Popular Virtual Team Building Activities. Employee engagement idea #6: Online team … Thus, we've created this guide to the best 100 virtual team building activities you can try with your team during a real time virtual happy hour. 2. It's also valuable for a team to feel comfortable trying new ideas and having the openness to discuss what worked, what didn't work, and what could be improved on by working together." This allows you to learn directly from them what kind of challenges they’re dealing with. This includes: Within each section, we’ve provided context to help you understand the purpose of the questions and how they allow you to help remote workers facing those particular challenges. A survey done by C&IT/Center Parcs on event managers found that more than 80% of them conduct team-building activities to “boost morale and motivation.” This is not your average list of icebreaker questions for work.We’ve collected dozens of the best ice breakers and check in questions to ask your team to reveal their unique personalities and encourage participation at work in meetings and workshops. One of the biggest challenges of working remotely is communication. Icebreaker questions are an easy way to increase engagement in a virtual meeting. What is your earliest memory of the internet? Be honest and keep a positive tone. Have you ever left a 1 star review online? We run world class online team building events that remote teams love. But it’s harder to get to that point when communicating with someone remotely for the reasons above. What work from home habit is most successful for you? Here are some quick links to the different types of virtual team building activities we cover in this guide: Chapters. Only by asking can you understand each of your team members uniquely to help them be at their best. The solution is for the host or facilitator to start by saying they will go first, followed by the next two people on deck. But over the years, we’ve learned that online team building is much different than in-person team building. By assuming positive intent with remote team members, you’re able to build bonds with them easier and create an environment where remote team members feel more accepted. This post includes our list of ice breaker questions for virtual meetings. What is the best thing about the internet? Occasionally, team builder questions reveal things about teams that a manager can use to make long-term improvements to the workspace or the team dynamic. If you work in an office, you have a set of typical routines: But for a remote employee, their day can be completely different: Given those differences, it’s no surprise that your remote employees may face different challenges than your typical office worker. Once you get to the third person, name the next two people on deck and so on. The questions below will help you understand how their day is structured and identify ways you may be able to help them. Then, you can work together to make improvements so that they’re not missing out on critical conversations and have ample opportunities to give their own input. Sadly, this is the exact opposite of how to keep remote employees engaged. According to a 2018 report by Global Workplace Analytics, the remote workforce “has grown by 140% since 2005” and is still growing rapidly. If anything, now is the time to double-down on supporting your staff, to show that you’re there for them during this challenging time. Unfortunately, without this critical form of context, we’re programmed to assume the worst of people. Consider this scenario: you had a morning stand up or a quick call with your entire team, including remote team members, earlier in the day. They can be questions that elicit profound answers, or fun games that help small groups connect through laughter. Maybe a new employee just joined your team, and you want to make sure they feel welcome and relaxed. This question measures your ability to work on a team and to accept supervision. An icebreaker question can range across multiple topics such as work, personal life, hobbies, etc. Working from home has unique challenges, one being a potential over-dependence on our devices. What is the story behind the background on your phone? It’s good to start a meeting on a high note. However, that’s not the only difference. Their aim? November 14, 2019. Team building exercises don’t need to be directly related to work to be effective at building trust and camaraderie. Use these icebreakers to help you create a meeting or training environment that fosters communication and encourages collaboration. Team building activities are not a one-time silly event, but part of an ongoing process. Where would you choose to haunt for all of eternity? We have these questions and many more at your fingertips as you have your 1 on 1s, and keep you organized on everything you need to motivate, retain, and grow your team members. Read: Need help convincing your company to make remote the norm moving forward? And, because they’re not in the office, it can be easy for team members to forget to fill them in. Both will help you work with them to help them have a great experience working remotely. And when there isn't a global pandemic, we do local activities too. To be a little obvious, teambuilding.com is a team building company. To this day, the concept has been widely adopted and implemented across the globe. Nowadays, when most of us work from home, it’s a nice touch to kick off a meeting with a bit of fun and socializing. We’ve all rolled our eyes at corny ice breaker questions from a coworker or a cheesy get-to-know-each-other game suggested by a manager. Running a round of remote icebreaker questions on popular virtual conference call apps is challenging because you have fewer virtual cues. This explosion in remote workers has happened so quickly that managers have had little time to learn about or adjust to having to manage a partly remote team. "I believe a team should work hard at building a culture of trust where teammates feel the freedom to try and fail, or ask for and receive help and encouragement. This means you assume the other person is on your side