Free download from The People PuzzleChocolate in the fridge or the cupboard?
It’s a daft question, and that’s exactly why it works. Get 120 questions that divide a room, show it’s safe to disagree and help you see the people behind the job titles.
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Chocolate: fridge or cupboard?
Go on, you’ve got an opinion. Now imagine what happens when your whole team adds theirs.
Side by side for years. Strangers really.
Plenty of teams work side by side for years without knowing the first thing about each other. That isn’t because people don’t care. It’s because nobody asks.
The Connection Builder Pack fixes that in two minutes a day. It gives you 120 harmless, slightly ridiculous questions that split a room down the middle. Nobody gets it wrong and everybody has an opinion. Then something quietly shifts. People laugh, they disagree, and they find out that disagreeing doesn’t break anything.
Small questions. Big shifts.
It makes it safe to disagree
When a room splits eleven to one over cold pizza and everyone is still laughing, your team has practised disagreeing and found that nothing broke. That’s the habit you need when the stakes are higher.
It levels the room
Nobody is an expert in how to cut a sandwich. The managing director and the apprentice get one vote each, and for two minutes hierarchy takes a back seat.
It shows you who people really are
The answer is rarely the interesting part. The reason behind it is. “I always put the trolley back because my dad used to…” is where connection starts.
“If we can fall out over chocolate in the fridge and still have a laugh, we can disagree about the plan and still trust each other.”
Everything you need to start tomorrow
- 1120 ready-to-use questions across ten themes, from Food Fights to A Glimpse of Character.
- 2Four ways to run them: on a whiteboard, round the room, with a show of hands or as a poll on a call.
- 3The Three Vs (Vote, Voice, Value), a simple way to turn a quick vote into real connection.
- 4“Watch the one”: what the lone tally mark tells a leader about how safe it is to be different.
- 5A four-week planner, so you never have to think up a question on a Monday morning.
Ask it. Then make space.
Any format works. The important thing is asking the question and giving people the space to answer.
Watch the one
The single tally mark is the most important mark on the board. What the room does with the one person who likes warm pizza tells you how safe it is to be different in your team.
The pack shows you what to notice and exactly what to say, so the minority view gets airtime over pizza. Do that week after week and people start to believe you’ll do it over the plan.
Lee Houghton, co-founder of Get Knowledge
Lee is the author of The People Puzzle and the business novel The Missing Piece. He works with senior leaders in some of the UK’s most operationally complex organisations, including National Highways and Valda Energy. He has learned that the gap between strategy and delivery is usually closed one conversation at a time.
Tomorrow morning, ask one question.
See what happens.
120 questions, ten themes and a four-week planner. Free, and ready before your next team meeting.
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