Simply put the performer on spotlight and let the rest of the team members will figure out the message from the performers’ gestures. The goal of the game is to communicate the prompt without using words. ‘Simon says’ is another great activity to help engage your team and bring some laughs. The group leader can instruct team members to perform actions such as hopping on one foot, jumping jacks or even a dance move. Make sure to confuse your team by giving fast ‘Simon Says’ commands and see if they can catch up. Keep going until you have one employee remaining and allow them the prize of being Simon Says the following week. Soon your team will all be fighting for that first place spot.

The best option, of course, is to run all your meetings from a conference room or other professional workspace. The coworking spaces at Bond Collective are the perfect solution. The other members of the team take turns trying to guess the name of the song until the timer runs out. If none of these questions seem right, generate a list of your own or search online for other options. Set up a virtual scavenger hunt for all to play in their own spaces. Drawing games like Pictionary can be played anywhere and there are also plenty of websites that cater to virtual games.

Because often people may discover interesting facts about themselves during this icebreaker. So, make sure to think of two to three engaging questions before the event begins. Sound Bath is the meditative Zoom icebreaker treat for small, intimate groups. You’ll start with breath work before https://remotemode.net/ your sound therapist delights your ears with frequencies and sounds from drums, gongs, chimes, and singing bowls. The 30 Second Dance Party is a great Zoom work meeting or video-conference warmup! Share your music, get others to share theirs, and then leave the cameras on and groove.

If they pick dare, ask them to perform a funny dance move or sing a few lines of a popular song. This is a low preparation but fun and engaging ice-breaker for any time of day. So get the fun vibes flowing in your next virtual meeting with these ice breaker questions, or plan them as a part of the post-meeting happy hour. You could even suggest them to your team leaders for everyone to have a good time together.

Icebreaker Games & Team Building Activities

A good meeting makes people feel comfortable and valued and builds social cohesion toward a common goal. Kicking off meetings with a trivia game is a sure-fire way to light up the team mood and encourage active participation. Set up a live poll with two options (e.g., dog or cat, beer or wine, hot or cold, beach or mountain) and ask everyone to choose their favorite. Similarly, you can opt for “Would you rather” questions such as travel to the future or the past, give up the internet or air conditioning, read a book or watch a movie, etc. In this classic icebreaker, ask each participant to provide three statements about themselves, two being true and the other a lie. Then, the other participants have to guess which statement is a lie.

This exercise is also useful for enhancing communication and problem-solving skills. Charades is among the best quick virtual team building icebreakers to brighten participants’ moods.

Donut can introduce your employees to someone they haven’t met and allows them to choose how frequently they’d like to meet someone new. Once all questions have answered, give teams two minutes to finalize answers then have them return to report their final responses. To host your own virtual show and tell, invite your employees to a Zoom meeting and ask them to bring something to share with their co-workers. Pictionary is a team building classic and for good reason.

Coffee Breaks

Poll your team about what sorts of activities they’d like to do or what they want others to know about them. The only rule is to have fun, stay engaged, and help others do the same. This icebreaker is especially relevant for organizations with a diverse and global workforce. Ask each team member to describe their city without naming it, either by stating some facts about the town, saying what it´s known for, or its nickname. By doing so, everyone can learn a bit about each other culture and get an impression of their personal lives. While this is a relatively simple icebreaker, it allows team members to get to know each other and start meetings on a lighter note. It is a great icebreaker to introduce new team members and make them more comfortable in their new environment.

Ready to let off some steam and share some laughs as a team? Start the clock and give each team one minute to draw and solve. When they finish, the person to the right of them will go next and share something about the person called out. You could also use the stream for themed photo contests. Better yet, with Halloween coming up, you can host a family costume contest. Your virtual book club can be whatever you want it to be.

Bonus: Emoji Check

The next task is for participants to line up the animal in order, from the tiniest to the largest. Team members can do this by commenting on the chat section. Finally, the leader will ask the players to reveal the name of the chosen animal to confirm whether the guesses and the order is correct. To begin this zoo line-up game, the leader will ask the participants to think of a zoo animal they like the most. The leader will then ask the participants to pretend to be the chosen animal by imitating the chosen animal’s sound.

• Team leaders can help alleviate these fears by hosting meetings that are engaging, collaborative, purposeful, and even fun.
• It also allows people to build up trust with each other, which helps them feel more comfortable sharing ideas, offering constructive criticism, and collaborating with others.
• If you manage a remote team or are a part of one, you might have conducted or experienced an ice-breaking session.

That means that your team have free range on writing whatever they want, without the fear of judgement for their input. This question is open-ended, so it gives participants icebreakers for virtual meetings a chance to write whatever they want. Answers can be funny, practical or just plain weird, but they all allow new co-workers to get to know each other better.

The Omg Icebreaker

Explain that the goal is to, without communicating with one another, all hold up the same shape at the same time. Give a “1, 2, 3” count for everyone to hold up a shape, examine the results, and put them down. As the team tries to silently reach a majority, there’s sure to be laughs. Instruct all Zoom attendees to think of their dream vacation spot before the meeting and add a background that represents their virtual vacation selection. If you’re using Hive, you can easily enter a Zoom meeting with a group by using the “/zoom” command in all meetings. This is one of our personal favourites because it’s a fun and simple way for your team to get to know each other.

