Minisode 20: 5 Fun and Memorable Virtual Holiday Parties Your Team Will Actually Like
Hey, improve it! peeps. Itโs that time again: ๐ฑ๐ญ๐ข๐ฏ๐ฏ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ท๐ช๐ณ๐ต๐ถ๐ข๐ญ ๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ญ๐ช๐ฅ๐ข๐บ ๐ฑ๐ข๐ณ๐ต๐บ.
Fresh out of ideas? Worried itโll be a limited turnout with the virtual format? ๐ฐ
We hear you and we got you. Tune into todayโs ๐ถ๐บ๐ฝ๐ฟ๐ผ๐๐ฒ ๐ถ๐! ๐ฝ๐ผ๐ฑ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐๐ ๐บ๐ถ๐ป๐ถ๐๐ผ๐ฑ๐ฒ for not one, but ๐ง๐ช๐ท๐ฆ concrete ideas for virtual holiday parties that wonโt be a drag.
Who says monotony canโt transform into something memorable? ๐ซ๐ โ ๐ญ
P.S. - Our Laugh Breaks received a holiday-inspired makeover and we are so excited for the big reveal. Click the ๐น๐ถ๐ป๐ธ ๐ฏ๐ฒ๐น๐ผ๐ to join us for a 20-, 30-, or 45-minute session of our ๐๐ฎ!๐น๐ถ๐ฑ๐ฎ๐ ๐๐ฎ๐๐ด๐ต ๐๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ธ๐. You may or may not start seeing snow outside your window with all of this holiday cheer! ๐จ
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Erin Diehl is the founder and Chief โYes, Andโ officer of improve it! and host of the improve it! Podcast. Sheโs a performer, facilitator and professional risk-taker who lives by the mantra, โget comfortable with the uncomfortable.โ Through a series of unrelated dares, Erin has created improve it!, a unique professional development company that pushes others to laugh, learn and grow. Her work with clients such as United Airlines, PepsiCo, Groupon, Deloitte, Motorola, Walgreens, and The Obama Foundation earned her the 2014 Chicago RedEye Big Idea Award and has nominated her for the 2015-2019 Chicago Innovations Award.
This graduate from Clemson University is a former experiential marketing and recruiting professional as well as a veteran improviser from the top improvisational training programs in Chicago, including The Second City, i.O. Theater, and The Annoyance Theatre.
When she is not playing pretend or facilitating, she enjoys running and beach dates with her husband and son, and their eight-pound toy poodle, BIGG Diehl.
You can follow the failed it! podcast on Instagram @learntoimproveit and facebook, and you can follow Erin personally on Instagram @keepinitrealdiehl here. You can also check out improve it! and how we can help your organization at www.learntoimproveit.com. We canโt wait to connect with you online!
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Minisode 20 Transcription
Erin (00:00):
Welcome to the Improve It Podcast!
Erin (00:11):
Improve it! Peeps. Welcome to today's Minisode Short. It's sweet, it's here for you. I have got five fun and memorable holiday party ideas that your team will actually like for you today. So let's talk about it. It's becoming the holiday season and your team is spread out all over the world. You've got different time zones, you've got people in the uk, you've got people in Europe, you've got people in Australia, you've got East Coast, West Coast, worldwide. As Missy Elliot once said, Do you feel everyone around you asking, What are we doing for the holidays? Do we have a holiday party? As a leader, you take a step back and you cringe because are you expected to fly everyone in? You'll have X number of flights, X number of hotels, plus the actual party itself to pay and budget for? Or do you plan something virtually that will be both fun and memorable and also, dare I say, enjoyable for your team?