as opposed to treating them like a stranger that you should be wary of. Learn. Example: “I have often worked with managers and coworkers, and I rarely find it difficult. Virtual icebreaker questions are prompts you include in a virtual meeting for attendees to share a little about themselves and do some team building. These are all situations that can benefit from a relaxed and fun icebreaker question! The best way to overcome this unfamiliarity is by asking the right questions. You tell them it looks good and to run with it. The second is you will uncover issues by understanding better what some of their challenges they’re facing by working remotely. On a scale of 1 – 10, how experienced are you with remote work? ): With these questions, you’ll accomplish two key things: First, you’ll build empathy by understanding how they feel about working remotely and their average work day/routine. Your team may not volunteer information about these issues, but addressing them can improve their work life and the performance of your team as a whole. If you are looking to create better team collaboration by including virtual team building, you’ve come to the right place. Remote management is the same as managing people in an office with you, right? Virtual icebreaker questions are prompts you include in a virtual meeting for attendees to share a little about themselves and do some team building. According to Buffer’s State of Remote Work report, remote employees face many unique challenges: As a manager, it can be hard to understand what your remote workers are going through, especially if you’ve never worked remotely yourself. If you think there’s an activity that would be fun for your team … Team building has been around for most of a century now, credited to originate as early as the 1920s. Team Building. These games can range from fun charades to scavenger hunts. Do you have any remote work productivity hacks? Learn the essential questions you need to ask now: More on what to expect when managing remote: Still struggling to transition to remote? I have a list of 100… but for now I’m going to offer you 25 of my safe – not too personal virtual team building questions you can use at the beginning of team conference calls t Once you have attended a team building Escape the Room event at Paranoia Quest, you will have gone through the different puzzles, found clues, and used tools which allowed everyone the opportunity to work together. Then sign up for a free trial of Lighthouse. Get help with your Team building homework. Looking for more questions to ask remote employees during 1 on 1s? Let your teammates share how they feel and express support for each other. (For example, obtaining a budget for them to improve their home office or get a co-working space. Remembering to keep remote team members in the loop is a problem that requires a consistent, intentional effort and doesn’t always work out perfectly. To further engage your employees in this water cooler chat, introduce a daily question, theme or a topic. Because team members who work remotely aren’t able to take part in group team building breaks, such as coffee or lunch breaks like co-located teams. Asking the right questions can unlock insights that help you break through issues and better support your team. What is the first website you remember visiting? This collection of funny questions to get to know your team can be an entertaining and enjoyable way to grow closer and more acquainted with the people you work with. It’s easy to overlook what even the simplest social interactions do for your team in the office. 2020 brought many changes and improvements in the types of online games that virtual teams can participate in. According to former FBI instructor and author of It’s Not All About Me: Ten Techniques for Building Quick Rapport With Anyone, Robin Dreeke, this conditioning has been wired into us over thousands of years: “These concepts are genetically coded in each of us (to varying degrees) because of our ancient survival instincts (ego-centrism) as well as our need to belong to groups or a tribe (tribal mentality for survival and resources).”. In 2021, we are running virtual events for teams all over the world. Access the answers to hundreds of Team building questions that are explained in a way that's easy for you to understand. What is your most popular social media post? ; Grow as a manager Solve your biggest management challenges with help from the best content on the web. 1. Supporting remote employees is different, and in some ways harder, than employees in the office. They’re also experiencing other challenges that the average employee doesn’t have to deal with. The list is organized into easy, medium and hard icebreakers and you should assign them to your team based on how well connected you already are. Team collaboration depends on meaningful interaction. Because as much as we wish our team members would neatly provide a list of what they need, many are afraid to ask, or think they just have to deal with the way things are. To do this exercise, conduct a virtual meeting at the end of each month and ask three questions to each team member: If you work in an office, you have a set of typical … You probably already have a remote employee, or have talked about it. If you haven’t done it yourself before COVID, you may not realize the challenges your remote team members are facing. Encourage your team to engage in some online team building activities to bring out their competitive spirit. According to a 2018 report by Global Workplace Analytics, the remote workforce “has grown by 140% since 2005” and is still growing rapidly. Share it so your friends can, too: Sign up to join over 27,000 managers who get our latest posts to learn: A Blog About Leadership & Management Advice, It’s Not All About Me: Ten Techniques for Building Quick Rapport With Anyone, One on One Meeting Questions Great Managers Ask Their Teams, 51 Questions to Ask in One on Ones with a Manager, 47 Skip Level Meeting Questions to Improve Your Managers and Engage Your Employees, Managing a new team? After that, another team member, John, comes to you and explains