According to Forbes, tasteful humor at work is great for the workplace – but not all leaders know how to make it part of the culture.
“Many leaders, especially introverts, don’t know how to safely encourage the use of more humor at work and are unsure how to express it in their own leadership style,” Kerr explains. “Many of my clients also simply cite a lack of time as a key dampening factor. The desire is there, but they simply don’t know how to bring more humor into their busy work life.”
As more companies gear to enable remote work where possible, here are 5 icebreakers to help liven up the (many) upcoming video meetings:
- What’s this meeting’s theme song? (No repeats allowed!) Ask the team to imagine the tone of the meeting and pick what success would look like – is it the theme song for Rocky? Let It Go?
- Draw yourself in one line and hold it up! Cap it at 30 seconds and have everyone hold it up – it’ll get a few giggles going and contribute to team bonding even from afar.
- “In 10min, we’re all going to take a 1 min break. What should it be?”. One of the key learnings from remote workers is that it’s easy for minutes to turn into hours, hours into more hours, and the intent for breakfast to turn into dinner. Help mitigate that by asking the team if you’ll stand up and walk, have a glass of water, do a stretch…
- What’s your favorite book/movie? You’ll find some great new golden nuggets within the team. This one never disappoints.
- What’s the most colorful piece of clothing you own? This could be put in the agenda and make that video conference less monotonous than the others!
If you have ideas on adding to this list, feel free to suggest them on our LinkedIn page. Happy video conferencing!