“Damn, man, did we forget the chicken in the oven?”

“I think so! But it’s ok, we have frozen pizza.”

Not exactly a dialogue from a Tarantino movie – but an exchange that gave me a chuckle, when connected with a photo of two guys sitting on railway tracks.

If you want a quick warm-up before your next online team meeting, this one is for you.

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The idea

It’s natural for us to tell stories about anything we see. When we see two people – making a story about what’s happening between the two of them is almost automatic!

What you’ll need:

• A high-resolution photo of two (or more) people. You can get a ton searching unsplash.com, for example.
• A virtual whiteboard (like Mural) where people can add their “bubbles” (virtual post-its are fine)
• People in an online meeting (works best with 8 or more, let’s say up to 20).

Introduction for the participants

“On the photo, you can see two people. What are they saying to each other? Add post-its to the photo and write down what they might be saying.”

The result?

You got everyone active, tested they can use the virtual whiteboard you’ll be using throughout the rest of the meeting and broke the ice with an exercise that is significantly less “cheezy” than “tell one thing about yourself that nobody knows”.

The best thing about it?

You can keep it fresh even with the same group, just by switching the hi-res photo the next time, yay!

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