Make your next Zoom meeting more enjoyable!

Having team members connect remotely is challenging. And after 36,473 Zoom calls, they’re all starting to feel a little stale. We get it.

Here are two activities that you can lead with your team (in-person or virtually) that will boost morale, provide some laughs, and result in some great learning around what it takes to make virtual meetings effective.

TEAM BONDING QUESTION:

With most of us spending time on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or some other virtual communication platform each day, we are starting to notice some common “characters” showing up during our calls. I’ve provided a short list of these characters below. For fun, go around and see if team members can identify with any of the characters on the list. Also, see if your team can brainstorm a few more.

1. Chatty Cathy – the person who provides their thoughts, ideas, and funny commentary for everyone to see in the chat feature. Non-stop.
2. Emailing Eddie – The person who is pretending to be paying attention but is obviously sending non-meeting-related emails throughout the call.
3. Pet Loving Pete – The person whose dog is barking, and/or cat is walking over their keyboard, and/or fish/bird/ferret/rabbit/etc. can clearly be seen in the background.
4. Call-In Courtney – The person who repeatedly finds their “camera isn’t working” and must call in by phone.
5. In-and-Out Ingrid – The person whose internet connection commonly fails them and finds themselves being repeatedly frozen or dropped from the meeting.
6. Treadmill Terry – The person who refuses to waste a good opportunity to stay in shape and walks/jogs their way through the meeting.
7. Studio Steve – The person who makes everyone else feel a little inadequate due to their crystal-clear camera, professional lighting, and podcast-level microphone.
8. Background Betty – The person who continually changes their virtual background, often showing pictures of their most recent vacation, or pop culture images that will garner a laugh.
9. ______________________________
10. ______________________________

TEAM BUILDING QUESTION:

Divide the team into small groups of 3 or 4 people and give them 10 minutes to each share their answers to the following questions:

1. In the last 3 months, what was the most effective virtual meeting/training/event you participated in?
2. Why does it stand out?
3. What can be replicated from that experience to make your team’s virtual meetings more effective?

Have a representative from each group share 2 or 3 ideas that surfaced in their discussions that could help to strengthen the teams’ virtual meetings.

Click here to download a PDF of these questions that you can share with your team:

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