160+ Fun Icebreaker Questions For Virtual Work Meetings, Team Building Activities, & Holiday Parties

For example, ask your people questions, do phone calls, and participate in team building activities. Basically, do 2.5x as many virtual team building activities as you do local team building. For example, if you dedicated five minutes at the beginning of office meetings to icebreakers then your virtual meeting equivalent is 12.5 minutes. If you organized one company offsite each quarter, then you should organize at least two and maybe three virtual off-sites in that same time period. If you think this way about meetings, chances are others do, such as the team members you’ve called together to discuss a vital aspect of the project you’re all working on. Instead of dismissing meetings whole cloth, you could try some icebreaker games to make them more fun and productive.

• You can increase participation and get feedback by asking your team to enter responses into a chat to create a virtual icebreaker.
• If the participants have been there or done that, have them raise their hand.
• Virtual Social Shuffle is a connection-building group activity for remote teams.

The game forces your colleagues to work collaboratively when brainstorming potential solutions. Second, the Marshmallow Challenge encourages people to think quickly and offer alternative solutions when their initial idea fails. After they guess, ask the employee who wrote the fact to identify themselves and give any further context if necessary. This could be a great way to get to know surprising new things about your teammates. The real trick is for the leader to confuse players by giving fast Simon Says commands, then giving them a command without saying the keywords. This could work like, “Simon says touch your hips, Simon says hop on one foot, Simon says touch your nose — touch your ears! ” Whoever does the action will be booted out of the game because it wasn’t a Simon says action.

Virtual Icebreakers And Team

Use some of the strategies we talked about today to open the floor for conversation before diving into your topic. Taking just a few minutes to connect and talk with your new employee will make a huge difference. Here are some virtual icebreakers that work for companies of all sizes. As a company, you are also trying to bond new employees to the organization as a whole.

When your meeting starts, ask your employees to have their bingo card ready. Explain that as the meeting goes on, they should mark off whenever a situation on their card happens. The first one to get five in a row types “BINGO” in the chat to win.

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Work with our team to design a unique, engaging, and consistent line-up of events to bring your team together. Once they mess up they have to answer a trivia question. Everyone starts with 5 points and you lose a point for wrong answers. This icebreaker is the perfect way to express gratitude will also allowing your team to express challenges they may be facing.

16 secrets of engaging remote meetings – Miro’s tips and ideas for running successful virtual meetings. You play this game in a virtual conference room, and nominate one person to be the speaker and the rest are artists.

I do recommend you ask people to share names because it’s super helpful for new folks. Even with office veterans, it may give someone the chance to correct a wrong pronunciation that has taken over. Remote Career in IT There are all kinds of icebreaker formats, most of which involve simple prompts. We recommend starting with either a traditional sequential format or a modified version of Never Have I Ever.

‍humorous Ice Breakers For Meetings

Then they have ownership of the ice breaker and buy-in to the whole meeting. In this article, we write about warm-up games and ice breakers for remote meetings, workshops, training and coaching.

This is one of those icebreaker games that works only for in-person meetings. First, pass colored paper sheets to your team members and ask them to write an interesting fact about themselves. Once they’re ready, each team member will throw his paper airplane to the other side of the room. Then pick the paper airplanes, read them out loud and have them guess whose paper airplane it is. Before deciding on whether or not to do a remote team building exercise or which icebreaker to use, decide what your expected outcome is from the exercise. Then, once you know your goal, you can work backwards and choose the most appropriate remote team building exercise.

However, the remote work life comes with its own challenges — namely, Zoom fatigue. A really fun and entertaining slide type, Pin on Image slides can produce a debate or some laughs. Think of it as a chameleon slide; it can fit any type of meeting. Attendees receive points and rewards for their level of engagement and interaction within the platform – photos posted, quizzes, fun facts about speakers, etc. After about two minutes, everyone has to switch their cameras back on. The first person who finds the most items moved will win.

Remote Team Dinner Fun For Foodies

Explore more uncommon talents and see which your coworkers would like to have in this type of questionnaire. You’d be surprised how passionate some of your coworkers can get over food. When asking “Would You Rather” questions, ask about various savory or sweet food staples and which they would prefer to eat forever.

Do what it takes to ensure that everyone takes part in this fun game. If there are too many members participating in the game, you can reduce the recitation time to make sure everyone gets a go. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. Former ESL teacher and quiz master converted to the wild slide. Now a content creator, traveller, musician and big time slider preaching the good word of interactivity.