Erin (01:25):
There's no flights, there's no hotels, there's memories, there's connection, and there is fun from the comfort of their own home, in their own comfortable attire. No renting the runway, no sequin dresses, no spanks, comfort of fair homes if you were saying yes to not the dress here, stay tuned because I have got those five fun and memorable holiday party ideas that your team will actually like right now. So the first one is a personal favorite of team. Improve it. We did this back in 2020. Dear friend of mine, Tom Lare, shout out to Tom if he's listening today, mention this to me and I'll tell you this. Go to meeting was a software that I used for years prior to Zoom. When he told me about goat G O a T two meeting, I about lost my mind. First of all, I love a pun.
Erin (02:37):
Second of all, I love goats. Who does not love goats? If you don't buy hum, pun intended, go to meeting is a great way to brighten the experience or part of your team's experience for a virtual holiday party. You will get either a 10, 20, or 30 minute tour of a goat farm. This tour guide will join your meeting, do a quick intro of the farm, and then introduce you to animals on the tour. You can have unlimited guests and the prices are super fair. It's either $140 for a 10 minute meeting for 20 minutes. It's $275. And then if you wanna go the vi P experience, you're looking at $750. All of this supports the farm and gives back to this farm as a way to showcase what they do to the world. They invented this in 2020, and I have to tell you, our team did this in probably late 2020, right when the pandemic happened and we were all just feeling the blues and it brightened our day.
Erin (03:57):
Joy spread across our faces. And let's just say this, we have to give joy to others. That's our job. So finding something that brings us joy is so important. So the first suggestion I have for you and your team is go to meeting a 10 minute, a 20 minute, a 30 minute. You can get nuts with that 30 minutes, but it truly is so fun to see and just something that you don't experience with your team. So try it out. We're gonna put the links to all of these things and the show notes. The second suggestion I have for you for a fun and memorable holiday party idea virtually is an Airbnb online experience. Now I'm a huge Airbnb fan. Love traveling and staying in Airbnbs feels more comfortable. It's not a hotel. I actually, when I was pregnant and traveling, all I stayed at were Airbnbs because I just wanted comfortable, comfortable spaces, beautiful places.
Erin (05:01):
And Airbnb during the pandemic also got super creative. Clearly the very beginning, people were not renting out their homes, so they started creating online experiences. So there's several options that you can choose from for your team. A, you could cook something together. There's a class for pizza from Florence with an Italian pizza chef. You could do a class called Dancing in the dough and make ramen from Japan. Or you can learn how to make Argentinian inez. All right, so you could cook something together. I believe they send you all the ingredients that you need ahead of time, and it's up to you to get your team to get those ingredients in some way, shape or form. So you could cook something together, or B, you could take a coffee break. There's classes and teachers on how to read the future of coffee, which is quite interesting, or the health benefits and a tea ceremony from Japan.
Erin (06:08):
If your team is competitive in nature, there's also team competition, love. Let me enunciate air and competitions. So they have haunted hotel, immersive escape rooms, office Olympics, Explore Ma, explore card magic. It's crazy the amount of experiences they have in a competitive world on Airbnb experiences. A team favorite from Improve It because we are all virtual. We don't have a physical office space anymore, is drag bingo, drag queen bingo. We did this in 2021 as a team, and again, it brought so much laughter, levity, and positivity to our faces. It was fun, it was interactive, it was competitive. I love drag queens. I had drag queens at my baby shower. Okay, so drag queen bingo is hilarious. So there's all different types of experiences from Airbnb, cooking, coffee breaks, competitive things. Bingo, take a look. Go to the link in the show notes. You can find out all types of information on Airbnb online experiences.
Erin (07:26):
I'm so glad they kept this Alive Post pandemic. It's really fun. As you can see, there's so many teams out there who are still working remote and will continue to do so. So important to have these experiences for every single person. Number three, I am calling this break out of the norm. Hear me out. This is not something that I've made up, but I'm gonna say I'm giving you this to you. I'm giving you this idea as a way to get your own wheels turning. So the beautiful thing about Zoom, our WebEx, I believe teams also has, this is breakout rooms. That is how we conduct all of our workshops virtually with breakout rooms. It is a fantastic tool. Let's use it while we're planning these holiday parties. So what I'm thinking for you and for your team, and quite honestly for my team this year, is this idea of having a collective room, your main room, and then three different breakout rooms.
