Your First Gathering

The welcome 

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. 

Have the chapter lead introduce themselves. Who are you and why did you start this chapter?

Then go over what is the 'Culture First' community and our mission. Go through our slides. If you want to edit these, just make a copy of the deck. 

*Some things to consider:

• Have Jessie Jacob there to talk about the size and reach of this community

• Have another chapter lead from the community come and share why they started their community and what they are doing with their chapters

  • Also share some photos if possible from their chapter gatherings 

• Have a community member from another chapter attend to share their perspective and what they community has meant for them

The connection (20 minutes)

Moving from the welcome, it is now time to allow people to connect and get to know one another a bit better. 

Part One - The Check-In

Consider leading folks through a breathing or grounding exercise.  A few ways to facilitate this:

• Box Breathing

• 3 rounds of 4 seconds in and 4 seconds out

• Play a Calm or Headspace video 

Have them reflect on some questions. 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.)

As a facilitator - the biggest key here is to manage time to keep session on track. Consider giving people a specific amount of time to introduce themselves and to answer these questions. 

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

• 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 

We now move in to the work round, which is the main crux of our event. 

Part 1 - Aligning with the Mission + Principles

Have folks reflect on the below questions: 

• What does it mean to you to be 'Culture First'? Why do you care about creating a better world of work? (This gets them to connect with the purpose in their own way) 

• Which of the Culture First principles do you align with the most? (Maybe have them pick 2.)

Go around and do one question at a time. Give folks a certain amount of time to share. 

Part 1 - What's next

Have a discuss about the below questions:

• If you were to continue to be a part of this community,  what would the ideal version of the community look like to you? (Remember, this work is hard and we can't do it alone.) 

• What kinds of topics do you want to learn more about to help you grown and/or move your organization to be more Culture First? (This gives you an idea of what people are looking see in terms of future content) 

You could use just let this be free form or use some tools for an online event. If it's 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. 

Close (10 Min)

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?

Some optional poll questions that you could load into 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? 

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.