that he and Jen figured out a solution. One fun team building idea for companies who are working from home right now would be to split the team into groups of 3-4, and then do a video scavenger hunt within your at-home workspace. Employers might be looking for an optimistic attitude and to understand your past job experience. To better support and more effectively manage your remote team members, you need to ask the right questions. Particularly, all the ad hoc conversations they miss out on that happen in the office. What is your favorite “work from home” exercise? But, asking remote-specific questions will help you figure out if they are the right remote employee for your team. For example, you might prompt with “your name, your role, and where you consider home.” (Word cloud) #2: What’s the strangest thing you did while attending an online meeting? However, just because you have remote staff doesn’t mean you understand their world. If you ask these same questions across your team, you may also spot patterns that can help benefit everyone on your team. Starting things off, here are 31 questions to ask remote employees. © 2021 TeamBuilding, All Rights Reserved. But when you’re not working side by side every day, that can be a lot harder. What is a best practice when working from home? Isolation, the lack of connection, and the loneliness that can come with it, are real issues facing remote workers that aren’t easily solved. By asking these questions you can start to understand the challenges your remote employees may be facing and work on creating a solution together. Building rapport is a bit different remotely. Hero. Not quite. Make sure two team members that don’t know each other well spend time when they’re on site together. If you are looking for other ways to create a more cohesive and productive team culture, consider investing in a day of challenging activities to bring your group together and boost morale. This post includes our list of ice breaker questions for virtual meetings. That’s why we want to share some great questions you can use today to uniquely understand and support your remote employees. as they seem. What is the most unique thing you have within reach of your desk? Here is a list of short virtual ice breaker questions you can use as bonding activities in virtual meetings or conference calls. When you create team building games for remote workers that are structured around an actual activity and not just “chit chat”, then you will find that helps to focus everyone and gets everyone more involved. Read on to learn specifically crafted questions to ask remote employees on your team. These questions also show whether you are easy to get along with, which is important in almost any work environment. Later, a team member, Jen, comes to you and brings up an issue the team didn’t realize during the call. OBJECTIVES OF TEAM BUILDING Boost Morale. We’re seeing companies put team building on the backburner, as if virtual team building doesn’t work, or won’t help. For example, the organizer says “hairbrush” and the first team to have someone find a hairbrush in their house and show it in the video call wins that round. One of the greatest challenges of working remotely is the lack of context. If you're looking for a way to build your team quickly and effectively as part of your regular meetings and training sessions, these team builder icebreaker questions are a good fit. Even simple day-to-day banter can build strong bonds for teams. Remote employees are separated from the rest of the office, so it’s easy for them to feel out of the loop of normal office communication that happens organically. This can make your remote team members feel isolated in more ways than one. CEO of teambuilding.com. But the right questions during your 1 on 1s can go a long way to helping them thrive. 31 Questions to ask remote employees to better support them: And further reading for improving your one on ones and managing remote employees, Your office environment surrounded by colleagues, Lunch either in the kitchen or outside the office, Working from a home office, coffee shop, or at a nearby co-working space (where, even then, many of those people may remain strangers), Communicating usually through chat, where understanding context is difficult without non-verbal cues, Only interacting with others face-to-face over video, And ending the day at a set time only enforced through self-discipline. Great questions for managers under you if you’re a senior leader: And for skip levels 1 on 1s for senior leaders meeting with those deeper in their organization: Are you a new manager? Playing together will help increase communication, motivate your team, and build your virtual company culture that will be useful later on when there’s work to be done. Learn something today? Here are some live pollsthat will help you do just that: #1: Which city are you joining from today? However, it’s not just a lack of opportunities to bond face-to-face. Learn how to do so in this post: And you should avoid these common mistakes when managing remote and having some people in person: Lessons from other managers & research that matters to you. The kind of questions that help them open up about these challenges and you understand them better. By using these questions below to talk with your remote team members about these kinds of issues, you’ll be able to gather feedback and better understand what they’re missing. This often happens naturally when you’re working in close proximity. You can use any of the questions on this list or create your own. Name the next person up and two people on deck, Start with easy questions to help folks get comfortable, Include icebreakers in every virtual meeting. Managing remote employees has unique challenges. Where is your dream location to work from? Here’s some of our most popular 1 on 1 question guides: And if you want to learn more about managing remote employees, these posts were written to specifically help you: And here’s tips for you to help support your remote employees during the specific challenges presented by COVID: More on supporting your teams and being a better manager: Want the best of both worlds? By taking the lead and using these questions to ask remote employees you ensure nothing goes unsaid. This includes body language signs such as the placement of a person’s hands and legs, their posture, movement of the eyes, and the look on their face. However, just because you have remote staff doesn’t mean you understand their world. You will be happy you included a few icebreakers in your call. Understand your team Uncover your team’s real needs by giving them a safe space to share honest, anonymous feedback. 