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How can I make bi-weekly team sync more fun and engaging?

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Mid-Level Software Engineer [IC2] at Yelp2 years ago

I am hosting bi-weekly team sync where we share project updates, announcements etc. How can I make it better? I am planning to add team members wins/anniversaries to add cheers. But in what other ways, I can make this meeting more fun and inclusive.

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    Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero, PayPal
    2 years ago

    My favorite thing to add to these meetings is a shoutouts/thanks section.

    I think it's similar to what you're thinking with "team members wins". The idea is that you go around the meeting and ask them if they want to thank another team member for doing great work/being kind/doing some awesome thing in general. I think "wins" might be too high a bar to clear as when I think "win", I think some nice launch. Even for something as small as "Teammate XYZ spent 5 minutes helping me debug this silly build issue I had.", it should get recognition. Spreading positive energy is so fun and beneficial to the long term health of the team!

    I also like the idea of company anniversaries; this was a big thing at Meta. Back before the Meta days, we called them "Faceverseries."

    Some other ideas on what to add:

    • Blockers - If this isn't part of project updates, it should be.
    • Tips and tricks - Example would be like a team member discovering this cool new IDE shortcut.
    • Offsite ideas - You probably can't do this every meeting, but offsites (and talking about/planning them) are always fun!
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