Icebreakers for remote meetings and virtual workshops Medium

icebreakers for virtual meetings

Travel-related questions usually excite people and let them share some of their dreams and goals. Learning deep information about somebody can bring everyone closer. If you want to bring people closer and also learn some useful information, ask similar questions. We lead wildly fun experiences for teams with 1,000,000+ players to date. The goal of the scavenger hunt is to engage team members to  locate or photograph particular objects within a specified time limit.

Take Your Online Events to the Next Level

Silence can be nice  — but is rarely possible and not always what we need. Whether you are working from home or at the office, headphones with the right type of music can be lifesavers. This keeps things fresh and gets people involved in new ways.

  1. Icebreakers are very helpful when it comes to bringing online meeting participants closer together.
  2. Employ a tool like Donut or Slack’s Donut integration to randomly connect team members for brief, informal virtual meetings.
  3. Out of everyone who was able to find something in the given amount of time, participants can then vote on which object is the “best fit” for the category.
  4. As a result, participants can share stories about those trips and find a common hobby, like playing the piano.

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Zoo Line-up is one of the most creative icebreaker ideas for Zoom meetings. The players will brainstorm the solutions for about five minutes. Next, every other team member who has ever done the same icebreakers for virtual meetings thing will shout, “Me too!

  1. This approach leads to a greater diversity of ideas, and ultimately more productive meetings.
  2. You’ll need to clearly state the order you’ll be doing things and make sure people know when they can talk and share information about what they’ve written or drawn.
  3. 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.
  4. Once they see there’s nothing scary about sharing, they can jump in with their own story.

Some of the best quick virtual ice breakers are short questions. You know your colleagues have remote work skills, but these questions help you get to know them on a deeper level. Virtual ice breakers are fun activities, games, and conversation starters that help participants in a virtual meeting get to know each other or “break the ice.” Most virtual team-building games last around 5 minutes and ideally no longer than 20 minutes. If you have a larger team, you’ll be looking at closer to 20 minutes. With a small remote team, you can keep it closer to 5 minutes.

You can use our integrations with Google Slides and PowerPoint to insert the poll directly into your slides.

Have a Backup Plan for Virtual Ice Breakers

There’s just something about a mug that brings me a feeling of warmth besides the drink inside of it. Mugs have a delightful way to infuse a bit of personality and fun into the moment. So how about inviting your team to share their favorite coffee mug or tea cup (or tumbler,water bottle, etc) and tell the story behind it? It’s amazing how something as simple as a custom mug can hold so much meaning and create a sense of camaraderie among colleagues.

icebreakers for virtual meetings

Everyone loves quizzes as ice breakers and so a little brain teaser at the beginning of your meeting will perk your colleagues up. Ask team members to send unknown facts about themselves beforehand. During the game, you can allow participants to ask clarifying, open-ended questions to narrow down guesses.

This virtual ice-breaker is especially great for teams who have met before, but might not know every detail about the other meeting attendees. I guarantee people will finish this activity with a new connection or sense of understanding. You never know who else is from your same part of the country, state, or even your same hometown. That’s why this ice-breaker is a fun way to get people engaged and excited to share a personal tidbit (and bonus points, it has nothing to do with work).

These are some of our favorites, but we love new ideas and ways of working together. We’re constantly adding to (and improving) our template library. Also, if you’re looking for warm-ups and energizers, icebreaker questions, or icebreakers for small groups, we have you covered. If you’re running a larger meeting with more than 10 people, you may want to create teams and have them run the icebreaker in a breakout room. Once 5-10 minutes have passed, bring everyone back together and share the funniest moments from the activity.

Starting with an icebreaker question spices things up, adding a sprinkling of novelty and stimulation that gets people’s brains in gear for a productive get-together. As a result, you can enjoy effective and productive meetings online. Such virtual ice breakers for Zoom or Google Meet work if your web conferencing tool allows you to upload images for backgrounds.

We also have a list of the best Zoom team building exercises, a list of the best virtual team energizers, and a list of fun remote team event ideas. Ladies and Gentlemen is one of the top virtual ice breakers for work that tests attentiveness. Using icebreaker questions at the beginning of virtual calls is one of the best ways to create a relaxed environment for your team. Incorporating these icebreakers in your virtual classrooms will not only warm up your sessions but will be the first step in creating an active learning environment. Active teaching, unlike traditional methods of passive learning, allows you to foster a community of active learners who are comfortable, engaged, and ready to collaborate. The key to a successful icebreaking session is to be inclusive, encouraging, and most importantly, to have fun.

You can use a Slido word cloud for that, but instead of words, your participants will submit an emoji. This works best with larger meetings and events when a large number of emojis gets submitted. These are great rapid-fire questions to energize your participants and kick-start a conversation. This one is both a walk down memory lane, as well as a nice opportunity for some good natured humor. Short introductions are a good way to take the pressure off people when getting to know one another and set expectations. For brevity’s sake, it’s best to break it down into simple categories such as first name, last name, and one fact about each person.

” as they bend a finger or reduce one pen by removing it from their hand and placing it on the table. The next player will share an experience, and the same response goes on until the team gets a winner. In this case, the winner is the first person to bend all their fingers or run out of objects.

This is a great virtual icebreaker that allows for more intimate conversations among your teammates. If you’re familiar with breakout rooms, you’ll appreciate this one. Good productive idea exchanges make for great virtual icebreakers too.

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