Erin (08:35):
And within those three different breakout rooms, you have three different activities. So one idea might be that you have one room that is just a slideshow of the past year, pictures of the past year with the team, fun facts, but it's set to music. It's got this really fun, upbeat music with it, and you're seeing a slideshow of the team and it's just something that will help the team feel connected and memorable. This slideshow should last anywhere from five to 10 minutes. So keep the pa, keep the pictures on there for 20 seconds or more. You know what I'm saying? Get a slideshow together. It's so easy. You can have a team member help you do this. But I love a slideshow because it reminds me of all the amazing things that we accomplished in the year. You can collect pictures from everyone so you have so many different viewpoints, not just your own.
Erin (09:32):
So have one breakout room with just a slides show. The next breakout room could be your typical happy hour, but instead of just having drinks, you have conversation starters. So you have a facilitator or a moderator of that breakout room who is giving some really fun questions that you might pose at a dinner party. Who would you have dinner with? Anyone living or alive? That's the same thing. Erin, living or dead. Think of fun questions ahead of time to create conversation. Or if you just want time for the team to chill and connect, you can do that as well. One rule of thumb here, if alcohol isn't allowed in your company, then call it a coffee break. If alcohol is allowed, you could send team members a bottle of wine or you could send team members a gift card to pick up a beverage of choice for the happy hour portion of the breakout rooms.
Erin (10:31):
And then the third room is a voting room. Now this room should have music, but you're gonna have the team go to an external link that is like a Survey monkey, a questionnaire, Google forms that allows them to vote on end of year superlatives. So you could do things like most resilient, best team player, most encouraging, most likely to be on mute. Think of your team and your culture, come up with some really cool superlative ideas, and have the third room as the voting room. So you've got one room, you've got three rooms going at a time. You break people into groups. You have a slideshow in one room, a happy hour with some questions that are fun to answer with the group. And then the third room is the voting room. And when you're done after these rotations, you give each room about 10 to 15 minutes, you bring everyone back to the main room and you read the results of the superlatives.
Erin (11:37):
It's fun. You can give out awards and have people give a small speech after they accept their award. You'll definitely need for this a few things. Number one, you're gonna need a show producer. So somebody who is going to man the breakout rooms and just a food for thought here, instead of switching everyone around, keep people in the same three groups within breakout rooms and each room has its own host. Just switch the host from room to room and you're gonna need three hosts. You'll need that happy hour host who's there just facilitating conversation. You'll need somebody to manage the voting and calculate and tally the results. And then you'll need somebody who's in charge of playing the slideshow in that third room. So as long as you have people in each of those rooms and you have a show producer or somebody who is in charge of running the breakout rooms, you're good to go.
Erin (12:33):
Number four is a combination of all the things I just mentioned. So you could start off with everybody coming together in your meeting have go to meeting, come or bring in a cool host from Airbnb to do an experience for the first 10, 20 minutes. Then have those breakout rooms. Each one has its different themes. So again, you have number one, that room for a slideshow, the second room for a happy hour, the third room for voting. And then bring back everyone to announce the winners. You can play with this. You can have so much interactivity within this one hour virtual holiday party that people are so engaged. It's not just this team meeting and happy hour. It is constant engagement, constant interaction, and it feels personal. What I love about all of this is that you have the ability to really customize this experience for your team culture and for your team.
Erin (13:46):
So I love this idea of starting off with all four, having a goat two meeting at the upfront just to get everybody energized and laughing and smiling, jumping into the breakout rooms, making them feel really special with pictures from the year in that slideshow with voting and having really personalized superlatives for your company culture. And then those happy hours are there to just showcase each other, have some time to connect and laugh, and then bringing everybody back to see each other again, announcing the superlatives and just enjoying each other's company. I've had the privilege of sitting in on many different holiday parties during the pandemic, especially as clients asked us to help out with certain things. And what I love is that people really value that time to connect, to not work, to see each other as human beings. Now here is my fifth and final virtual holiday holiday party idea that your team will actually like.
