Connection cards activity

Get to know your Circle with questions that build deeper connections.

Before You Start

Goal: Build connection, align on shared values, and deepen trust with your Circle through intentional sharing.

Meeting Agenda · Approx. 60 mins

  • Member Updates · 10 mins
  • Icebreaker · 10 mins
  • Activity · 25 mins
  • One Action · 10 mins
  • Wrap-Up · 5 mins

👋 Member Updates · 10 mins

Go around your Circle and share personal updates. Keep them brief and focused on significant changes or important decisions since the last time you met. It's OK not to have one every month. If you have a One Action update from last time, share that too.

🧊 Icebreaker · 10 mins

Invite everyone in the group to share. Keep answers to one or two minutes per person.

Something that brings me joy is…

🏋️ Activity · 25 mins

This activity features a series of connection questions designed to help you get to know one another on a deeper level. They focus on sharing personal stories and benefiting from each other's ideas, experiences, and support.

Go around the room and have each member answer a question, and keep going for as long as time allows. You can go through the questions in order, or have members choose a question to answer. If you're going in order, it's fine to skip a question and move to the next one if you don't feel you have a good answer.

Questions:

  1. How has your childhood or background shaped the way you show up at work?
  2. What is one thing you wish men understood about the experiences of working women?
  3. What is your greatest professional ambition, and why does it motivate you?
  4. What is one challenge you’ve faced at work specific to being a woman, and how have you overcome it?
  5. What is one piece of advice you would give to other working women?
  6. When have you felt most powerful?
  7. What are you most proud of?
  8. What do you most regret?
  9. Tell us about a time when you overcame adversity.
  10. What are the three things you most value? How does your daily routine align with these values?
  11. Who’s had an impact on your life whom you haven’t thanked? Why?
  12. Who do you most admire and why?
  13. Who do you most envy and why?
  14. If you could give one piece of advice to your younger self, what would it be?
  15. How would your closest friend describe you?
  16. If you had to describe your life in three sentences, what would you say?
  17. What is one thing in your life that you wish you could change?
  18. What brings out the best in you?
  19. A year from now, what will you wish you had done today?
  20. If there was one more hour in the day, what would you spend it on?

🎯 One Action · 10 mins

Commit to one concrete action — big or small — you'll take before next meeting. Go around the Circle and share (1 minute or less per member). Vocalizing it helps hold each other accountable.

Think about one concrete action (big or small) you'll do to step outside your comfort zone or try something new in the next 30 days. The action could relate to something that came up in today's card activity, but it doesn't have to.

📅 Wrap-Up · 5 mins

Before you break, plan your next meeting and close on an energetic note. Go around your Circle one by one and finish the sentence:

Now I am feeling… (choose one word).

  • Set the day, time, and location
  • Choose the next topic or resource
  • Confirm who's leading the discussion
  • Decide how you'll stay in touch in between

Brought to you in partnership with Carole Robin of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, based on an activity originally developed by Stanford's Interpersonal Dynamics faculty.