Our guide unveils top team icebreakers for meetings, offering innovative activities to spark creativity, foster connections, and boost your remote teams energy. Less than half (45%) of workers give their social wellbeing a positive rating, according to a Deloitte survey. This lack of positive working relationships doesn’t just have personal consequences — it can damage morale and productivity in your organization, too. These virtual icebreakers can excite and engage your employees during online meetings so that they feel more connected and ready to participate. Fun virtual icebreaker activities are essential for fostering connections and creating a comfortable environment on a video call.
- Once all the participants have made their guesses, the lead player will reveal the untrue statement.
- In this activity, participants are asked to draw their current mood using an online whiteboard tool or a piece of paper.
- Me Too is on the top list of virtual icebreaker ideas for meetings.
- You can ask your teammates to explain why they’re feeling a certain way, or just keep it at the rating.
- Sharing is caring – and that should apply to both the good and the bad.
Seeing each other’s backgrounds will break the ice and give you something to talk about during the first minutes of the call. You may open your meeting with this question, either via word cloud or an open text poll, and wait for your team members’ submissions. These are great if you want to surprise your participants with a fun little activity and enjoy some bonding time.
People may learn some interesting facts about teammates or gain more appreciation for the diverse perspectives on the team. Use Virtual ToolsA number of video conferencing platforms have built-in features that can help you bring people together. They include chats, screen sharing, reaction buttons, virtual whiteboards, polls and more. Consider Time ZonesThis shows respect for people’s schedule and ensures maximum participation. It also helps participants feel more included, especially if they already struggle with the hardships of remote work.
- This is a great virtual icebreaker that allows for more intimate conversations among your teammates.
- In this case, the winner is the first person to bend all their fingers or run out of objects.
- When someone else identifies a common interest or experience, they engage in a conversation about it.
- Everyone joins a video call from their remote location — then they’ll follow your lead based on whatever digital icebreaker you’ve created.
- Activities offer opportunities for team members to work together in a format that is lighthearted, but still impactful.
- That question always elicits the same automatic and socially conditioned response of “good” or “fine,” whether true or not.
Prompt: “What is one thing — big or small — that you’re grateful for coming into the room today?”
Tell your colleagues to provide a lie that’s not so obvious so as to make it harder for others to guess. Before your next all-hands or town hall meeting, set a theme and ask your colleagues to pick a virtual background image that, for them, represents it best. These are great get-to-know-you games and longer team-building activities that will both entertain and bring the team closer together.
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Overall, virtual ice breakers are a fantastic way to foster icebreakers for virtual meetings deeper emotional, personal connections to teammates. If you’re not doing them regularly, it is definitely something to consider adding to each Zoom meeting you host. Beyond chatting, ice breakers for virtual meetings can involve the environment around you via a fun game like a show-and-tell session. Without face-to-face interaction, virtual meetings can feel a bit impersonal.
But, with so many people working from home these days, it can be more challenging to really get the party started with remote coworkers you’ve haven’t seen or spoke to in a while. To break the ice, try starting your virtual holiday party off with a few of these fun icebreaker questions. Icebreakers are, well, a great way to break the “ice” at the beginning of a work meeting or the start of an activity.
Effective Icebreakers for Virtual Meetings
Have participants choose an item on the desk and hold it to the camera for everyone to see. A list of virtual icebreakers wouldn’t be complete without a group photo! This one’s as much fun through a video chat as much as it is in real life. And you can repeat it time and time again by taking a different picture each time — make funny faces, bring in your pets, do a crazy gesture, be creative. Winter holidays are a common time for companies to get their teams together to mingle and celebrate the year’s successes.
Have a laugh, reduce anxiety, boost camaraderie and get everyone primed for a productive session! ” is known as one of the best icebreakers for virtual meetings because it sparks curiosity and provides an opportunity to learn more about different cultures. In the world of remote working, this humble question can be the first step for team bonding and inclusivity. As we’ve highlighted before; you must take the meeting purpose, participants and length into account before planning icebreakers for virtual meetings. We categorized our 12 suggestions based on concept so you can choose the one that fits your team and goals.
It’s a lot easier to engage in team-building activities when you communicate with others in person. These activities allow people to familiarize themselves with one another, which is crucial in virtual meetings lacking the social aspect naturally present in face-to-face encounters. With more and more people working remotely, virtual meetings have become the norm, which can make the getting-to-know-each-other part a bit tricky.
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Fellow is the only all-in-one AI meeting transcription and management software for remote and hybrid organizations. Have fewer, more effective meetings with the help of AI, productivity-driving features, and seamless integrations. Participants can play a snippet (e.g., 10 seconds) of a song using their device’s audio. The rest of the group endeavors to guess the song’s title and the artist responsible for it. This activity allows for shared musical appreciation and amusement. Go around the virtual room and have each attendee contribute two words that encapsulate their present emotional state or prevailing thoughts.
Spice up your meetings by playing a fun question-and-answer game we like to call Rapid Fire, where you set a one-minute timer and ask as many questions as possible. Virtual meetings are no different, in that they benefit from the same groundwork as a regular meeting. Each approach can be as elaborate or as simple as you like — if you’re short on time or have a large group, just having a question in mind can do the trick. If you have a larger team, activities or games are sometimes the best options since they will allow for natural opportunities to break out into smaller teams or subgroups. Collective Knowledge is the perfect virtual icebreaker for new groups because it doesn’t put any one person on the spot right away. It’s not conducive to back-to-back meetings because your team members will tend to answer the same way every time.