• By breaking the ice early at the event, you are overcoming one of the biggest challenges related to virtual events.
• Most importantly, good icebreakers allow people to get to know each other and enjoy the work they’re doing—which, in turn, makes it more likely that they will do great work.
• Online team-building games are fun and social – they encourage interaction among coworkers and help bring back the camaraderie of a physical office.
• When the week is over, host an informal virtual meeting and ask employees to share the history behind the recipe they shared and what they thought of the recipe they tried.
• We’ve included icebreakers you can use with small groups of remote employees, ones for total strangers, and everything in between.

To get started, ask your employees to contribute pictures that exemplify your company culture and values. Creating a team movie featuring each of your employees is a great way to get your team connected. To get started, ask each of your employees to submit a short video. Once each employee has an item in their hand, explain that they are now going to try to sell it to the other members. They can set the price and have one minute to deliver a sales pitch and one minute to answer questions. Before your meeting or training, come up with 5 to 10 questions for your employees to answer. These should be a mix of fun, random, and difficult questions.

Send out a prompt of photo options and then have everyone take their own photo representations of the prompts to share with the group. Planning a virtual coffee shop meeting will lead to casual chatting while everyone prepares their morning beverages.

Interactions with fellow team members can be awkward, especially for new recruits. Icebreakers can make everyone feel more relaxed and thus be more open to sharing their ideas, opinions, or experiences with others. On 4 small pieces of paper ask each attendee to draw a circle, triangle, square, and rectangle—one shape per paper.

Deeper Virtual Ice Breaker Questions For Team Building

When you’re just getting to know your new team, it’s good to have a solid framework in place for introductions, expectations, and action items. In fact, Ladders recently predicted that 25% of all professionals will be remote by the end of 2022 — that’s up from less than 4% before 2020. Create a collaborative map in Google Maps and ask everyone to drop a pin where they were born.

• If your employees need to stagger their lunches, try to rotate the time you meet so everyone has an opportunity to participate.
• Use a virtual whiteboard or other apps to have employees add important milestones.
• Fortunately, there are lots of enjoyable and quick ways to break the ice at your next virtual meeting.
• They don’t have to get into the specifics of what that person has been doing so well, they just have to mention them by name.

At the beginning of the meeting, invite your team to open Lucidspark’s easy-to-use “get to know you” template. You can provide a series of boxes with prompts at the top, and the sky’s the limit with the questions. Allow people to add their own boxes with new questions if they think of any. Participants can use virtual sticky notes to write their answers and elaborate with pics and GIFs. Finally, encourage team members to respond to emoticons or text.

They Get People Engaged And Interested

Mastering virtual communication is imperative for boosting morale, employee satisfaction and keeping that sense of community within the workplace. Since Covid-19, the rise of work from home-ers has skyrocketed- and doesn’t look like it will be stopping anytime soon. Online team icebreaker activities are a crucial part of conducting virtual meetings. Virtual icebreakers include activities, questions & answers, and songs & puzzles. These activities are useful in introducing folks, warming up the meeting environment, and enabling participants to enjoy the virtual meeting. For remote team members, who interact less often than in-office workers, icebreaker exercises also help them overcome jitters and be more comfortable interacting.

• Ask your team how they are in a different way this time – try it with a poll.
• If they pick dare, ask them to perform a funny dance move or sing a few lines of a popular song.
• Give everyone time to work independently and have time for sharing with the larger group.
• AhaSlides lets you create up to 10,000 entries on a colourful spinning wheel.
• A good meeting makes people feel comfortable and valued and builds social cohesion toward a common goal.

However, this is why virtual team building and ice breakers are so important. Even post-pandemic, remote teams and virtual communication will become more common than ever. This list of engaging virtual ice breakers will have your team bonding and building a successful rapport.

Virtual Snack Break Or Coffee Break

If you want to keep it simple, just open your meetings by having everyone answer the same question. As you can imagine, the possibilities for these questions are endless, but if you need some help getting started, see the Icebreaker Question list below. We often open our monthly meeting with Core Values stories or brags about other team members who we’ve noticed living our core values. You can ask people to share any kind of company story or victory to help people feel more positive and engaged. With access to those spaces and that infrastructure, your virtual icebreakers will go off without a hitch and bring your distributed team closer than ever before.

Ice Breaker #8: You Nailed It!

Show and tell is always a fun way to connect as a team. Once everyone has gone, the person to the left of the employee is up next. The person who was just appreciated will share what they are thankful for about that person and the circle will continue clockwise. Lead by example by inviting an employee or two to chat over coffee. You could also provide small gift cards to the team or send company mugs to those who participate. Awards banquets and parties give you the chance to recognize your employees for a job well done.

Get To Know Your Icebreaker Template

It feels rude to jump straight into the agenda without a bit of chatter, but you’re also trying to make the most of a limited time. By sparking discussion, openness, and creativity, you can have successful meetings that always bring the best out of your teams. Team activities can take more time to plan, but they’re fantastic for delighting attendees and nurturing a positive team feeling. Taking small breaks to have fun and deepen relationships helps people pace themselves, avoid burnout, and connect with team members in a meaningful way. They see them as distractions from the actual work they’re doing or fear they’ll be lectured to and then released without making any real progress. Team leaders can help alleviate these fears by hosting meetings that are engaging, collaborative, purposeful, and even fun.