🏕️ Let's Go To Summer Camp: Campfire Stories

6 Ways to Share Employee Stories & Build Community | Summer Camp Edition 1

Jun 26, 2023

It’s officially summer — the season of s’mores — a time for sunshine, relaxation and camp! As a destination for exploration, summer camp teaches many skills while fostering fun and friendships. I learned a lot from my summers as a camper and counselor in the woods, theaters and studios — lessons on creativity, resilience, teamwork and more.

As I reflected on camp memories, I wanted to find ways to bring similar experiences into our work lives today. With The Switchboard’s Summer Camp, I’m drawing upon that camp spirit to share knowledge, engage in conversations and bring fun to the ways we communicate and connect at work.

Instead of traveling for archery, arts & crafts and kayaking, this camp comes to you as an enrichment experience to sharpen skills, spark ideas and inspire your professional path. Sit back, relax, read, discuss, and engage along with the content as it’s shared — a side of s’mores is encouraged, but not required.

Take the poll below to shape the summer calendar or reply to this newsletter with your special request.

Now, let’s get started with the first night of camp by gathering around the campfire for stories at work.

There’s a powerful force from the glow of the campfire that’s sparked conversation and connection for thousands of years. Research featured in Smithsonian Magazine documents How Conversations Around Campfire Might Have Shaped Human Cognition And Culture:

Most adults today spend the daylight hours at work; nighttime is for cutting loose over drinks and food and sharing stories and strengthening relationships. Our ancient ancestors probably weren’t so different.
According to new research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ending the day around the campfire, where songs, stories and relationships blossomed, ultimately shaped cultures and perhaps even helped develop some of our ability to understand one another, cooperate and internalize culture.

🪵🔥 How can we recreate these campfire-esque experiences at work?

It doesn’t always need to be after-hours or in-person, it can be incorporated into our days and virtual gatherings.

Begin by empowering and training your colleagues to tell powerful stories. By creating a toolkit, employees can communicate clearly and effectively. Here are three helpful resources to spark a storytelling strategy:

How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth, an organization known for its live storytelling nights (more on them below).
Do/Story/ How to tell your story so the world listens by Bobette Buster, helps writers find a hook in their story. Learn more from this book report on best practices.
The Art of Storytelling from IDEO, the iconic design thinking brand, offers tips, data and a framework for impactful stories.

Once you’ve created an internal guide for storytelling support, start gathering your work community for creative storytelling experiences inspired by the campfire.

Below are six ideas for recreating that campfire feeling:

🦋 The Moth: Themed Stories
🍫 Tiny Fireside Chats
🧪 Failure Stories
🧸 Show and Tell Sessions
🎤 TEDx Talks
㊗️ PechaKucha Presentations

🦋 #1 The Moth: Themed Stories

According to Psychology Today, sharing stories brings people together. It also builds empathy — one of the top skills for employees, campers and counselors. Founded by the novelist George Dawes Green, The Moth launched in 1997 with themed gatherings where people tell stories without notes. There’s also a popular podcast, The Moth Radio Hour.

Moth shows are renowned for the great range of human experience they showcase... Since each story is true and every voice authentic, the shows dance between documentary and theater, creating a unique, intimate, and often enlightening experience for the audience.

There’s a theme for each storytelling show and a time limit for the presenters. Consider featuring employee stories about organizational values, DEI stories or vote on a topic of interest. These events can be recorded for others to watch later and complemented by written posts shared on your internal platform.

🍫 #2 Tiny Fireside Chats

Consider bringing a mini campfire to you! This nostalgic Tiny Campfire experience from Team Building, the organization known for Museum Hack — unconventional tours of the best cultural institutions — offers a kit with a "camp counselor," story support, fun trivia and an at-home s'mores-making kit.

Customize this experience by inviting a leader as a guest speaker and hosting a Q and A fireside chat. The trivia could be focused on fun facts about your organization and its people. If you are in the office, a gourmet s’mores bar with artisan chocolate, fresh-baked shortbread cookies, and Malvis, Spanish-inspired marshmallows could be a delicious draw to the event.

🧪#3 Failure Stories

We’re great at celebrating successes, but research shows there’s a lot we can learn from failure if we just talked about it more often. Wharton Professor and Author Adam Grant is on a mission to change how we talk about failure:

When you normalize failure as part of growth, people are quick to recognize it. They strive to learn from it and rectify it.

Showcase stories of failure and what we can learn from them publicly. Ensure a safe space by setting ground rules. Encourage leaders to sign up first so that employees at all levels will feel comfortable sharing. For inspiration, check out What The Museum of Failure Can Teach Us.

🧸 #4 Show and Tell Sessions

This is much more than talking about your favorite teddy bear at work. Similar to camp, Show and Tell has a nostalgic childhood feeling to it. The idea comes from a kindergarten tradition of sharing a meaningful object or photograph but can be expanded in creative directions to show making chocolate as a hobby, publishing a small local community newspaper, teaching gardening as a hobby, creating sculpture art for inspiration and more employee passions.

These Sessions can teach a lot about a colleague that’s not on a resume or discoverable at a meeting. Give each presenter 5 minutes. Encourage minimal slides to lessen the preparation needed. I prefer to keep the presenters and their topics a surprise until the event. It adds an element of mystery to draw people to attend. This program is also great for groups of friends. I’ve published a guide for how to organize an experience.

🎤 #5 TEDx Talks

This iconic global talk series with red carpets is “on a mission to discover and spread ideas that spark imagination, embrace possibility and catalyze impact.” Since 1984, talks have been recorded around the world and inspired millions of people. Affiliated chapters — called TEDx — can create their own official TED-style events in communities such as colleges and companies.

Take a look at the TED Talk Library’s Leadership and Management Insights featuring Boston Consulting Group. Follow a similar approach by tapping into the talents of your team members as speakers to share their skills with each other. Here’s more about producing a TEDx Business Event with an official license.

㊗️ #6 PechaKucha Presentations

Japanese for “chit chat,” PechaKucha was started in 2003 by renowned architects, Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham Design is infused into the program’s format — “a slide show of 20 images, each auto-advancing after 20 seconds. It’s non-stop and you've got 400 seconds to tell your story, with visuals guiding the way.”

There’s now a global community in 1,200 cities and schools have adopted the method to teach students. Create your own version with a license. These events can be business-focused as a different way to talk about work projects internally or highlight employee passions and interests.

Have you tried any of these programs at work? What other ideas do you have for bringing the campfire spirit to how we communicate and connect at work? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

The Switchboard