Recreate watercooler moments

Check-in rituals (5–10 minutes; 1 minute per person)

Ask how each team member is feeling by choosing one of these questions/rituals.

• What’s your internal weather right now (sunny, thunderstorm, cloudy, drizzle ️)?
• In one word or one color: How are you feeling?
• If your mood right now were an animal, what would it be? Why?
• What’s one thing you enjoyed doing this week?
• Share one high and one low from the week.
• In an abstract way, draw how you’re currently feeling. It might be a cloud floating in the sky or a snail hiding in its shell. Hold it up to your laptop camera and discuss.

Quick questions (5–10 minutes; 1 minute per person)

Choose one or two of these icebreakers to avoid an awkward Zoom silence.

• Getting to know new colleagues
  • Where did you grow up?
  • If you were famous, what would it be for?
  • What’s something small or unexpected that brings you joy?
  • What was your dream job when you were a child? How does that compare with what you’re doing now?
  • What’s something important to you that your peers might not know about?
  • What’s the most exciting thing you’re working on?
  • What’s one of your biggest challenges right now?
  • What’s one way we could help each other?

• Ways of working
  • Which habits or rituals help you maintain focus?
  • What sparks creative energy for you?
  • What stresses you out? How do you decompress?
  • What helps you stay in a state of flow?
  • What was the best project you’ve ever worked on? What did you love about it?
  • What’s the most challenging project you’ve worked on? What made it challenging?
  • What’s your favorite efficiency tip?

• Superpowers
  • Which of your talents shines bright in your current role?
  • What’s a talent you used to show off as a kid? 
  • What’s your human superpower (for example: capable of falling asleep anywhere)?
  • What’s something you can teach in one minute?

• Dreaming about the future 
  • Which goal—personal or professional—do you hope to accomplish this year?
  • If you could do any job in the world, what would it be and why? 
  • What’s a skill you’d like to develop?

Check our Creative Conversation Cards for more ideas.

Show-and-tell (10–20 minutes)

A virtual treasure hunt.

• Find an object near you that has a story or personal meaning and share it.

Last photo (5–10 minutes; 1 minute per person)

A modernized version of show-and-tell.

• Ask participants to share a story about the most recent photo in their phone that isn’t curated or edited. No cheating! 

Rapid-fire connections (15 minutes)

This is a great way to quickly build trust and community by giving pairs of people something to bond over.

• Round 1: Create random breakout rooms with two people in each. Give them five minutes to tell each other about where they’re from and then create a secret handshake (or set of gestures for Zoom) inspired by that information. 
• Round 2: Recreate the random breakout rooms with different pairs of team members. Give them five minutes to tell each other about a recent failure (big or small) and then create a life motto inspired by that information. 
• Round 3: Recreate the random breakout rooms with different pairs of team members. Give them five minutes to tell each other about a recent success (big or small) and then create a touchdown dance inspired by that information.

• Try a tool such as Donut, a Slack extension that randomly pairs team members for 1–4 weeks and encourages them to bond over non-work topics, or Connections, a bot that helps team members connect and build strong bonds using watercooler topics, interest groups, and meetup roulettes.
• Use “random” pairing in Zoom for breakout rooms, to make sure you don’t always have the same teammates together in a group.

• Set up a Zoom coworking session. Start with a 10- to 15-minute check-in to learn what everyone is working on, then have them add their project to a doc for accountability. Put on some music and cowork for one hour. If anyone feels blocked, ask them to speak up and talk through it with the team.

• Write async weekly status updates, to make sure team members know what everyone else is working on. See something you’re curious about? Ask. If someone is blocked, offer your help!

• Creative conversation cards
• Get to know your team
• Form team-bonding rituals
• Evaluate your team’s well-being
• Tools for community building in virtual first

• Make Time for Small Talk in Your Virtual Meetings (Harvard Business Review)
• Why Every Employee Should Be Building Weak Ties At Work (Forbes)
• 9 Ways to Create Belonging for Remote Employees (Glassdoor)
• The New Future Of Work (Microsoft)
• Figuring Out Social Capital Is Critical for the Future of Hybrid Work (MIT Sloan Review)