Brain Trust 

The welcome (5 mins)

To begin, allow five minutes for people to show up, get acclimated and settled in. During this time, the leads will welcome participants as they arrive. You may consider having some music playing as they enter the room. You could also pose a question in the chatbox such as "where are you joining from today?"

The connection (20 mins)

There are two parts to this connection section.

Part One - The Check-In

Moving from the welcome, it is now time to allow people to connect and get to know one another a bit better. To do this, we will ask the attendees some questions. You could do this a number of ways:

• Chatbox

• Slido (there's a free version where you can ask three questions - very simple to set up)

• Group share (we only recommend this if the group is very small) 

The questions to consider asking are:

(feel free to choose your own and choose 2-3 of them) 

1. What drew you to this gathering? (This question is helping them to discover what resonated with them and what they are hoping to get out of the event)

2. What’s one word to describe how you’re doing today? (If using Slido, consider turning this question into a word cloud

3. What's your energy level today? Red, Yellow or Green? (Red means low energy, but you made it. Yellow means feeling alright, but could be better. Green means energized and ready to go.)

4. What does it mean to you to be 'Culture First'? (This gets them to connect with the purpose in their own way) 

5. What is a sound effect to describe how you're doing today? (This is a great question for a small group share) 

As a facilitator - the biggest key here is to manage time to keep session on track.

Part Two - The History and How We Work

It is now time to allow people to hear more about:

• Why Culture Amp started these chapter communities and the journey thus far. Also share why you started this chapter or what called you to run your chapter. 

• What it means to be Culture First

• The values and pillars that hold us all together

• The components of every Culture First event

To do this, you'll have a Culture First Community Team member come to speak to this or have your chapter mentor from another community speak to this. During that time, you'll share this slide deck. 

The work (60 mins) 

We now move in to the work round, which is the main crux of our event. There are a couple of different ways to facilitate this section. 

Option 1 - 

Section A - Group Reflection + Connection

You can facilitate this section in a number of different ways whether that is with an EasyRetro board, Miro board or as simple as a Google Sheet. 

The questions to ask during this section are:
(feel free to choose from these or make them your own) 

• What’s a recent win you’ve had?

• What’s a short term or current day challenge you’re experiencing at your organization related to people and culture?

• What’s a long term challenge you’re experiencing at your org related to people and culture? Or what are the big milestones you're hoping to achieve? (Understand what they are working on and what the ideal version of their culture is) 

If using EasyRetro or Miro, you'll have them create individual cards for each of their answers. With Google sheets, create a column for each of the questions so they can add a row with their responses.

Now have them go back to the second column or their second answer and edit their response. Ask them to rank that challenge on its level or severity. On a scale of 1-5, how much help could they use with that challenge?

The idea is for this section to tee up Section 2 with the Community Brain Trust.

Section B - Community Brain Trust 

This section is all about bringing the group together to support one another in our challenges. Good ideas come from anywhere regardless of your where you work, your role, or experience. 

Think of a Brain Trust as a close group of advisors that are there to support you and provide perspective on your current challenge or problem.

What is going to happen:

1. Look at how they rated their challenge on a scale of 1-5.  (1 - no severe and don’t need a lot of support, 5 - urgent and important and could use some support)

2. Split up into breakout rooms (20 mins ) 

Here's how to break up the groups based on the number of attendees:

• 10 attendees total - pick 2 of the most pressing challenges

• 12 attendees total - pick 3 of the most pressing challenges

• Less than 9 attendees - pick 1 and go through the exercise as a group

3. The person with the most severe challenge will tell us more about what’s going on 

• Make sure to set a timer for this and limit it to 3 minutes or less 

4. The rest of the group will ask clarifying questions with follow up answers for context

• Set a timer for this and limit it to around 5 minutes 

5. Once the situation is clarified, have the rest of the group (i.e. the advisors) offer advice, feedback, suggestions or resources for the person with the challenge

• Try to come up with as many solutions as possible and build off others 

• You can have the person with the challenge turn off their camera and have the group reflect and offer advice as if that person were not in the room

• Set a timer for this and limit it to around  8 minutes 

6. The person with the challenge will reflect on the insights and what they think they can take action on 

• Set a timer for this on your end and keep it to around 4 minutes 

7. Come back to the main session and have a group reflection

Option 2 - 

(*this option is better when you have more time available) 

Steps to facilitating the Brain Trust - 

1. Split up the group into breakout rooms of 4-6

• If you have 4 people per room, then you will want to give them roughly 40 minutes total in the breakout rooms and if you have 6 people give them 60 minutes total. 

2. Assign a timekeeper.

3. Have the entire group share their challenge like a round robin tournament. The first person will share their challenge while the rest of the group offers advice or feedback.

4. The second person will go. So on and so forth until everyone has had a chance to share their challenge and get advice. Give each person around 10-15 minutes total for the entire process spelled out in option 1. 

5. Have the person sharing their challenge turn off their camera and have the advisors share ideas or solutions if that person weren't present.

6. Have a group reflection.

The action (5 mins)

Every great event has a close and one of the pillars of the Culture First communities is to put learning into action. Going to another talk or presentation only moves the needle so much in improving the world of work. It's about the action. This is the time to get the group to reflect and see what they are inspired to do. 

The questions for reflection:
(Again, feel free to make these your own) 

• What's one word to describe how you are doing now?

• What was your biggest takeaway from today?

• What's one thing you learned that you are willing to put into action?

The close (5 mins)

Here are some optional questions that you could load into a poll on slido, zoom or create your own google form to send out afterwards:

• How helpful was this session for you? 

• How likely are you to continue attending these sessions?

• How likely are you to recommend this chapter to others?

• How ofter would you  like this community to meet? (monthly,  ever other month, quarterly)

• What time works best for you to meet? 

• As we grow our community, how would you like to see it evolve? What would the ideal version of the community look like to you?

• What do you find most valuable about the group?

• What do you want/need that this community could provide or support you with?

• What knowledge or expertise do you have that you can share with others in this community?

• What topics within culture are you hoping to learn more about?

Create space for the community to connect with one another.  Consider inviting them to your slack channel. Consider having them share their LinkedIn profiles in the chat.

Wrap up by thanking everyone for attending and sharing your upcoming events and how they can stay involved.