Planning a Virtual Face-to-Face?
In a team that’s been working so hard they need some fun?
Looking for a virtual team-building game?
As part of our FREE VIRTUAL KIT, red10 ‘s Will Sudworth explains two simple and fun team-building games that:
A Don’t take up valuable meeting time – as you play them whilst getting real work done in the meeting
B Help the team to learn vital virtual tools and techniques – namely the chatbox and annotate tools
Bag of Tools and Techniques
If you find this article useful, have you seen our Free Facilitator’s Kit for Virtual Meetings ?
This article is one of the Tools and Techniques in our 3Bs Virtual Kit – Basics, Behaviours and Bag of Tools to help leaders facilitate great virtual meetings. There are advanced tools that you may be interested in too, such as Breakout Rooms and Annotations for prioritizing
1 Tag – Introduction
This game is a lot like the game of Tag from the school playground, where only a few of the children were ‘on’ and had to chase and ‘tag’ someone so that they would be ‘on’ instead.
The game assumes that the team are using red10 ‘s 7½ Rules of Being Virtual that ask the team to keep a constant eye on the chatbox in whatever video conference tool they are using.
It’s easy to run, it doesn’t take time away from the meeting, and it encourages the team to use the chatbox – a tool that speeds up team meetings.
It can be distracting, though, so you may want to pause it for serious or complicated parts of the meeting. I once made the mistake of leaving the game running whilst trying to introduce a team to Mural® – it all got too much ?
Tag – Rules
AIM: To be free of tags at the end of the meeting
- Randomly choose two people to be ‘on’ – let’s call one of them Suki
- To ‘tag’ Tony, Suki would put @Tony in a message in the chatbox
The more subtle you are, the more chance you have of tagging…
e.g. “What do you think of the proposal @Tony?” - If Tony doesn’t respond within 1 min (as shown by time of message), Tony is now “on”.
Suki is free, and it is Tony who is ‘on’ and has to try and tag someone else - If Tony does respond within the minute, then Tony is now immune for 1hr
Suki now needs to find someone else to tag…
Click here for a slide that you can use to introduce the team to Virtual Tag.
2 Hide and Seek – Introduction
This game only works on Zoom® as it uses Zoom® Annotate.
It works like the game of hide and seek except that rather than hiding yourself, or hiding an object, you hide the words “hide and seek” on someone else’s screenshare, and see who is first to find the words.
As well as being fun, it helps a team to learn how to use the Annotate tool.
Hide & Seek – Rules
AIM: To be the person who found the most hidden words
- At the start of the meeting, introduce Zoom® Annotate using this slide
- Show how you can use the ‘text’ tool in Annotate to subtly add the words “hide and seek” to someone’s screen share
- Show how you can use the arrow tool in Annotate to put your name on a screenshare when you find the “hide and seek” words
- Begin the game, with the facilitator subtly adding the words “Hide and Seek” to someone’s screenshare. Whoever spots it first gets a point and is asked to now add ‘hide and seek’ words for the others to find so that the game continues.
Click here for a slide that you can use to introduce the team to Virtual Tag.
Other Virtual Games
What team-building games have you created that you’d like to share?