The icebreakers let me do something I would normally ... job showing how to use each icebreaker, and the ones he chose are well vetted. 12 Funny Icebreakers To Start Your Zoom Meetings, Happy Hours & Dates Off Strong. As summer is slowly coming to an end, it’s time to revamp some of our icebreakers for the beginning of school to make them ready for a virtual environment! Break the ice often. You can call it however you like – virtual watercooler talks, virtual happy hour, you name it. Icebreakers can be used in a variety of ways. This fun game is great for introducing new colleagues or getting to know each other better. This year’s office holiday parties will probably feel a little different than the merry gatherings we were used to before.... Running a virtual quiz is one of the best ways to connect with your team and enjoy some moments of... Making your virtual all-hands meetings engaging for your employees is a tough job. 5 Virtual Icebreakers Your Remote Team Will Love. The list is organized into easy, medium and hard icebreakers and you should assign them to … It’s important that you identify your audience first. Set a time limit if you need to — 60 seconds per person — pro-tip if you are doing this with a large group a timer and time limit is a must to keep things short and sharp. Then, ask them to share a story behind the picture (if it’s not a secret!). Use an icebreaker game. Run a quick weekend photo contest to get your teammates talking. Here’s another one from the ‘Get to know your colleagues better’ series. The purpose of this page is to give online teachers usable Icebreaker s for synchronous or asynchronous activities. The products below can be used as ways to get students working together as partners, small groups, or as an entire class. For example, in our Slido marketing team, we share highlights as part of our monthly all-marketing meeting. You can also use word clouds to pick up your team’s thoughts and feelings. Here is a list of 50 icebreakers and games to keep students engaged and motivated during remote learning! So next time you’re running a remote meeting or training, why not try an icebreaker activity as a warm up exercise. A few tips for running great icebreakers: Each person takes turns to give everyone a quick tour of their immediate surroundings — i.e. Icebreakers are questions or fun games to initiate light-hearted conversations to create a relaxed work environment. Collect two true facts and one false fact about a colleague and put it into a multiple choice poll. Or would you rather watch a video? By Marisa Casciano. I normally put a limit of 5 images. 5 Fun Icebreaker Ideas for Virtual Teams. This icebreaker is inspired by my colleague Sabine, who decided that since our team-building trip couldn’t happen this year, at least we’ll make up a cool story of how it went. Keep the laughs and interaction going by creating a fun slack channel (or whichever tool you use). Or ask them to stay on for a few minutes afterward to talk, if they can. Open your meeting with a question such as: “In one word, how would you describe the past week/month?”. Take a different one each time — make funny faces, bring in your pets, do a crazy gesture, be creative. Most of the time I just ask each person to take a pic and send it to the group chat — it’s as easy as that! Being able to see each other’s space a bit more before starting is a great way to feel more connected and like you are sitting in the room with them, even though you may be halfway across the world form one another. We since learned so many cool new things about one another! No need for special tools like Miro or Mural, just group chat and VC. Types of icebreakers. Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site! As a group, you need to come up with a list of 10 things that everyone has in common — we are all wearing shoes, own a MacBook, etc. For the best effect, I generally have a mix of both work and non-work questions. Take inspiration from our APAC team and their cute heart symbols as they sent their love to the rest of their team who couldn’t join them on the call. As you kick off your meeting, ask your teammates to post their top moments in an open text poll. This can be a great opportunity for an icebreaker. 10 simple and fun virtual icebreakers and team building activities that are tool agnostic. Sharing is caring – and that should apply for both the good and the bad. Take turns sharing your results and if you have time you can even do a count and see how many similar or different the team is — i.e. As the title suggests this activity is simply asking the question — “if you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would it be?”. Are you struggling to engage students during distance learning? Introductions. and share images with each other — theses are as easy as that! Taking a group photo of you (even through video chat) is another way to have some fun. This is a great team-building activity to get to know each other on a more personal level. We have written a separate post on ‘ How to run group activities in virtual classrooms for your students here. You can even take it a little further and get inspired by our colleague Nadia who recently prepared for us a full-scale virtual scavenger hunt. We actually started doing this as a weekly activity in our #random Slack channel. These photos also make nice content for your social media, internal newsletters, or Slack channels! Team members take turns introducing themselves and sharing information about their role on the team, their background, and some personal details. Virtual icebreakers for remote meetings help you maintain a sense of cohesion with your group. How do you run icebreakers for online sessions though? My personal favourite drawing activity is “if the last sprint was an animal, what would it be and why?” They have to draw the animal and you get all kinds of interesting ones with even more interesting reasons why. A simple, but a good one and very easy to do remote. Finally, if you don’t have any of those tools available you can simply get each person to google an image of the location and share it with the team — or just say it. To save time you can get everyone to take the test beforehand. #truestory . Just remember to give people the heads up to have pen and paper ready before you start or you’ll likely lose 10 minutes to everyone rummaging around their homes looking for them. Besides highlights, share also some of the failures of the last month. Crowdsource your colleagues’ personal or professional highlights of the last week or month. Does anyone want to share their thoughts?”. Icebreakers are easy to include in virtual meetings and virtual happy hours. Remote work can be a lonely business. Expect lots of hearty “aw-s” and “oh-s”. For icebreakers, an easy way to track who's already shared an answer is to add an "X" or other mark after their name. What's hot. Like Charades but with a remote twist where you can only use images to explain whatever famous movie, book, etc they pick. Tell them to share a cool photo from their weekend, for example in a Slack channel. Starting a meeting with some laughs will help your teammates feel more connected. For Swedes, however, it is much more than that. Sometimes, it’s hard to get a sense of how your team members are feeling – especially during larger meetings. This is a fun way to get to know each other a bit deeper and to feel more physically connected even though you’re remote. Take a picture of a view from your window and post it to Slack, Find something smaller than your fingernail, Change your Zoom background to your favorite movie set, Click ‘Share Screen’, choose ‘Whiteboard’ and click ‘Share’. This icebreaker is great for taking a pulse check of the overall atmosphere in the team and detecting possible downturns. Product Validation: Testing and Researching Ideas to Ensure Product Success, Structured Meetings Are The Product Manager’s Secret Weapon, Product Management Skills: Market Research. Now there are three variations on how to facilitate this one virtually. This tagging helps avoid questions like, "who hasn't gone yet?" Get creative, there are infinite possibilities: Favorite movie scenes, 80’s disco, memes, dream vacation places, you name it. Since not everyone may be comfortable with sharing this verbally, ask your team members via a poll. 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