12 *Actually Not Awkward* Virtual Icebreakers for Remote Meetings

Pick funny, off-kilter truths, like “I can’t roll my r’s” or “I never learned how to swim.” Try not to put your lie last, and make it at least somewhat believable. Nobody’s going to believe you went to outer space, or that your Dad was Obama’s best friend in college. I suggest employing employee engagement strategies to keep your team working well together regardless of location. Practices employee engagement best practices and use employee engagement tools to excel.

icebreakers for virtual meetings

This is an ideal virtual icebreaker for recurring meetings. If you and your team meet regularly, you can turn this into a tradition and run one quiz question at the start of every one of your meetings. Everyone loves quizzes as ice breakers and so a little brain teaser at the beginning of your meeting will perk your colleagues up. A would you rather virtual icebreaker question is guaranteed to spark a lively discussion at the start of your meeting and help with breaking the ice. Icebreaker questions are a fun, easy way to get to know people and lighten the mood.

Fun and Engaging Icebreaker Questions for Virtual Meetings

What animal each participant relates to the most may say a lot about them! Give a little bit of time before starting to let participants think about animals and what their favorite says about them. Have everyone introduce themselves, and then share their nicknames and the backstories that go with them. Across many industries, working from home and an evolving environment of hybrid, distributed, or remote teams has become the norm.

We tried it recently during our Brand team meeting and it was an hour well spent – productive, creative, and fun. You can call it whatever you like – virtual watercooler talks, virtual happy hour – it’s your choice. 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. It’s much more fun and you’ll spark creativity among your colleagues. You can use a Slido word cloud for that, but instead of words, your participants will submit an emoji.

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In many groups where I’ve used this icebreaker, the attendees prefer to flip the order and do lows first and then highs because it can be a downer to end on a low. If you do this icebreaker, be prepared to say something encouraging or meaningful after each person goes. It can feel really disappointing to share something negative that happened to you that week and receive no reaction. Some video conferencing tools include breakout rooms as a feature, which is super helpful when you have a lot of attendees.

  • Creating a solid team bond can be challenging when there are more than a handful of people at your workplace.
  • And the good news is that now these kinds of games can be played online.
  • Just make sure the emphasis is heavy on family and light on feud (jokes!).
  • Ideally, you will want to use important but not well-known or frequently visited pages.

Once participants have their prompts, give them a set amount of time to write. At the end of the time, go around and have each team member read their stories aloud. Next, every other team member who has ever done the same thing will shout, “Me too!

New hire ice breaker questions

Rock, paper, scissors is a classic game because it’s fun but still very easy to play. Bringing it into the virtual world can help your remote employees feel a little more connected before your virtual https://remotemode.net/ meeting starts. One of the biggest complaints about virtual icebreakers is that they waste valuable time. Feel free to set a timer and start the official part of the meeting once it goes off.

Virtual icebreakers can be particularly helpful for new team members who may feel isolated or disconnected in a virtual setting. Here are a few virtual icebreaker ideas that are ideal for welcoming icebreakers for virtual meetings new team members into the fold and to supplement your onboarding efforts. Virtual games can also serve to encourage behaviours or introduce concepts that will be useful for later in the meeting.