The Future of Free Hugs During The COVID-19 Pandemic
Anyone who’s been a part of the Swift Kick family over the past 14 years knows that introducing the Free Hugs campaign to new people is a core part of our training. It’s how we teach people to build a Culture of Connection™ where everyone feels welcomed, connected, and engaged. But what about now, in […]
Creating an Engagement Dashboard for Your Organization
For two years, I sat on the board of the NY Entrepreneurs’ Organization as the Head of Member Engagement. At my first board meeting, I asked the group for some prior data on member engagement. My aim was to find a baseline level of engagement which I could use to build goals for the future. […]
After You Make An Introduction, Get Out Of The Way
This post is a continuation of our last post about creating affinity groups through shared interest introductions. Tom talked about how he connected two strangers at an event because they were both wearing Batman shirts for International Batman Day. Read the post here if you need a refresher! After I made the Batman introduction happen, […]
Is Batman in Your Organization?: Creating Affinity Groups
A common practice of mine during my trainings to greet as many of the participants ahead of time. During one training, a guy walked in wearing a unique looking Batman shirt, so I made a comment. His face lit up, and he excitedly said to me, “Did you know that today is International Batman Day?” […]
What’s Going On? -The Question Every “Neutral” Asks
In the previous blog post, I talked about a game my friend Kevin made up called “Scream and Run.” In case you need a recap: “Your challenge is to run as fast as you can towards the rest of the group while screaming. Then run back doing the same.” The group laughed again. “Oh, but […]
The Two Ingredients Required for Successful Engagement
At some point, every facilitator eventually runs out of activities they can do with a group. It’s natural and bound to happen. This exact thing happened to a friend of mine, Kevin Prentiss, who was running a 10-day long summer program for a group of students at Stanford University. After 10-days of facilitating activities and […]
Energy Flow: The Importance of Modeling Success in Group Settings
Recently, at a training I ran with a group of leaders, I was told ahead of time that a few people were going to be coming in late due to prior commitments. While typically not a big deal, this quickly became an issue for this group. The entrance door must have been attached to a […]
The Importance of Creating Your Secondary Family
When I was 11, Mom got the call that Gram was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. In that moment, Mom promised that she would never put Gram in a nursing home. Two weeks later, Gram moved in. For the next seven years until she died, we spent our days dressing her, feeding her and chasing after her […]
Building Trust at an Event
This May, Swift Kick decided to do our first speaker training bootcamp which we titled “Speak Easy.” In a jam-packed day from 8:30am-6pm speakers, executives and anyone interested in learning came to LMHQ to learn how to be a better speaker. There were many components to making the day successful. One of the most important […]
Weak Ties Get You the Job
In 1973, Mark Granovetter, a sociological researcher made a simple claim, that “….when it comes to finding out about new jobs – or, for that matter, new information, or new ideas – “weak ties” are always more important than strong ties.” When using the phrase “social network” now, we tend to think about the folks […]