Erin (14:49):
If you really wanna make an impact, If you want your team to feel seen, heard and valued and have them laugh together, try out, improve its laugh breaks. This is something we created during the pandemic. We have hosted over 80 laugh breaks to date with companies like Pfizer, Tractor Supply, Warby Parker, and more. I mean 80 plus Laugh Breaks. This is short form improv to break up your virtual meetings and to really increase engagement at your team holiday party. So here's how you do this. Number one, you go to the link on or in the show notes, Learn to improve it.com/laugh breaks. You go to our website, you go under services. You can see laugh breaks there. You choose the date and the time that you want us to show up. And you book either a 2030 or 45 minute laugh break. These are our most nominally priced offerings.
Erin (15:57):
They are so, so, so, so, so fun. And we have them as opportunities for teams to connect in a different way. After you choose your date, your time, the amount of time that you wanna laugh with us, you then answer a few quick questions about your team to really help us customize the experience. After that, you can either provide us your Zoom link and we can jump on your zoom at the specific time, or we can provide you with one, whatever works best for you and your event. And then one week before your last break, you will hear from our director of client experience with logistics. It's super easy. We just have a few small rules. You can't pin us. We need everybody to be on speaker mode. And when I say pin, it's like when you pin a speaker on screen. So that person is just that person stagnant and everybody can see that person.
Erin (16:53):
We need everybody in our team to show up. It's a host plus three improvisers. You book this, you pay, we show up and we can be a surprise or you can let your team know that we're coming. We have done so many Zoom bombs to this point. So up to you how you wanna communicate that. Then you sit back and you relax for 20 to 45 minutes of short form improv. We use the chat box for laughs for suggestions. We encourage your team to stay on video so we can see those smiles. We have our highly skilled improvisers from all over the US doing these hilarious improv games. And this year specifically for the holidays, we have yes and did ourselves with ha la day. Tha yes, I said Ha. You can choose from any one of these four themes to include during your laugh break.
Erin (17:55):
Number one, you can have an ugly sweater, laugh, break. It's as easy as it sounds. If you don't have an ugly sweater at home. Put on a normal sweater, get some duct tape and write on it. Ugly. There's your ugly sweater. But encourage your team to wear ugly sweaters. We will do the same as well. The second theme is called comfort and joy, where we encourage your team to come in your pajamas, your sweatpants, your bedroom slippers. The third theme is our holiday theme, which means you're going on a holiday, aka a vacation. So dress like you're going to your favorite vacation spot, change your virtual background and let us do the same. And the fourth is called just a jolly Good time. So we'll show up to our laugh break. And that is the entire experience, which we've done, like I said, over 80 times for 80 different teams.
Erin (18:51):
And it is amazing without adding any type of costume. But we wanted to give you that option so you can find that link in the show notes. Come and laugh with us this holiday season. I hope that any one of these five ideas sparked your creativity. Let's enjoy these holidays. Haha, by bringing laughter, levity, and positivity to our teams and to the people who make work. Work. Let's make everyone feel seen, heard, and valued by giving a virtual experience that they will not only remember, but they will enjoy. So proud of you and prove it. Peeps. Thank you for tuning into today's Mini. So, and you know what I'm gonna say? Keep failing. Keep improving because the world needs that very special it that only you can bring. I'll see you next week. Hey friend, did you enjoy today's show? If so, head on over to iTunes to rate and subscribe. So you never miss an episode. Now, did I mention that when you leave a five star review of the Improvement podcast, an actual team of humans does a happy dance? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. That's right. So leave a review for us on iTunes, screenshot it, and send me an email at info learn to improve it.com. I'll send you a personalized video back as a thank you. Thanks so much for listening. Improve It Peeps. I'll see you next Wednesday.