Book clubs beat happy hours

The secret to better virtual socializing

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the New Corner Office,
the podcast where we share strategies for thriving in the
new world of work or location and hours are more
flexible than in the past. Today's tip is about how
to have virtual get togethers. The basic rule is that

(00:25):
any virtual social occasion needs to be facilitated. In other words,
book clubs beat happy hours, So the zoom happy hour
became a bit of a pandemic cliche over the past
few months. Back in March, when people suddenly started working
from home, teams try to replicate what they could of

(00:46):
office culture. So if you all would have gone out
for drinks, you all instead would make yourself a drink
and then drink it in front of your laptop screen
with ten boxes of other people staring at you. Needless
to say, this is not terribly fun, and it's one
reason why people talk about zoom fatigue. In a bar,
you can separate out into two to three person conversations

(01:07):
and move fluidly between them. The same number of people
on Zoom are generally trying to have one conversation, which
works about as well as if you get ten people
at a dinner table. It's bad Thanksgiving, someone always dominates
whether you want that person to do so or not.
Other people get bored and hope it is all over soon.

(01:31):
But that doesn't mean you can't socialize virtually. The key
is that it has to be facilitated. Someone has to
be in charge, and someone has to organize the conversation
so it feels like the conversation has a purpose and
everyone feels included. The organizer can ask people questions. In turn,

(01:52):
the questions can have a specific point to them rather
than the just a general how are you doing? Or
if you're doing an activity, someone has to direct to
that activity rather than just allowing things to go free form.
Now that might sound like work or in any case,
a lot of work for something that is supposed to
be fun, But done well, the socializing can be both

(02:14):
enjoyable and edifying. A book club means you're talking about
the ideas in a book. Or you could all take
an art lesson together by shipping paints and a canvas
to all team members and then have a teacher show
you what to do. You could do a Q and
A with a thought leader that your team has brought
on for an hour. You could hire a performer to
sing or play an instrument for you, and then teach

(02:36):
a bit about what she does. You can't just put
a dozen people together and hope it goes well. This
is absolutely critical for virtual gift together as, though honestly
it's true for real life ones too. The team happy
hour is often a missed opportunity. I've been in some

(02:56):
fairly boring happy hours where I got stuck talking to
someone who was stuck on a single subject, or really
not feeling like I was getting to know people with
small talk. I'm guessing you've had this experience too. In person,
we sometimes get lazy about socializing, but facilitated social interactions
can be really profound if we're willing to put in

(03:17):
the effort. That's true in person and true with virtual
get togethers too. In the meantime, this is Laura, Thanks
for listening, and here's the succeeding in the New Corner Office.
The New Corner Office is a production of I Heart Radio.

(03:38):
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