Hello Reader,

In all my years of working with virtual and distributed teams, the common confusion is: what is ‘real’ work?

Some people think that taking the time to let team members connect and deepen their relationships is a distraction from ‘getting things done.’

But the relationships forged in play are precisely what give us the resilience needed to solve hard problems.

When I led the opening session of the Australasia Change Days Conference recently, I asked the attendees, “What is the hardest thing about keeping people's attention during virtual meetings?”

Here are some of their answers:

• Stopping people from looking at other applications or screens - doing their ‘real’ work!
• the digital distractions they have (emails / phones)
• Interactivity
• It being more interesting than all the other things they can see at the same moment.
• Competing with all the other distractions around them including email, people chatting with them off screen,
• The flat screen- not being in the room with them
• Keeping them engaged enough to ignore any emails etc coming in
• Continued engagement through activities to make them think/ do
• Keeping their cameras on, engagement.
• keeping them engaged in the present moment so they are not easily distracted
• Keeping them engaged in every moment of the meeting

These are common problems, I hear about them all the time. During my interactive workshop, Gamify Your Work, I provided a variety of tools and techniques that remote and distributed teams could use to get more done in good cheer.

Here's a simple Zoom game: everybody turn into a pirate!

The feedback from this session included:

• Great tips and tools for improving online facilitation - excellent
• Will definitely use icebreakers and games in my next workshops
• Absolutely brilliant session, engaging interactive and educational
• Engagement is everything
• Play is the antidote to zoom fatigue
• This was brilliant
• Thanks Caelan, I really enjoyed that.
• Thank you Caelan for an interesting and engaging session!

If you’d like to gamify a holiday party, I’d be happy to lead some fun games for your team on Zoom.

Do you need a fun host for a virtual team gathering?

Reply to this email, and let's talk.