
Songs & Stories
Play a song, tell a story to each other & eat together.
Take a second and listen to this song. This is a song that reminds me of home. I listen to this when I’m feeling nostalgic. It makes me think of all the braais I hosted at my place. Time stood still during those times. The laughs, the music, the food, and the company.
Play a song and tell a story to each other. This, in short, is how songs and stories work.
It is useful to build familiarity with each other in teams. I have used it in many different scenarios. These include:
- Team kickoffs.
- On a regular once a month cadence.
- Leadership team lunches.
- Welcoming new team members in a team.
Facilitating Songs and Stories have given me unexpected insights into the teams that I support. An example of an unexpected learning was that that the one person on the team does Salsa dancing. They shared a song that they dance to. This surprised the whole team. Another story comes to mind when someone played a Dimmu Borgir song and explain that they listen to that song when walking their dog late at night in the woods. Someone also played a Spanish dance song and told the story how they learned dancing from very young. They even got up and danced to the song showing the team their moves.
It’s such a simple activity yet so powerful.
Want to try it yourself?
Here is what you need:
1. People
2. Music
3. Food makes it betterHow to do it in 5 easy to follow steps:
1. Bring food.
2. Set up a a device where people can search and play music on a speaker
3. Give the following instructions:
We are going to play a song and tell a story about it.
We you have the device, search for your song and play it.
You can either turn down the volume and talk over it like a radio DJ.
You can play the entire song and talk after it.
You can play a small snippet and then talk or just introduce it and play it.
It is up to the player to decide how long they want to have people listen to the song and how long they want to talk
In order to get the device you need to ask for it. If you do not want to play a song it’s completely fine.
The story you tell is about why you chose to share the song that you played.
It could be a memory, a song stuck in your head, your favourite song, there are no constraints really
4. To start play a song yourself and share a story.
5. Allow for conversation to happen when it does.
As a bonus try to capture all of the songs and share it as a playlist to the team after the exercise.
A very short adaptation of this could be used as a check in or icebreaker exercise.
1. Ask people to take out their phones.
2. Give them 1 minute to find a song that captures their mood in the context of what you are meeting about.
3. Ask each person to play a snippet of the song on their phone and talk about why they chose the song.
Benji introduced me to this exercise at the last Spotify agile coach unconference. Thanks again Benji.
I’d love to hear from you if you try this. Ping me on twitter.
