Now that virtual meetings via Zoom, Teams, WebEx and other video conferencing platforms are the new norm creating bonds with colleagues and clients is particularly difficult.
Virtual meetings and working from home can also leave people feeling unproductive, lonely, and overworked. ‘Zoom fatigue’ is where people feel tired from frequent interaction via video chat. Luckily Myna offers a few benefits to help prevent Zoom fatigue and make video calls much easier to manage.
Ice breakers are a great way to start a meeting it can be a fun way for people to get to know one another, can strengthen colleague relationships, create a more inclusive atmosphere, and stimulate better conversation and ideas. They can be a great way to get people’s attention and lighten the mood.
Here we’ve put together some of our favourite virtual icebreakers:
1 The Background Challenge
A fun feature that has become widely available on video conferencing platforms is the ability to change your background. Zoom, Google Hangouts and Microsoft Teams all have this feature. Some platforms also allow you to change your image to any picture you want. With this feature challenge the meeting to find the most interesting or funny background and then get people to guess what the photo is from/where it is or get them to vote for the best. There are many different themes, here are some ideas:
- What represents you best?
- Best holiday/ dream holiday
- Memes
- Movie Scenes
2 Treasure Hunt
Get your meeting moving, by giving them a task such as ‘you have 20 seconds to get your favourite thing in your house.’ Then get them to show and explain why they have chosen that item. You might learn something about your team!
Ideas:
- Find something yellow.
- Find something smaller than your fingernail.
- What would you save if you could only save one thing?
- Something that is older than you.
3 Team Trivia Quiz/ 1 Truth, 2 Lies
Get to know your colleagues better with a quiz about them. Collect interesting facts about each team member and let the team guess which person its about.
Or
Get each person to give 1 truth and 2 lies about themselves and see if the team can workout which is the truth.
4 What’s the last picture that you took?
Ask your virtual meeting to look at their phones and show what the last photo they took was. This could be dangerous but let’s hope your colleagues remember they’re at work! Then ask them to share the story behind the picture.
5 Pictionary
Give one team member a secret word to draw and get the rest of the team to guess what it is.
Or
Give the whole meeting a word to draw in 30 seconds. Get them to use painting app and share the drawing or just pen and paper and show it to the camera. Then get the team to rate the best version.
6 Picture Charades
Same rules as charades but using a series of pictures to describe the film, book etc. No talking and the images cannot be directly from the film or book. Show the pictures one by one and set a limit to the amount of pictures (usual 4 or 5).
Working from home can be lonely and making connections can be hard so hopefully these icebreakers will help your virtual meetings to be a bit more fun and engaging. Teams that feel comfortable with each other are far more likely to contribute. Until we can have face to face meetings these icebreakers could build some great working relationships.
