The secret to successful team building is actually lots of fun – Speed Networking

Like most executives, I’m always thinking about my business’s growth.

One very important way to increase my business growth is to build stronger teams. A team that trusts each other through good times and bad.?

With most of my team remote or hybrid, doing in-person events on a monthly basis isn’t feasible. However, doing them once, twice or three times a year is just too long for people to wait to have those water cooler conversations.?

So I found a perfect balance. Once a month Speed Networking among all employees over Zoom. It takes 1 hour, once a month – and the impact is unbelievable.

Growth is directly related to the strength of a company’s team culture. I’d definitely found that to be true in my own organization. We tried many different approaches for team engagement but nothing worked better than Speed Networking.?

Since we couldn’t find an app to support us in Zoom marketplace, we built it ourselves.?

Speed Networking for Zoom was developed in order to help fuel growth organizationally, as well as to help individual professionals find an easy way to connect and network.

In Speed Networking sessions, participants quickly connect with other professionals in a format that’s fun and productive for almost any group size. And, the app connects to a platform everyone’s already familiar with – or can learn to use in seconds – Zoom.

Everyone who has joined the session has the opportunity to meet with others in small breakout sessions that start with ice-breakers. Then, (if time permits) after rotating through several small sessions, everyone connects again as a larger group at the end.

The results have been amazing. Now, Speed Networking has become one of the most important cornerstones of our company’s meeting cadence, and probably the event that everyone anticipates the most.

Team bonding activities have evolved along with the workplace.?

Today, team building solutions need to fit any work environment, be it in-person, hybrid, or remote.

As a start-up with limited resources and busy-employees who wear many hats, we often struggled to find team-building activities that were easy to run, fun to be a part of, and achieved results.

Enter Speed Networking.

We designed the app to be easy for anyone and everyone to operate. With 1-click, every participant is assigned a room for each breakout session rotating so they don’t meet the same person twice. Optionally, you can add an icebreaker to get the conversations started.

One of my team members, who says they tend to feel shy in some situations, said that Speed Networking helped them shake off some of their anxieties: “After the first session, you quickly realized that everyone is super friendly and all your fears and anxieties go away.”

And, by keeping each breakout session short, the energy is always high. Following one of our sessions at Upnotch??, someone said, “The fast-paced format, with just a few minutes per person, kept me fully engaged and wanting more time.”

In some Speed Networking sessions, ice-breakers might be more work-focused to give folks opportunities to learn more about each other’s roles and contributions to company goals. Others might explore more informal topics from favorite foods to worst phobias. Even the simplest, silliest questions formulated moments before the session can create buzz.

The point is to have fun, learn more about your colleagues, and deepen connections in a space dedicated to just that – deepening connections. When we know more about each other, we’re more invested in each other’s successes. And, we’re more likely to provide support even through failures that we’re all bound to experience, too.

Sometimes we’re so busy, we don’t take the time to learn about people we interact with every day. Or, there are folks we only pass briefly – whether in physical offices or virtually – and hardly know at all, even if we’ve worked together for ages. I know I can be guilty of this no matter how hard I try to form personal connections with all of my staff.

One of our team members said their favorite part of this exercise is that, “It was fantastic to have dedicated time to chat with colleagues I don't usually get the chance to interact with.” I couldn’t agree more.

Since our organization has team members around the globe, having Speed Networking as our virtual water cooler is vital. Those chance, water cooler encounters are the ones that can sometimes be transformative in building better, happier teams.

For small to mid-sized companies, Speed Networking is the perfect solution for teams to grow stronger together.

As part of our format for this team building activity, after everyone connects through breakout sessions, we reconnect as a full group at the end. That way, everyone can share one thing they learned about another participant in one of the breakout sessions. The time needed to share at the end, ultimately, makes this activity best for smaller groups.

Enterprise organizations may not be able to invite all their employees to participate in the same Speed Networking session. But, they can always organize as many events as needed within teams, departments, and divisions. Or, larger organizations can use the app to foster connections among key players in cross-functional teams in highly-matrixed environments.

While on the surface, virtual team building events may seem more touchy-feely than results-driven, the results speak for themselves.

One of our team members said that the activity was a “great way to connect with my team on a deeper level,” and that it has helped to “improve our communication and collaboration moving forward.” Another said, “This format not only sparked interesting conversations but also significantly strengthened team relationships, fostering a collaborative and supportive environment.”

Now, team members are more invested in achieving collective goals. They better understand not only what everyone’s individual contributions to those goals are, but how much work is actually involved behind the scenes.

And, perhaps most importantly, we all understand the people who actually get the work done. We’re more than just numbers contributing to a bottom line or cogs in a wheel. We’re people.

Discovering how well Speed Networking can build teams was almost a bit of a happy accident. But, we couldn’t be happier at Upnotch?? because of it.

Everyone leaves sessions more energized and excited for the next one.

And, because the Speed Networking app is free (at least for now) for anyone to use, any organization can start building better, stronger teams too.