Asynchronous remote team activity for busy people: Hot Seat
Works best for teams between five to 50 people
The #hotseat is a low-key team building activity that works especially well if your team is very busy, very introverted, or both. It does not require any additional zoom calls, it is completely asynchronous, and everybody can showcast as much or as little of themselves as they are comfortable with.
I originally learned about the idea in the Support Driven Slack community (a treasure trove of inspiration and information if you are interested in Support). I tweaked the format a little bit, and my colleagues took care of the rest. I’ll lay out the logistics and give you some starter questions which you can then use to design your own process.
Logistics and time commitment
Hot seats work best in groups of five to 50 people. Once you pass that number, I’d recommend splitting the group into either teams or divisions. Though you could even split them alphabetical or by timezones, or choose any other arbitrary logic. Worst case scenario, people end up getting to know colleagues they usually do not work with on a day-to-day basis.
Our hot seat lives in Slack. That means the channel is simply called #hot-seat. Once a week, on Wednesday, the new hot-seat owner is announced. Based on the user list of the channel, I use a random number generator and then simply assign the person on that position in the list, unless they’ve been on the hot seat recently.
I may or may not have gamed the random number at times to get a specific person on the hot seat. This can be helpful for the first one or two rounds to set a standard of answers to the (ever weirder) questions.
Once the person is announced, everyone can post questions for the person to answer. Answers are given in threads (and others can then comment on the answers, if it makes sense) and should get in by Friday afternoon.
How to ask questions that go beyond “what’s your favourite animal?”
Some people are very creative when it comes to asking questions – and they feed off each other. You can kick start this process by adding a couple of fun questions yourself. Basically, model what you’d like to see in the future, and be aware that it will only get weirder – or maybe that’s just my team.
Here are some questions that have come up in our Slack channel. I have to admit I can’t claim any credit for them, though I certainly had a lot of fun reading both the questions AND the answers.
In no particular order:
If you had the chance to be immortal, would you take it?
Rank all five Backstreet Boys members, based on anything
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
Which meal is your favorite: breakfast, lunch, or dinner?
Do you hit the snooze button or wake up immediately?
What’s the most ridiculous outfit you’ve ever worn? Please answer with a photo.
Census shows bananas are on their way out, people are just not buying them. You’re tasked with rebranding bananas, starting with coming up with a new name. After a night of brainstorming, you have 3 names on your list. They are:
If you had to sum your job up in one .gif, which .gif would it be?
If you could change how your sneezes sound, what sound would you choose for your sneezes? (for example, instead of the classical ‘achoo’, you can have a clown car horn sound)
3 things you love & 1 thing you hate about your spouse
What’s your signature dish or what do you cook very well?
Name one country in each continent you would live for 6 months and give a reason why.
What’s the most important file on your computer?
Seriously, people will surprise you. Of course, the questions also say a lot about the person who’s asking and the discussions that sometimes ensue in the threads are equally fascinating.
There you go: experiment and improve 🙂
This post was originally published in early 2020 - and it still works, now more than ever.