Old Picture Exercise for Building Connection

Hey, it’s Jackson back with another exercise that you can use to build a sense of really just connection and honestly even friendship within your team. I use the word friendship very intentionally because Gallup, one of the world’s leading research organizations, has this kind of funny question that they ask on their Employee Engagement studies, which is, “Do you have a best friend at work?” What they find is that this question, which maybe at first sounds a little like, “What are you asking that about work? It’s kind of weird,” that question is one of the biggest predictors of employee or workforce retention, engagement, and ultimately kind of work-life satisfaction.

So, this exercise is really informal, less of a lesson, it’s really just something you can do right now that can build a connection, kind of getting to know each other, and really just create a nice energy in a team or even a larger group depending on how you want to break this down for your audience.

Here’s what we’re gonna do. As you watch along this video, you’re going to get into groups of anywhere from four to ten people. If it’s a really big group, whatever, anywhere from four to ten people, you can make this work however works best for the size watching this. And what you’re going to do is go ahead and just open your phone right now if you have your phone available and go back to an old picture, alright? Scroll back kind of randomly. I would say try to go back maybe like a year. If your pictures go back that far, maybe even further. If you like, my, I think mine goes back like three or four years. Go back and just try to find a picture that maybe you didn’t even remember at first, but when you see the picture, you just really kind of laugh or smile. And maybe you can gauge how appropriate it is. I’ve done this exercise before with college students in the audience, and sometimes there are some questionable things to share. So, when you find a picture that’s relatively appropriate but it really just lights you up, makes you smile, it’s a great memory, I want you to pause for a second and just look at that picture and just enjoy it. And think about what is the story associated with that image. Who is in the image? What is your relationship to those people or that thing or whatever it is? You know, what about that is significant to you? Why is that important? And what is the story there, the context, or the background?

Okay, so you’re gonna do all that, and then you’re going to go ahead and just share that with the people around you, and you can show them the picture. So, “Hey, there’s the picture. This is my friend, blah blah blah. Here’s what we were doing.” Just share that, and then share again why they’re significant to you or what about that is significant to you. You’re gonna go around and do that, and each person should spend about, you know, you spend about two to three minutes on your own just reflecting on that. You can take a few notes on it, what’s important about it, what’s the story. Remember, kind of just enjoy that memory. And then, each person is getting together two to three minutes to just share that out in the group and talk about it. Use some of these other skills that you’ve learned if you’ve watched other videos in our library, around active listening, around powerful questions, around mindfulness and attention, and really just enjoy that together, share with one another. And I promise you that after doing this for, let’s say, anywhere from five to ten minutes, each of your groups is gonna have a lot more sense of commonality, connection, and honestly, just enjoyment, because this exercise should be really fun.

That’s all this one is for now. You now have your instructions to break off into your groups, find a fun picture, a really great memory, reflect on that memory. What’s significant, who’s significant, and then share it as a group. And there you have it. I’ll see you in the next one.