Make it a competition to see which of your team members has the gnarliest frown, and bestow upon them the title of Frown King or Queen. Bonus points if you actually go out of your way to make a paper crown. Every player will have a chance to put their own spin on the budding story, and can even try to throw the next participant for a loop with a crazy situation. Break the ice with this free template for workplace culture.

• Create bingo cards ahead of time listing common situations that happen during virtual meetings.
• Don’t miss out on the best tips on employee engagement and company culture.
• A scavenger hunt is also an exceptional opportunity for cross-department interaction.

At an annual all-hands meeting, you could prompt participants to share a favorite memory from the last year or something they’re looking forward to in the next one. Here is an entire list of virtual icebreaker questions for more inspiration. When you work from home, you need to be intentional about getting that social time in. Icebreakers are one of the easiest and quickest virtual team-building activities to get started with. To run this remotely, you’ll want to share your screen with your team. Everyone will need to have a separate device to use so they can enter the game and submit their answers.

Fun Virtual Icebreakers For Remote And Hybrid Meetings

It can be a quick game, a question for the room or something out of left field. They are a great way to break down those awkward pre-meeting barriers and get people talking and interacting. Sophia Bernazzani of Owl Labs, an organization devoted to making immersive meetings smooth, once talked about Six-Word Memoirs. This icebreaker requires participants to describe themselves in just six sentences.

When working with new people one of the most important things is learning their work styles. Are they the type to pick up the phone and call or do they prefer communicating through email? Do they want weekly brainstorming sessions or do they work better isolating themselves at a coffee shop? Learning everyone’s styles will help to drastically cut back on any future problems. At your next meeting go over everyone’s preferences; this can be verbally or through an online poll. CAN FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE. Icebreakers can be an introvert’s worst nightmare. When considering which one to use, make sure to emphasize inclusivity of all personality types.

This game will put your culinary ability to the test. The SIWOM team tried it out in July and we had a blast! We paired up at random and the organizer gave us recipes (all different!). Whichever team has the most points at the end of the game wins. As an interactive presentation tool trusted by over 100,000 users from 185 countries, AhaSlides can be your gateway to more inclusive, more productive meetings. The Q&A slide collects written answers for you to respond to over Zoom. Essentially you, as the facilitator, are in the hot seat for this one.

Reward your team members with fun prizes like a free coffee or takeout. After both people have answered and the two-minute timer is up, have them find a new partner and assign them a new conversation starter.

Have your remote team grab their pets or show a picture of them. If you are a meeting planner, team leader, or event organizer , you MUST watch this video. We hope you liked this blog post and icebreaker ideas. They should also be innocent, accessible, and easy to answer so that anyone can take part in the conversation, whatever their age, gender, beliefs, religions, etc. Virtual meetings are becoming more and more popular in the workplace, as they allow employees to collaborate across borders without having to be present at the same location.

Challenge Each Other To Team Member Trivia

Place them with employees they don’t usually spend time with, allowing them to meet somebody new. Tasia is the COO of TeamBuilding, a 100% remote company that runs local and virtual team-building activities that your people will love. Tasia has a master’s degree in Psychology from Effective Icebreakers for Virtual Meetings Eastern Washington University and a focus on organizational behavior. Before we go, here are a few extra best practices to help you run successful virtual icebreakers. This icebreaker works by asking your coworkers to choose one of their favorite songs from a certain genre.

You’ll also get brownie points if you save and share some of the funniest drawings and share them with the team on Slack afterward. To play a game of Story Building on Slack, install Ricotta Trivia and upvote the part of the story you like the best for making it more interactive. Yes, my family called me Sasa because my little sisters couldn’t say “Vanessa.” And I lived in China during college. This icebreaker is a great way to get to know each other and to have some laughs along the way. Next, everyone shares their three statements and the group votes or discusses their guess for the lie. In small groups, you can use great questions to get people to open up. Schedule a time where you and your team can video call and eat a meal together.

Why Icebreakers Work For Virtual Meetings

This ice breaker can promote team bonding, and it’s one of the easier options on the list. Simply choose a brief personality quiz on your phone or computer (if you’re stuck, here’s a list), and pull it up on a projector or send the link to everyone. Icebreaker questions have got to be the top on the list. You can take these up a notch by adding a timer or converting these into rapid fire rounds. You can also keep it fresh by setting a theme for every meeting and asking questions of that particular theme or category.