve kicked off each new (+ogether) cohort, I use this exercise as the FIRST way that the group introduces themselves to each other. 

I’ll now lay out my learnings in the value of this process, and why I believe this sort of experience is truly effective.

Get comfortably uncomfortable

As I’m sure we’ve all experienced at times, there is something special that happens when we feel out of our element. The assumptions we make about how we are perceived, the rules we use in how we interact, are set aside, reevaluated, and the typical pathways we follow are covered over.

When I use this exercise, I actually want to embrace the uncomfortable feelings and reactions in myself and the group, and lean into the greater degree of candor that grows out of it. However, it’s important to navigate this with kindness, sincerity, and encouragement, maintaining the spirit of the group and ushering them forward.

Go first

There is much anecdotal and traditional wisdom surrounding the idea that you shouldn’t expect something from other people that you’re not willing to do, yourself. In the case of this exercise, this is absolutely true. I’ll admit, while doing this for the very first time with my first cohort, I wasn’t sure if I, indeed, needed to participate. When I asked who wanted to go first, the group resoundingly said, “YOU go first, Bram!”

At that moment, I was reminded of how powerful and important it is to usher in vulnerability by first paving the road yourself. I, too, feel nervous, unsure, and clumsy while speaking for two minutes about myself. But, as I watched the group witness what this exercises really looked and felt like, they began to loosen, disarm themselves, and prepare to follow fearlessly.

Mutuality is a must

I find what is critical about these cohort group dynamics is that there must be a MUTUAL level of sharing and listening among each group member. In order to encourage and reinforce that sort of dynamic from the offset, total mutuality is required in this exercise.

Every single person is required to share for exactly two minutes straight. And, although this is not explicitly instructed by me, every single person then responds to the sharer with reflective and reinforcing responses, every time.

By the end of the group exercise, each person knows and believes that they had to endure the SAME experience as the others, and they all did it, together.

Reward transparency with understanding

As I mentioned before, once the sharer finishes their two minutes, the role of the listeners is to simply reflect back to the sharer what they heard as the sharer spoke.

While this sounds simple (and if you’ve ever done couples’ therapy, it probably also sounds familiar), it is difficult and challenging only because it is so markedly different from how we generally listen to and respond to others.

The goal here is not for the listener to launch back their own opinions, suggestions, or ideas back to the sharer, but to demonstrate to the sharer that they have been heard, and even more, understood.

Reinforce with reflection

At the end of this exercise, I applaud the group for their collective courage, kindness, and patience with each other. Then, I simply ask them, “What was that like for you?”

What I find in this moment is that the mutual experience of the group is now fully highlighted and reinforced, as each person begins to share how they felt. The members find, again, that their experiences were connected and similar, yet distinct. This helps them understand that their individual selves are welcomed, and even crucial parts, in creating a powerful and safe experience as a group.

By the end of this short exercise during our very first cohort session together, I watch as this group, who were total strangers, skeptical of each other, guarded, and unsure a mere 60 minutes earlier, walk away feeling genuine friendship, connection, and care for each other.

As we move forward into a holiday season where we often are met with situations and encounters that feel uncomfortably stale and static with half-strangers or estranged loved ones, may we remember the powerful potential that always lies in front of us to push for powerful connection.

See you next time!