Encouraging an engaged dialogue within a remote team during a virtual meeting can be a real challenge. Things can get even more spicy during hybrid meetings, when you have some team members in a conference room, and some team members calling in from home. An unfortunate outcome can be that some team members just shut down, so their relevant opinions are not heard. In my virtual communications workshops for teams at companies like Facebook, Salesforce and Uber, I find this exercise to be a really helpful and fun way to create self-awareness and communication parity among remote and in-person team members.

This quick exercise works best with teams up to 10 members. If you have more than 10, demonstrate the exercise with 10 volunteers, then send all of the meeting participants to breakout rooms of 10 for 5 minutes to try the exercise on their own. Plan for a 5 minute debrief following the exercise. Here’s how it works:

The 1 to 10 Exercise

1. The group task is to count verbally from 1 to 10 in sequential order

2. Only 1 person can say a number at a time

3. 1 person can’t say 2 numbers in a row

4. If multiple team members say a number at the same time, the entire group must start back to 1

I like to encourage participants to be aware of how they are personally doing the exercise. I suggest that if they normally speak up in meetings to try hanging back, and if they normally keep quiet to try speaking up.

If a group is having a particularly difficult time making it through the sequence, have them stop and take a breath together, visibly moving their shoulders up and down with their breath. Encourage them to watch each other and try to synchronize the breath, then try the exercise again. I find this does wonders with getting a team engaged visually with the ‘virtual room.’

Team members often try to ‘hack’ the exercise in fun ways: alphabetical order, nonverbal cues, repeating patterns, etc.. It doesn’t really matter!

Debrief

After the exercise, ask your team these questions. If the team doesn’t volunteer any answers, call on the most engaged participant.

• How did that exercise feel?

  • Asking this question helps get strong reactions and emotions expressed so the following debrief discussions can be more objective and useful.

• How did the team do?

  • Draw out specific challenging and successful moments.

• What did you learn?

  • Asking an open ended question like this may reveal unexpected takeaways.

• How did you decide whether to speak up or stay silent?

  • Various strategies can be indicative of further training opportunities.

• How does this relate to our meetings?

  • Again, asking an open ended question like this may reveal unexpected takeaways.

• What can we apply going forward?

This exercise helps teams in 2 ways. First, participants become more self-aware regarding how they show up virtually- from active to passive. Second, teams start to become much more aware of non-verbal cues over the virtual meeting platform, which eases the transition of dialogue from 1 speaker to the next immensely.

I encourage you to try this low-stakes exercise at the beginning of 1 of your virtual team meetings. You may be surprised at the effect it has on interaction during the rest of the meeting! Please let me know how it goes, and check out my workshops if you’d like to get your team firing on all cylinders in your hybrid meetings fast!