A guide to running better virtual meetings

An icebreaker is a team-building activity that helps group members get to know each other and feel more comfortable. Often used in team meetings or to introduce new students in a class, icebreakers foster a sense of community and help build rapport between https://remotemode.net/blog/15-effective-icebreakers-for-virtual-meetings/ colleagues, students, or team members. This is one of my favourite activities for virtual team building. It’s quick, effective and can be modified for almost any scenario. The game works by having one person start a sentence with by saying a single word.

You can begin with everyone just throwing random facts out there, asking questions, and seeing where they can make connections—even if it’s a stretch! For example, you might say, “I love to cook.” Another coworker might then say, “I’m a terrible cook, but I love https://remotemode.net/ to eat. My favorite food is Italian.” Someone else might chime in, “I speak Italian! I studied abroad in Rome my senior year of college.” From there, you might discover that you’ve all been to Rome, and this could lead to sharing stories about those trips.

Icebreakers You Can Do In Person

You need to ask your team members to find something with a specific character during a specific time frame (let’s say 30 seconds). A great way to know more about your coworkers is through their offices. Maybe Ann loves motivational quotes and paintings, and her office is full of colors. This question can generate great and interesting cinema debates. There are so many different opinions on movies that you can discover people on your team who share your same movies and others who are completely the opposite. An interesting way to start with meetings is by doing 5-minute meditation sessions.

• Plus, no one has to feel pressured to frantically come up with an interesting enough fact.
• Here are a few virtual icebreaker ideas that are ideal for welcoming new team members into the fold and to supplement your onboarding efforts.
• This playful method creates a powerful shared picture of the feelings in the group.
• This exercise is especially good for newly-formed teams, as it encourages people to share their interests and preferences.
• If your teammates are scattered around the world, kick off your meeting by sending a virtual hi to each one of them.

It’s fun to identify people, plus everyone gets to share something about themselves. You’ll definitely learn a lot of interesting stuff about each other. Using an open text poll, encourage your team to share their failure or struggle in Slido as well so that people can see that they’re not alone in being imperfect. You can then regroup and open a discussion about lessons that people learned from their failures.

Ice breaker questions set the mood and bring everyone together

This icebreaker poses that age-old question of what we would do if stuck on a desert island while asking your team to think about what they would need to survive. In all cases, these activities encourage communication and contributions from your entire virtual team. For this reason alone, their inclusion at the start of a meeting can be transformative. When kicking off a virtual meeting, we have additional work to do in order to position the session for success.

They can explain their emojis in the chat or over their microphone. Everyone may be more engaged and communicate in ways that make them feel comfortable. Control and leverage the tiny signals you’re sending – from your stance and facial expressions to your word choice and vocal tone – to improve your personal and professional relationships.

Create office superlatives

For example, you can be the moderator and create a playlist of songs with diverse genres. And in the call you can put the song with no lyrics and the first person who guesses it wins. Or, you can do a round where each member puts a song and you all answer, that way you also participate in the game. Chasing a beach ball around will get teams’ blood pumping, and sharing fun facts will help them get to know each other better. You can use several platforms to host a live word cloud session, including Mentimeter, Poll Everywhere, and Slido. These programs allow audience members to share their opinions in real time.

After people submit their answers, ask volunteers to share how they voted and why. If you need a guaranteed conversation starter, try a question that brings back childhood or teenage years memories – they provide an inexhaustible source of amusement. If your teammates are scattered around the world, kick off your meeting by sending a virtual hi to each one of them. Our ‘magic cube’ random question generator will do that for you.