 Great. Hi, Jessica. This is Jason, and I have Jessica, a fantastic person who books all of my podcasts and has an incredible business interview connection. So, I'm excited to have her and talk about her experience with my game Cards Against Mundanity. So, hello. Hey, Jason. Thank you so much, and I can't thank you enough for actually creating the game because it's been amazing. Like, we've played it a couple of times here in our office, and I'll let you kind of prompt me with questions, but it's like, I love the game and it's been so great to create a lot of just like, build our relationships here in the office. So, what challenges are you facing, you know, as a business? Because I think it's helpful to give people ideas of, you know, what prompted you to want to do something like this? Yeah, I think what prompted us to want to do something like this is just to start with the challenges that we have, you know, we're in the first year of having employees here in our office. And the biggest difference that we've seen with having in-house employees is that not only are we hiring and training people to do a job, but being face-to-face in an office with people, there's the human element of, you know, dealing with emotions and different moods and, like, people have different, you know, traumatic events in their life, like, loved ones dying or getting sick, and that really affects how you are in the workplace. Like, it's really, it's not realistic to have people just drop all that at the door and then just come in and be happy, like, workers, like, we're all human. And so the biggest challenge that we really have been learning to overcome is to have that psychological safety in the team with people that you've really known less than a year, some less than just a few months. And so, like, doing a game like this really helped us to get to know each other and kind of have a bond that is hard to get otherwise in such a short amount of time. Yeah, and I think there was even work, obviously, with people that you know for a long time, too, because these are questions in the game that you would never really ask people normally. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, they're questions that, yeah, I mean, some of the staff members here I have known for several years, but just hanging out with them, I'm not asking them, like, what's the hardest health problem you've ever faced? Or I don't know if that's one of the questions, but like, questions like that, it's just you're not thinking of those kinds of conversation starters. So it really does help. So how did you roll this out to people? Because sometimes I know I've had some people ask questions directly, you know, do people, you know, are they open and willing to share? And how do you bring this up to other employees that you have and the people that you manage? Yeah, so what we did is we had a whole like two days set aside for some kind of planning and business planning. We wanted to kind of overhaul a lot of our workflow systems. So we scheduled out this day that was out of the ordinary. We did a lot of like future planning and brainstorming. And then we went out to lunch. And then we came back and played the game after that. I know that part of your recommendation is to like do an activity that kind of like loses people up. So we didn't really have time to do that, but we went out to lunch and then we played it afterwards. So we kind of let people know we're playing a game. And then we, you know, followed your instructions like I went first and then Margie went and then everyone did end up taking. I forget there's the conversation starter and the connection questions. Yeah, the next questions and everyone ended up taking connection questions, which is so great like everyone, you know, that just showed us that people felt comfortable opening up and people answered honestly. And it was just, it was great. It was so great to get to know people. And do you think people were reticent at all to share or to open up? I mean, I can't, I guess I can't speak to how they were feeling inside, but I can say that everyone answered pretty willingly and honestly. And it just felt like a pretty safe space from the get go so it really went well. That's great. And how did people, you know, what results or what things came out of this because obviously if you run it a couple times something must have happened positively or impacted. Oh, yeah, yeah, we've played the game twice because one of our staff members wasn't here the first time we played it. So then we played again a few weeks later with her. And it was amazing actually. So we played it the first time and then sometime like two to three weeks after that, one of our team members had a pretty traumatic event happen in her family. And I really believe and she's only been here a couple months, I believe that, you know, because we played cards against Modanity and she got to know some other team members experiences. She clearly, you know, felt comfortable really opening up to us about what happened and we could really be there for her emotionally rather than having it be like a very cold like, you know, employee employer like I need to be out of work for this time for an emergency like she could really tell us what was going on. And I, if I don't think if we hadn't played cards against Modanity, I just think those conversations would have been much different. You know, if she hadn't known other people like on through similar things, if that makes sense. Right, because I think it's creating like the psychological safety that you can bring these issues and things forward and people are willing to listen. A lot of times we just don't even realize that that's a possibility and that people could actually really care at that level. Yeah, and I think also what I noticed is it was, as you know, the business owner, it was really great to have an opportunity to share some of my vulnerabilities because, like as the boss, you're kind of always told like, you know, you got to be a duck you don't want them to see you sweat. You always got to have everything together. But to have an appropriate space where I could share things that I struggled with, like, I think it humanized me and it helped, like my team relate to me more and see that, oh, like, I have struggles and stresses too. But it's like to go to your staff and be like, oh, I really struggled with a parenting moment last night. Like, that's not really appropriate to do like in the middle of, you know, necessarily like at a team meeting, but having it being an appropriate space. Just, yeah, I guess it just, you know, humanized me, I think, and helped me build stronger relationships with my team. Right. And I think when you when you're vulnerable to other people, then you make it safe for them to be vulnerable with you. Yeah, which is I think really helpful because in a business setting that sets up opportunities to bring people to bring ideas, creative things, innovative things, and they feel safe that they can do that because you've had an opportunity to share. And like you said, a lot of times as a business owner or a manager or leader, it's hard to find those spaces to be vulnerable to actually share. And you just can't do it out of nowhere, because it seems really inking growing and odd and people don't really know how to take that. And they're in the back of their head, they're going to think there's some agenda going on. Right, right, exactly. So what, have you seen any other anything going on with the team because of it or anything else happened, other conversations or feedback people have given? Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing is, you know, what I mentioned with one of our team members having a traumatic event happen and just like, yeah, so what I kind of already explained and I think there's been other things I just think the team as a whole is working better together and there's just more, like I said, there's that psychological safety and I'm sure there's like little things that happen that we don't even think about now because it's just, but I can say like in comparison to, you know, groups of employees that we've had over the last year, like before playing cards against mundanity and really thinking about the psychological safety aspect of having a team and a staff. It's going really well now, so yeah. What advice and recommendations would you give to other people that may consider playing this? Just play it. But I will say that, yes, play it, follow all of Jason's instructions. I think it's good to like, plan the day accordingly, like make sure people are set up for because one thing that I've learned is not to just like spring ideas on your staff like, hey, let's play this game now. Like, I think it's important to allow people to mentally prepare for like what's going to happen. You know, so just to let them know what's going on, make sure people are, you know, because people don't want to be, you know, just taken out of their day to play a game where they had other stuff that they were planning to do, so plan for it. Really take the time to plan the day, make sure there's something that will kind of loosen people up before you play the game, so it goes well. Yeah. And how did you find doing it the second time? Because I just am curious is my last question because, you know, usually people do it once. I've never had anyone do it twice. It was good, because we didn't get through every question the first time. So we like kept the cards, you know, like in order. So then when we, so we played it a second time and then once we got to the questions that we had already hit, we're like, oh, okay, we've already answered all these questions out. So it was good because then we went through every question. And if there were questions that we repeated, like a different person had them. So we got to answer it differently. And we kind of loosened up the rules a little bit with the second time around. We're like, oh, like, let's just get people as long as they want to answer the question. So it was fun. Yeah, because I think we also took more conversation starters the second time. We're like, oh, we did like all connection last time. So let's just do like some lighter ones. Yeah, that's fun too. Yes, exactly. And you got to the next one. Hey, well, thanks for sharing. I appreciate all that. And I know people listening will be, you know, really, it's really a lot of helpful information and making it feel safe for them to be able to share with their team and organization. So yeah, and thanks again for making the game. I really encourage everyone to play it. Great. Thanks.