Most business meetings start the same way: people trickle in, check their phones, make small talk, and wait for everyone else to arrive.
But here’s the funny thing by waiting for the latecomers, we actually reward lateness and punish punctuality.
So what if you flipped that?
What if the first few minutes of every meeting were designed for connection, creativity, and contribution so that showing up on time felt rewarding?
That’s where the concept of the Unofficial Start comes in.
The Power of the Unofficial Start
The Unofficial Start is a simple but transformative idea shared with me by my friend, Mark Collard, an expert in experiential learning.
The principle is this:
As people roll into a room, create a quick, low-stakes, meaningful opportunity for them to connect before the official agenda begins.
Instead of waiting for everyone to settle, you’re setting the tone for participation. You’re inviting people to join, not just attend.
Try This: “Word Collisions”
Here’s an easy, energizing way to kick off a meeting using the unofficial start method.
I call it Word Collisions.
Setup:
- Place a handful of cards or slips of paper on two separate tables. Each card has a different word values, emotions, or prompts (for example: trust, growth, courage, balance).
- As people enter, invite them to grab one word from each table.
- Then, have them sit with someone nearby and share:
- How their two words relate (or don’t).
- Or why one word feels particularly relevant to their life or work right now.
That’s it.
It’s a rolling start people connect as they arrive, not after the “official start” time. It’s fun, organic, and instantly builds engagement.
Why It Works
This kind of activity does something small but powerful: it shifts participants from passive observers to active contributors before the meeting even begins.
It also sets up a theme that runs through all of my work:
Connection before content.
Because if you try to hand someone a financial plan, a project strategy, or a change initiative and they don’t trust you, you might as well hand them a bag of Cheetos and say, “Good luck.”
The Power of Asking Better Questions
Once the group is warmed up, I often ask:
“When you meet someone for the first time, what questions do you typically ask?”
And the answers are nearly universal:
- “Where are you from?”
- “What do you do?”
- “How was your trip?”
- “How’s the weather?”
These are the safe, autopilot questions that come out of everyone’s mouth. They’re not bad questions but they don’t exactly spark meaningful connection either.
Because when we’ve answered a question hundreds of times, our responses become rote. We hit play on the same internal script.
That’s why I believe:
We’re living in an age where answers are cheap, but better questions are priceless.
What AI Taught Me About Human Questions
Here’s the ironic twist.
If I type into ChatGPT,
“Give me five ideas for my kid’s birthday,”
it’ll give me five ideas.
But if I type:
“Give me 55 ideas for a pirate-themed birthday party for my four-and-a-half-year-old in Pittsburgh,”
the output becomes way more interesting.
Same tool. Different prompt.
And humans are no different.
The quality of our conversations and even our relationships is shaped by the quality of our questions.
So, if you walk into a wedding or a conference and ask, “Where are you from?” you’ll get a generic connection.
But if you ask, “What’s something you’re excited about this month?” you’ll get a glimpse into someone’s actual world.
The Question That Changed My Tomorrow
A few years ago, my mentor, Mark Levy, opened a meeting with this simple question:
“What is something you’d like to do more of?”
At the time, my answer was: scuba diving.
I love being underwater. I grew up diving for lobster in New England, but I hadn’t been in years since having my now-four-year-old son.
Six months later, I was giving a keynote in Florida. I booked my flight a little early… just so I could go scuba diving.
I surfaced, looked around, and realized:
There’s a 0 to 1% chance I’d be here if Mark hadn’t asked me that question.
That moment became living proof of something I now call talking your way into tomorrow.
The Science Behind It: The Question-Behavior Effect
There’s real data to back this up.
Psychologists have documented something called the Question-Behavior Effect, the idea that simply asking someone about a behavior increases the likelihood that they’ll act on it.
For example:
- When researchers asked people on a college campus, “What is your intention to vote in this election?” it increased voter turnout by 25%.
- When they asked, “Do you intend to give blood today?” it increased actual blood donation by 8.6%.
- And in a study of 40,000 people, when participants were asked, “Do you intend to buy a car in the next six months?”, they became 35% more likely to do so.
That’s not a typo. 35%.
The questions we ask literally shape behavior.
So… What Are You Going to Do Tomorrow?
I’ll close this post the same way I often close a live session, with a story.
At a retreat I co-led with a brilliant facilitator named Alexis, a young man approached her, bursting with excitement about his new nonprofit idea to end global poverty.
She listened, smiled, and then asked:
“That’s amazing. What are you going to do tomorrow?”
Because dreams are built one next step at a time.
So I’ll leave you with that same question
and you only have two possible answers:
Something.
or
Nothing.
What are you going to do tomorrow?
Keep Exploring
If you’d like to bring these kinds of intentional starts and powerful questions to your own meetings or workshops, explore:
- 🎴 We! Connect Cards — the original deck designed to help people connect more meaningfully.
- 📘 Ask Powerful Questions — the book that started it all, co-authored with Will Wise.
- 💡 Connection Before Content Masterclass — practical tools and facilitation strategies for building trust and engagement.
And for free facilitation resources, visit weand.me/tools.
