Stop Wasting Money on Events Almost Nobody Likes to Attend
Despite organizations spending thousands of dollars on venues, catering, and elaborate planning, I witness what I call a "gather and hope" strategy: the regrettable assumption that simply putting people in the same room (with drinks and music too) automatically creates the connections and culture we aspire to.
An Elder’s Fifteen-Minute Gift
Think back to you early in your career. Maybe you had just turned 25, perhaps you still ground through graduate school and you felt uncertain about your path forward.
Now recall a senior professional who extended what seemed like a casual invitation. Maybe it was coffee, lunch, or just a brief phone call.
At the time, it may have looked like nothing special to them.
But for you, that fifteen-minute conversation might have shifted your feelings, confidence, excitement, belonging, even the trajectory of your professional life.
The elder who changed your career didn't need a decorated room, a catered lunch, or a formal agenda.
They needed only genuine interest and the wisdom to understand that sometimes humble gestures create big impact.
Everyone reading this now is an elder to someone. We have the power to shift someone’s feelings of connection with very humble investment.
When Good Intentions Meet Bad Execution
This brings me to our modern workplace dilemma.
Organizations increasingly demand that remote employees return to in-person gatherings because we recognize that something important has disappeared in a digital-first world.
The intention is great. We need human connection to build trust, admiration and adaptability.
Then often things go sideways. Many event planners operate without a coherent approach to human connection. They hope people and food in a pretty room are enough… everytime.
They recreate what they've seen on television or at other corporate events. They follow templates that we recognize as looking professionally appropriate and create an emotionally hollow experience.
The results are events that cost real money and time and leave participants feeling more disconnected than before, even perturbed for wasting precious hours and boring them even more.
A neighbor recently returned from a cross-country business trip, mandated by her company to "hang out" with colleagues.
Despite wanting to connect with her team and genuinely liking her coworkers, she came home feeling the entire experience wasted her time.
The whole trip lacked any framework to create genuine connection. So much lost opportunity.
I wish they would learn how to set up and host a space so connection has the chance, almost inevitability of growing. Note: There are free event guidelines to help with this on my site https://www.charlesvogl.com/downloads
The Fun Factor: More Than Entertainment
If you ask people to travel and spend time away from their families, the experience better offer a genuinely enjoyable experience.
This doesn't mean expensive or exotic.
Think about your closest friendships, the people you'd call in the middle of the night during a crisis.
You forged bonds with these people during events that were fun. So fun in fact, you looked forward to more. That was almost certainly a minimum standard.
Not necessarily elaborate or costly, and almost always genuinely fun.
When I see workplace gatherings that feel like obligations rather than fun opportunities, I see that we actually toxify the relationships we want to strengthen when we ignore the fun part of gathering.
Without the fun, people associate time with their colleagues with boredom and frustration.
The Ohana Insight: Understanding Cultural Dynamics
Creating venues for meaningful connection requires understanding that people bring different cultural expectations to shared experiences.
An example from my own background: My mom is from Hawaii, and I grew up in a home with what we call "ohana welcome." In ohana culture, we treat guests like family. You know what families do together? We clean together.
When I went to the East Coast, I discovered that good hosting often means allowing the host (often the matriarch) to provide a completely delivered experience. When I made the mistake of delivering a soiled plate to the kitchen, I insulted the host’s competence.
Neither approach is the last rule of hosting. You can understand the confusion and frustration that grows when two different cultural expectations collide at a workplace event.
Someone trying to help by clearing plates might appear insulting and rude in one context, while someone remaining seated might look lazy or entitled in another.
I don't see this as bad. I want us to prepare for these dynamics so we don't demonize people who approach situations differently, and so we can help people feel relaxed rather than wondering why others are giving them stink eye looks for trying to help clean up.
Beyond the Convention: Designing for Connection
Events that create lasting bonds typically invert many conventional assumptions:
Small group conversations often matter more than large presentations.
Shared activities that require collaboration build stronger connections than passive listening.
Informal time often generates more value than packed agendas.
Questions and dialogue create more engagement than polished answers.
My goal does not involve eliminating structure. We design structure that serves human connection rather than connection theater.
The Ripple Effect of Authentic Gathering
When I help organizations get team connection right, I see the benefits extend far beyond the immediate event.
Teams that have shared genuinely positive experiences communicate more effectively during stressful periods.
They reach out for help more readily when they need it.
They approach conflicts with greater generosity, drawing on developed trust and admiration.
They demonstrate more creativity because psychological safety enables risk-taking.
And more credentialed experts than me have done the research that shows us this is critical for organizations facing uncertainty and change.
Moving Forward: A New Framework
In my work, I've found that creating meaningful workplace connection requires intentionality at every level:
Start with genuine invitations that communicate specific value.
Design experiences that people actually enjoy, not just professionally appropriate-looking events.
Understand and accommodate different cultural expectations around hosting and guesting.
Prioritize small group interaction over large group presentation.
Build in time for developing conversations and relationship building.
Follow up on new connections made, helping them deepen over time.
I see the alternative: continuing with gather-and-hope strategies, as wasteful of resources, frustrating to teams, and actually damaging to the culture we want to build.
The Choice Before Us
I believe we stand at an interesting crossroads in workplace culture.
The pandemic taught us that we can accomplish remarkable things remotely, but it also revealed what we lose when human connection becomes purely transactional.
As I help organizations bring people together again, I see we have the opportunity to do it thoughtfully: to create gatherings that honor both our need for efficiency and our deeper human need for meaningful connection.
The mentor who changed your career with a fifteen-minute conversation understood something I still consider profound: genuine interest in another person's growth and well-being creates a difference far beyond the investment on a single day.
We should gather. We need to do so with the intentionality and prepared spaces that human connection deserves.
Get free resources on building the community you long for at www.charlesvogl.com
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