This exercise is a profoundly simple, powerful way to close any meeting.
It can easily be adjusted to fit any group size in any context.
Note: The brand new Future Focused We! Connect Cards featured in this video are free (and only available*) to attendees of the 2025 Connectors Summit. You can use and adapt this concept in a “do it yourself” fashion without the deck as well.
If you traced back why you’re here, in the career or path you’re in right now, you could probably map it through a series of conversations either with yourself or with others. That means your future is built the same way: one conversation at a time. You just don’t always know which ones will matter most.
The long tail is cool. But what’s just as powerful and honestly, a great energizer and way to wrap up a meeting is to focus on changing the next 15 minutes.
Normally, breaks look like chatting with whoever’s next to you by happenstance, or taking out your phone and going down the stress-scroll rabbit hole. Instead, I love doing a “take what you need” break.
Here’s how it works:
- Flip over every card word side up on your table.
Ready? Set. Go. - Choose one word off your table that captures what you’d love to happen in the next 15 minutes.
- Share that with the person next to you what your ideal next 15 minutes would look like related to the word you chose.
I actually came up with this activity recently in a team meeting. We got to the end of a longer-than-intended Zoom call, and we were all like, “Whew, that’s a lot of screen time.” So I decided to interrupt what normally happens after a meeting. I asked everyone: “What would your absolute ideal next 15 minutes look like?”
Everyone shared. Mine was plugging in my headphones, turning up some EDM, and walking to the farthest coffee shop down the street. And that’s exactly what I did. And honestly it changed the course of the rest of my day.
The Power of Ending Well
You know, when we think back to college, professors would end a class by asking, “Any questions?” And that’s honestly the worst way to close anything. The brain needs way more than two seconds to process 45 minutes of content, turn it into a question, build the courage to speak, and then actually raise a hand.
So really, “Any questions?” usually just means the sound of zipping backpacks.
Instead, I love giving people 5–10 seconds to actually think about what they’re genuinely curious about. Then we do a lightning round three or four quick questions and wrap from there.
Similarly, this exercise just pauses people long enough to make a conscious and deliberate choice about what to do next.
The Color Philosophy Behind the Cards
Someone asked me about the colors on the new Future Focused We! Connect Cards deck—they do have meaning. The questions are color-coded around three types of curiosity:
- Possibility questions: big-picture, imaginative questions like “If you could start a whole new career, what would it be?”
- Process questions: how-type questions that move the idea forward.
- Practical questions: action-based, specific questions like “What are you going to do tomorrow?”
Every conversation that’s shaped my life has kind of followed that funnel—from vision, to process, to practical.
