Last month I wrote about the 36 questions to fall in love with your team and the psychology behind it. When we build deeper relationships and trust amongst our colleagues, we spark the kind of connections that pay dividends when it’s time to work together at pace and navigate challenges. We know the number one thing that predicts high performing teams is safety and trust between team mates — psychological safety. So it follows that cultivating open and trusting connections between colleagues helps us be the most effective we can be in our work. And if you’re in the business of people as we are at Brink, then it’s natural that learning about each other is joyful and uplifting in itself.
To kick off 2022 at Brink we of course started our first Monday morning meeting together with a heartfelt round of ‘how are you?’. Then inspired by my cofounder Lea Simpson we asked: what’s the one thing you’d like to know about your colleagues?
I’m here to share the results. You’ll see some of them are silly (cats or dogs?), some zeitgeisty (if you were in the metaverse and had to immortalise yourself for life, what would be on your metaverse epitaph?) and some beautifully insightful and bittersweet (what’s the one thing you’d ask people to do at your funeral to make it joyful?)
But through all that, a recurring theme across the team is there’s a real craving for the minutiae. We heard from several Brinksters that really it’s the everyday questions — what is your favourite drink, what’s your go-to supermarket treat, what’s your favourite hobby — that are particularly enjoyable and even revealing about a person. Perhaps we’re all missing those office kitchen moments where we’d normally uncover these preferences so have inadvertently created a virtual watercooler moment. Perhaps its because joining a distributed team means you leapfrog some of that smalltalk that happens in the in-betweeny times in an office environment. Or perhaps it was the first Monday in January and for some of us our brains simply hadn’t kicked into gear to conjure up more profound questions just yet. I’ll leave that for you to decide.
I offer you 36 questions to fall in love with your team in 2022, as requested by Brinksters. The 36 things we’d most like to know about our team mates. I look forward to hearing the answers from my colleagues over the coming weeks as we make our way through the list sharing hopes, dreams, nonsense and favourite crisp flavours along the way.
And I’d love to know, how about you? What’s the one thing you’d love to know about the others on your team? Ask them! And let me know how you get on in the comments below.
2. What is your favourite hobby’?
3. What do you love doing yet never make time for?
4. What’s one thing you have a strong opinion on, but actually know very little about?
5. What movie, TV show, book etc in pop culture made you feel represented as a kid?
6. What’s your favourite item of clothing and why?
7. What are two things you wouldn’t compromise on in a partner?
8. What is your go to karaoke song and why?
9. What’s the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?
10. What’s your favourite drink?
11. If you could be on any reality TV show, which one and why?
12. What’s your vision for when you day dream about burning everything to the ground? When you think, I’m going to leave my job and life and do this
13. What’s one thing you strongly believe about yourself that is objectively false?
14. What’s the one thing you’d ask people to do at your funeral to make it joyful?
15. If your house was on fire what 2 things would you grab?
16. What is your favourite crisp flavour?
17. The best podcast you’ve listened to lately?
18. What’s your power tune when you need a boost?
19. What’s the one thing you do to get really zen?
20. What is a (or some) ritual(s) which ground you in your week at work and make it better?
21. What was something you were really sure about but then changed your mind?
22. If you could speak any language fluently (real, fictional, Ancient, modern, whatever) what language would you speak, and why?
23. What’s the one thing emotionally, physically that makes you tick?
24. What’s your guilty pleasure? Can be music, food, trashy TV…
25. If you were in the metaverse and had to immortalise yourself for life, what would be on your metaverse epitaph?
26. What treat do you always put in the shopping trolley at the supermarket?
27. What is your hangover cure?
28. What’s your favourite treat meal or drink?
29. Tell us about a song you were once obsessed with and what was going on in your life at the time?
30. Cats or dogs?
31. What’s something you’ve given up or quit and feel great about?
32. What’s a life hack we should know about?
33. What are you proudest of from the past week (at work or home)?
34. What are you reading?
35. Who has been a great influence in your life but you’ve never told them?
36. What’s one thing you’d like to know about your fellow team members?
I’d like to thank Brink team for your thoughtfulness, curiosity, unfaltering appreciation of and care for each other, and for these questions. I’m so looking forward to hearing the answers at our Monday morning meetings this year and getting to know you all that little bit better along the way.
See here for the original post about 36 questions to fall in love with your team, including the psychology behind it and our original set of questions.
