Try these team building activities for conference calls ideas to give your meetings some pizazz and get your team members energized.
It’s now been more than two years since many teams switched to hybrid and remote work models. Even teams that are back in the office completely have gotten used to the major developments in virtual teleconferencing that have made online conference calls regular and normalized.
Of course, this means that the thrill of conference calls wore off long ago. Now that conference calls have become so normal, they aren’t necessarily seen as so engaging. This is especially true because conference calls take place among people who are not physically in the same room–so there’s less physical energy to work off of.
However, it’s still important that team members feel engaged in conference call meetings, and for there to still be opportunities to learn about their fellow team members and have fun. In this way, conference calls can include a dimension of team building and creating stronger connections between team members.
So in this blog post we’ll give you a list of very simple and easy-to-implement team building activities ideas for conference calls. These activities can be done at any time and don’t require much in terms of special planning or organizing. They have just the right amount of fun and connectivity, without taking away from the meeting itself. But if you do them regularly, over time the benefits to your team’s unity and interpersonal trust will be clear, and the monotony of conference calls will be a thing of the past.
With that in mind, here is our list of fun team building activities for conference calls…
1. Ice Breaker Questions
Ice breaker questions are some of the best team building activities for conference calls. The reason for this is that all that’s required is asking questions, which is easy to do right before the conference call starts, or while you’re waiting for members to arrive.
We’ve written a whole list of 100 icebreaker questions that you can choose from and use to make your conference calls more fun. Some of these include:
- If you could go back in time and live in a different era, which one would you want to live in and why?
- Would you rather time travel into the future or the past?
- What would your dream house look like?
- Would you rather be rich and unhappy or poor and happy?
- Describe your idea of the perfect date.
- Would you rather live on Mars or under the ocean?
- If you could start any charity or volunteer organization, what would it do?
- If you could have one superpower, what would it be?
- Which is worse–putting clean clothes on your dirty body or putting dirty clothes on your clean body?
- Bath or shower?
- Perfect hearing or perfect vision?
These types of icebreaker questions are simple and short, and can be used just to add a bit more fun to your meetings.
2. Lightning Scavenger Hunt
As a team building company, we at Invite Japan love scavenger hunts. Of course, when it comes to team building activities for conference calls, there isn’t really enough time to do a full one. Luckily, lightning scavenger hunts can inject the same fun of outdoor scavenger hunts into regular meetings.
With lightning scavenger hunts, players have to scramble to find an object, or number of objects, within the given time limit. For example you could ask players to find an object starting with the letter “P” and then share your results. Or you could ask team members to find as many objects around them that are green.
3. Reflection Questions
For those teams that want a bit more depth to their team building activities for conference calls, there are reflection questions. Reflection questions are similar to icebreaker questions in nature, but their goal is to stimulate more serious discussions about the team, its goals, and how to improve.
We have a whole list of 60 questions that can stimulate team reflection. Here are just a few:
- What are the major goals of your team?
- How do you define “success” on your team?
- What are some ways that you could make communication more effective?
- Do you feel that your team is good at getting things done?
You can take as long as you want with the discussions, but if you’re short on time and need to get the conference call going, it might be good to moderate them more.
4. Home Tour
Home tours can be great tea building activities for conference calls, especially for teams that are working from home a lot. It’s a way for team members to give each other a glimpse of their lives outside of work, and can spark some good questions that will get teams to bond.
For this activity, simply have team members give a tour of their homes (only what they feel comfortable showing, of course). You can break this up so that each member shows off their home before a different meeting. Thus activity does require a bit of vulnerability, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing when it comes to team building.
5. Show and Tell
This game is a classic ice breaker activity, all you need to do is adapt it for conference calls. Have team members show each other an object that means a lot to them. Or, you could come up with different themes for objects to bring in, like “Things that I use the most when I work from home”, or “Oldest objects that you still have” or “An object that I was given as a present”.
Like the other team building activities for conference calls mentioned on this list, the goal of this game is to learn about each other and spark some interesting conversations that can lead to greater connectivity.
6. Exercises
Doing some simple exercises before your conference call is not only fun, but it’s also good for the body and releases those nice endorphins that will make everyone a bit happier during the meeting itself. Invite Japan, by the way, does a short exercise routine calles “Radio Taiso” every morning, so we speak from experience here.
You can do the same exercise routine every time, or you can switch it up and do different ones every time. You could even add another layer by having team members take turns leading the rest of the team in a routine. The important thing is to not take it too seriously. The best result is when everyone is laughing while they do it, because this means everyone will be feeling lighter and looser during the following meeting.
7. Best Thing
Best Thing is a very simple activity that you can do before conference calls. It’s like doing an easy “check-in” with your team. All you have to do is go around the group and have each member share the best thing that happened to them within a given time frame (last week, last month, last year, etc.).
This works really well as a quick team building activity because it lets other team members know what’s going on in your life and matters to you, while also boosting everyone’s optimism and happy feelings. Sharing these feelings will likewise make your team stronger and feel more connected together.
8. What’s Outside
What’s Outside is similar to Home Tour, except that instead of showing your home, you show (or describe) what’s outside your window. This is one of our most recommended team building activities for conference calls, especially for international teams, where members will have wildly different views from their homes.
9. Virtual Backgrounds
This team building activity plays with the different styles of virtual backgrounds that people use, and what they mean to team members. It’s kind of like “show and tell” but using backgrounds instead of objects.
Have team members choose a background on their screen that means something to them. After everyone sees each other’s different screens, have team members explain why they chose the background that they did. The discussions will definitely be interesting, and will get team members to learn more about each other’s lives.
10. Today I Learned
The last idea on our list of team building activities for conference calls has to do with shared learning. It’s important for team members to share what they learn, and to learn from each other, both about work-related and non-work related subjects. This type of learning brings teams together more and creates a better foundation for trust and understanding.
In “Today I Learned”, go around the group and ask each member to talk about something new that they learned today (or recently). It could be a fun fact, something about themselves, or a question that really made them think differently. By sharing, every team member will also learn something new, and learn more about the personalities of each team member and what makes them click.