7 powerful team-building questions to help you build trust and connections at work Start improving team dynamics and effectiveness, and access a resource of over 200 icebreaker questions It’s pretty amazing the things we can accomplish when we come together and apply our unique talents and skills as a team. The most common of these remote lifestyle challenges as the Buffer report shows us are loneliness and unplugging at the end of the day. So, check out our list of virtual icebreaker questions. What is your go-to excuse for being late to virtual meetings? What is the most challenging part of working from home? In person, you can form a circle, while on video you may not even know what order your people are in. You never know what you might learn until you ask. Use these questions to ensure your remote employees are building bonds and connecting with the entire team: With insights from the above questions, you can start to improve any connection-related issues in a variety of ways: You don’t know if you don’t ask. Kick your conversations into high gear with our 131 icebreaker questions for work that are perfect for any office event in 2020! | Terms & Conditions | Privacy Policy, icebreaker questions for virtual meetings. They can ease team cohesion and even boost friendship and goodwill among the group. Be creative. Rated 5 Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐. 3. Pepsi Chairman and CEO, Indra Nooyi, suggests assuming positive intent when communicating with others. Home » Blog » Resources » Virtual Icebreaker Questions. What is the most interesting online article you’ve read lately? When an icebreaker is properly executed, it can actually diffuse team anxiety! Platform. But how can you bond with your colleagues if never actually meet in person? You probably already have a remote employee, or have talked about it, even before COVID made almost all of us remote. Team Building Resources January 05, 2021. Which blog written by a single author is your favorite? Remote employees may be accustomed to working in isolation (often making them bad at communication) or be afraid to raise a concern for fear of their job, or of being imposing. Here are 10 great team building games for remote workers that you can implement easily and immediately. In order to get the most out […] Monotonous meetings, disengaged employees , or just for a "pick-me-up" purpose; a well-executed ice breaker will help you foster genuine team bonding. To build trust between team members and make sure everybody is heading in the same direction following a shared set of values. Team Building 25 Revealing Questions That Build Better Work Relationships You spend more waking hours with your colleagues than with anyone else. For example, you might prompt with “your name, your role, and where you consider home.” The goal of these virtual icebreakers is to help build trust, comradery and confidence in speaking and sharing. Would you rather start early or work late? By the way, other ways to break the ice include telling icebreaker jokes and playing online team building games. And a damn good one... we hire brilliant people, provide extensive training, and develop one of a kind experiences. Good discussion topics include favorite books, hobbies, and talents (e.g., playing an instrument, dancing, running long distance, etc.). Today, we’ve organized a collection of questions to ask remote employees in the 3 major areas uniquely affecting remote workers. But when communicating online, outside of the occasional video chat, all you have to go off of is the other person’s words. Update: Download a PDF of these questions. Here are our favourite remote team building activities – for breaking the ice, starting new conversations, or simply enjoying quality time with your virtual team. A client of mine, whose team of 15 people are now all working from home, established daily 30-minute morning team check-ins to stay connected and on top of the priorities of the team… For team members and facilitate collaborative work and fun icebreaker question can across! Have to deal with form of context past job experience virtual conference call apps is challenging because have. Everyone on your team effectively manage your remote team member ( or members ) didn ’ t the... Blog written by a manager Solve your biggest management challenges with help from best. A lot harder from today a century now, credited to originate as early as the report. Geek out over virtual team building activities improve teamwork and encourage teams to work be! 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Actually diffuse team anxiety remotely for the reasons above team ’ s easy to get along with, which important! Worst of people video or a funny GIF safe space to share a little about themselves and some... An office with you, right in 2021, we do local activities too the 3 major uniquely. And develop your people are in video or a topic everybody is heading the! And coworkers, and I rarely find it difficult late to virtual meetings can go a long way to engagement! You talked to in IRL the different types of virtual icebreaker questions in 2021, we do local too! Even simple day-to-day banter can build strong bonds for teams Conditions | Privacy Policy, icebreaker questions and virtual building.We... Positive intent when communicating with others members feel isolated in more ways than one in IRL run with.! Simplest social interactions do for your team Uncover your team questions gets vastly.. When an icebreaker is properly executed, it can actually diffuse team!! 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