After the first 6 months of 2022 passing, if we can be certain about anything for the next 6 months, it is that we can see a lot of remote team meetings popping up on our calendars in upcoming months. One of the trickiest parts about remote meetings is that it can be super awkward to kick off the conversation and generally socialize – especially during a call over Zoom.
The thing about awkward meetings is that no one ever wants to talk or share their ideas because the environment feels weird. If you have experienced this and want to boost things up, we have a solution for you – Zoom Icebreakers.
However, what exactly are they?
Zoom Icebreakers are any virtual activity or question that helps in making remote team members feel comfortable and connect with each other during virtual meetings on Zoom. It is referred to as breaking the ice or removing the tension in any group.
These ice breakers are super important because the social connection is important. With an increased social connection comes less stress, higher employer engagement, and a healthier look over the business.
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Zoom Ice Breakers For More Engaged Meetings
Check out some of the top Zoom ice breakers to smoothen the environment at your next meeting!
1. Two Truths and a Lie
We all know this game – of course! Especially if you have been on dating apps a bit (Hush-Hush)! However, you can totally take this fun activity to a professional level as well. This game helps teammates to learn some interesting facts about each other. Everyone can go around in circles and share three statements, two truths, and one lie.
Then, everyone tries to guess which statement was the lie. Even if you think you know your co-worker super well, this game is going to reveal something that you might have not anticipated or would have guessed! Even if you fail to guess it, at least it’s going to give everyone some giggles. Remember to keep things disciplined and no need to get wild.
2. Best Background Always Wins
One of the best things about technology is that you have a world full of possibilities ahead of you, just one touch away. While gaming, sports, activities, connecting, and other things are amazing, sometimes simple and easy things can do wonders as well.
In this case, you just have to let everyone know that you will be doing a background contest. Every participant needs to have a super kick-ass background ready before the meeting starts – well it’s a contest! And once you start the meeting, you ask everyone to vote for the best background!
3. Major Work-from-home fails!
You have probably experienced or done a lot of stupid things since you started working from home. And so have we all, once or twice majorly! At the start of your Zoom meetings, take a minute and discuss all your major fails and invite your remote team members to share theirs.
It is quite certain to make everyone chuckle a bit during the meeting and fade away the awkwardness easily. It’s important for everyone to feel connected and share their experiences of total embarrassment and acting like total fools.
4. Mood Check-Ins
Mood Check-ins are recently becoming a trend with managers who are practicing increased emotional intelligence at work and are a great virtual ice breaker for closer teams, or those that are meeting internally. For this ice breaker, everyone goes around and rates their overall mood on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the best and 1 being the worst.
A mood check-in is great because it always has a dual purpose, it allows teams to connect on an emotional level, and it also helps individuals better understand where teammates are at the moment. For example, whenever you receive a message from a teammate you might terse, know that they are at a 2 for their mood check-in, you are much less likely to take offense to it.
5. Grows and Glows!
Every week, hold a virtual roundtable and ask each of the remote members to talk about the Grows and Glows of their week. Grows are the things that can be improved with a little more focus or can become better over time with efforts by the team.
Glows are all the positive things or experiences or things that an individual is proud of. For instance, the glow is that I successfully completed a project well ahead of time and moved on to the next phase. And my growth is that I could have communicated better with my team members and given better directions.
6. Tell Us about your Most Used Emoji
This is quite fun as it’s super easy and everyone uses emojis. For this ice breaker, everyone will go around in alphabetical order and tell the meeting participants what their most-used emoji is. If you are not looking to highlight your most used emoji for any reason, simply state your favorite emoji.
For instance, start with yourself, I will go first, mine is the devil. It is cute and at the same time spooky, perfect to show any kind of emotions. Connecting with the team members by simply sharing light personal information is a great way to forge bonds between team members and give everyone something to talk about once the meeting gets over. It’s going to work out!
7. Share a Photo
Sharing a photo remains one of the most exciting team-building activities for getting to know your work acquaintances on a much more personal level! Only when they are super comfortable in doing that as well. This virtual ice breaker is super simple as just the title suggests. Look down through your phone for a photo that you would totally love to share with the team.
You can post it over the screen and share its significance too. Here is a little tip to make it more interesting, you can post a different theme every day. Some options are favorite, the best place you traveled to, pictures of the pet, favorite memory, favorite sunset, and so on.
8. Take a picture of the View
With plenty of people working remotely, this is quite fun and an easy way to start a conversation about where they are located and what their current work environment is like. Ask everyone to simply take a photo from their closest window.
Every person can take turns into showing off their photos and explaining the circumstances. This is an amazing way for the teammates to learn about each other and get much more context about everyone’s day-to-day situations.
9. Share your favorite TV series
Another great virtual ice-breaker is to ask your team about one of the top most recent TV series obsessions. This exercise is especially good for newly formed teams, as it encourages people to share their interests and preferences. It is always fun to find out that a co-worker is watching the same show as you, just be mindful of the spoilers!
You will be quite surprised by what you are going to learn about some people’s interests and preferences, and also discover the tons of shows that were so-not on your radar before. This can create a game opportunity for other bonding moments with your teammates. This game will create opportunities for other bonding moments with your teammates easily.
10. Ask out Riddles
Riddles and brain teasers are a super relatively easy and one of the best ways to get the metal cogs up and running – is simply to break the ice in the best possible ways. All the riddles such as walking on the living, don’t even mumble. Walk over the dead, they mutter and grumble, so what are they?
It is simply the mental boost that your people need, they would be discussing amongst themselves, could be searching over Google, but it would hype things up in no time. Also, if you are wondering what the answer is, it leaves.
11. Virtual Vacation
Don’t we all wish to be on a vacation right now? So this virtual ice breaker should be a major piece of cake. For this game, everyone goes around and tells all the meeting attendees where their top choice for a vacation destination is. In a major time of the pandemic, actually going to these places is near impossible, which is why we have claimed it is a virtual vacation.
Even better, instruct all the Zoom attendees to think of their best dream vacation spot before the meeting and add a background to it that represents their virtual vacation selection.
12. Guess that Song
This one is quite fun! You can simply play an audio sample of the opening 3-5 seconds of a song and then let any team member make a random guess about which song it is. The one to guess the maximum number of songs simply wins the game.
Also, alternatively, you can also play the song’s instrumental version instead if you want to make it a little more competitive. You can even make the members guess each other’s songs as well. The more people are included in the activity, the more exciting it becomes.
13. You got to sell it!
Sell it is quite an amazing and one of the most fruitful Zoom ice breakers that will reveal and bring out all the inner salesman in your team members like never before. It is also a great fun practice to judge everyone’s skills a bit. At the start of the meeting, ask out every employee to pick up any of the nearby objects but do not explain to them why. If they ask you, just tell them that they will find it out shortly.
Explain to each of the employees that they will now try to sell the item to the other team members once they have it in their own hands. They can set the pricing themselves and will have a minute to present the sales pitches and one minute to respond to the queries. Once all the remote members have pitched out, ask everyone to vote on the best pitch they think is.
14. Play the Taboo
Play the taboo, just as interesting as the name suggests, the game is super interesting too. You have to choose a word and some ‘taboo words’ that go with it. Then, send a private message to the team member who will be delivering the verbal cues to the rest of the remote team.
Those team members are then given 30 seconds to talk and simply express the clues to the rest of the group as well. The catch is simply that the person is not allowed to say any of the taboo words simply.
Conclusion
We have gathered down the list of top Zoom ice breakers for you that will undoubtedly provide your team with a few minutes of respite amidst any stressful day. Even the leaders sometimes need a little push and here is why we have made this list!
