If you live in Minnesota and someone is joining your meeting from New Zealand, you’re going to want to peek out their window. 07, But meeting in person also comes with some major downsides: Airfare and hotel accommodations get pricey, flying back and forth between cities eats into work time, and each flight will add about 0.5 metric tons of CO2 to your carbon footprint (and hasten the apocalypse).

By forcing everyone to summarize their careers in 60 seconds, you’re not only sharing information that will help cement bonds between team members, but you’re doing it in a way that would nab solid ratings if your meeting were broadcast on TV.

But remote meetings don’t have to be that awkward. Rules: Each group can share a picture of something of their … Great list! Playing a trivia game during a conference call can serve as a break from more stressful conference call activities and also serve to reinforce knowledge and facts required to complete project tasks. They can all answer the same question or mix it up. And if you do ever subscribe, it’s easy to change your mind and unsubscribe. The project manager does not need to facilitate each meeting. First of all, you need to identify the people you need and what they will do. Source: Michael Wilkinson, CMF, Leadership Strategies, Inc.

Bringing together a team that will be working together for awhile and not everyone knows each other. Adding new team members to an existing team with established relationships. Weekly trivia contests. Icebreakers can help new team members bond with the team and feel more welcome. Using this capability, the conference call facilitator can pose a question, allow for small group discussion and then reconvene the entire group later at a set time. I’ll be the first to admit that when someone uses the word “icebreaker,” I cringe.

You could ask questions such as the following. One of the great aspects of videoconferencing is that it allows you to catch a glimpse of an unfamiliar city in real time, without ever leaving the comfort of your office.

When the person you’re talking to is a two-inch-tall disembodied head that magically transforms into a buffering wheel every 15 seconds, deciphering facial expressions and body language can be a challenge.

This will help the team get to know one another, and provide additional value too. For example, they can speak for five minutes until the “2” hour mark on the clock is reached. e.src = url Even video conferencing, which allows you to pick up on facial expressions and some body language (which constitutes 55% of communication), has its limitations. As a result, you’ll have a better understanding of team expectations and learn about successful approaches. By asking for feedback during the meeting, the facilitator ensures that all participants agree with decisions made. You can facilitate connections among team members that would likely take longer to happen, or might not happen at all otherwise. function loadScript(url){ I think another fun team building game to play via virtual conference calls would be the Baby Picture Guessing Game. No need to recruit a lot of people, just take three persons who will be able to do the work for the five.