The Invisible Gap That Forms Between Sessions
There’s a quiet awkwardness that settles over a group that hasn’t been together for a while, especially over the long summer holiday break. It might only be a few weeks, but something shifts.
The easy familiarity people once had with each other feels slightly more effortful. Conversations are a little more stilted. The group is technically back together, but they don’t feel back together yet.
This matters – because a group that isn’t connected isn’t really a group. They’re just people in the same room.
Reconnection doesn’t happen on its own. It needs an intentional nudge.
Here are two activities that provide exactly that.
Commonalities
Competitive Reconnection
The first activity is called Commonalities. Split your group into small teams and challenge them to list every attribute that every person in their team shares — things like “we’ve all been to Europe” or “we all prefer coffee to tea.”
Here’s what gives the activity its edge: unique commonalities score higher. If another team lists the same thing, both teams lose it from their count. This simple twist transforms what could be a pleasant-but-slow conversation into something genuinely competitive, and it drives teams to dig deeper than the obvious answers.
In a back-to-school context, you can narrow the scope to what happened over the holidays, which makes for wonderfully surprising discoveries. But the activity works equally well for corporate teams returning from annual leave, sports teams reconvening for pre-season, or any group that’s had time apart.
The joy of this activity is watching people realise they have things in common they never knew about – and the genuine delight that follows.
Crosstown Connections
Active Reconnection
If Commonalities is the thoughtful approach to reconnection, Crosstown Connections is the energetic one.
Over several rounds, participants form pairs with a new partner based on criteria you call out – the type of shoe they’re wearing, or the month they were born in, for example. With each new partner, they exchange a different handshake or greeting you’ve introduced. The result is a room in constant, lively motion.
What I love about Crosstown Connections is how naturally it rebuilds comfort. People are moving, laughing, and engaging across the room rather than just with the people nearest to them.
By the end of a few rounds, the group feels warm, familiar and genuinely reconnected – not because you told them to reconnect, but because the activity made it happen organically.
The Reconnection Investment
Both activities are worth the ten minutes they take. A group that feels connected is a group that participates more fully, communicates more openly, and achieves more of what you’ve planned for the session.
Think of reconnection activities not as a nice-to-have warm-up, but as essential infrastructure for everything that follows.
To learn from more Lazy Facilitator tips and activity ideas, click the link below.
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