60 Second Magic 60 Second Magic

Updated: March 2023

This is my magic trick for building cross team relationships in a remote workplace:

Be one minute early to every meeting

Always say goodbye and be the last one to leave the meeting

That’s it. That’s the trick.

You’ll always be the first and last person at the meeting, so now you can make small talk with whoever is there (try to work in a real compliment). It’s done wonders for me at keeping in touch with assorted people around the company. And it started a little bit of a movement where a bunch of us would all show up a little early for team meetings to catch up. Pure ✨management magic✨

It might sound hard to do, but this is one of those rare cases when a bit of software can actually improve a human interaction situation. There are many ways to set up a meeting autojoiner, on my mac I use Meeting Bar which pops up a full screen modal when it’s time to join the meeting. Can’t help but be early.

I wish I could say that I came up with this purposefully, but it happened because I kept being late for meetings and that’s very much not who I wanted to be. It ended up turning a weakness into a strength without trying!