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The Virtual WorkplaceInsights and conversations about the virtual workplace in 10 minutes or less.. Author: Stimulus
Insights and conversations about the virtual workplace in 10 minutes or less. Language: en Genres: Business, Education, Management Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Warming Up for Virtual Calls
Episode 4
Tuesday, 12 May, 2020
Warming Up for Virtual CallsHi Chad here. Welcome back to the virtual workplace podcast. [00:00:11]Today I wanted to share a couple of activities that have been really important for me to break up my workday. More and more we're sitting in chairs, staring at screens than we ever have before. With all of the virtual calls and video conferences that we find ourselves on. Many times back to back to back to back. [00:00:33] It's probably not uncommon for some of us to be on six, seven or even eight of these calls a day. Probably more. That's not good for us. We're not meant to be sitting hunched over our laptops all day every day. Doing different warm up activities is how I've tried to combat the sedentary nature of our work. I can do this either before I join a call or if the team is up for it. we can do it at the beginning of the calls. And there's three different kinds of warmups that I like to do and you can remix them, together, do all of them or just choose one that sounds good to you. There's physical or active warmups, there's mental warmups, and then there's fun or playful warm-ups.[00:01:23] The physical warmups I think are the easiest to introduce just because I think all of us want to be a little bit more active as where we're stuck inside on calls all day. I just like to do some simple stretching. You can do it, sitting, doing arm, stretches and neck stretches, or even better you can stand up from your chair to do some forward folds, maybe some air squats, raise your hands over your head and lean left and right, or do jumping jacks if you want. [00:01:57] My friend Matt does 10 pushups every time he gets up from his computer to help himself try and stay active. So if you want to challenge yourself a bit more and be bold, maybe you can do pushups in between each of your calls. [00:02:10]It's really fun for me to break the ice at the beginning of a call and just ask everyone if they want to take a few moments to stretch. I think you can see everyone, breathe a sigh of relief, in doing so. Even better if you can get in some real exercise in between your calls. I know a lot of us have tried to set up home gyms with maybe some, freeweights and jumping ropes, yoga mats, et cetera. But if you can't do that, maybe spend just 30 seconds or a minute doing some stretching before you start. [00:02:41]The second warmup activities, the mental warmup activities, really are just questions that I like to ask at the beginning of meetings. It can be a bit awkward in those first few minutes when just a few of you are on the call, and so sometimes I just break the ice by asking question like what's something interesting that they're reading or watching, any podcasts that they might have discovered or even just, you know what the weather is like.[00:03:08] There's probably hundreds of icebreaker questions, but just choose a few that you like, the most to ask to your colleagues or friends or just come to each meeting with a different one. Maybe you can pick a list of five or six icebreaker questions that are interesting to you and bring a new one into each of your, maybe daily standups or check-ins that you have with your team. [00:03:31]The third activity are a fun playful or even game warmups. There are two favorite games that I like to play as warmups, both of these I've stolen from friends of mine. I was in a workshop with a friend, Daniel Stillman, and he stopped all of us and said, all right, everyone touch something blue and we all had to run around the room and find something that was blue. So my twist on this for a video chat, is name a color, and then have everyone bring an object of that color onto the screen and put it big and bright in front of the webcam. [00:04:11] You'll be so surprised at the things that people will find around them to bring onto the web cam. I've seen giant red helium filled lobster balloons, and little rubber, dinosaurs. And everything in between. Of course you say the color green, and then everyone finds their house plants. but other colors like yellow and orange or purple, people find some really fun and interesting things. [00:04:34] Once everyone has the object on screen, choose your favorite and then have that person name a color, and then you repeat that process Do it three or four times so that you have fun, diverse, group of objects that people are finding as they're running around, their home offices. [00:04:50]The second game that I've tried a couple of times is a virtual rock paper scissors tournament. This one takes a little bit longer, so give yourself a good five to 10 minutes if you're more than six people, but everyone onscreen gets paired with someone else. And then it's single elimination, rock paper scissors, and it devolves into chaos really quickly, but this is maybe an activity, you know, for a Friday. but it's really fun because people begin to cheer, for others and after five or 10 minutes, you can crown that week's champion of rock paper scissors. [00:05:30] It's also interesting to learn how you can go from complete chaos to some semblance of a bit more order in an emergent fashion. You don't have to be so dogmatic in how the rules work and what everyone's doing. It's so cool to see everyone kind of mime to one another, to, to get in there match, some people go really quick. Some people go slower. Some people nod their heads. Some people use their fingers to count. It's really cool to see, how everyone runs their games as they're playing one another. [00:06:03]There's many other virtual games out there that you can play, but these are two of my favorites. The main thing that I wanted to share here is the importance of breaking up, the orkday and breaking up all of the virtual calls that were on each and every day. [00:06:18] Instead of crashing from one into the other, always chronically five minutes late, think about how you can do some warmups either before you show up to the call or introducing warm-ups on the call with your team. I'm curious to know what warmups you have done, with your teams, which ones you've liked the most icebreaker questions, games, or physical activities that you've done with your teams.[00:06:42] You can always get in touch with me directly at 917.719.3737. Text me. Leave me a voice message and let me know what warmups have worked for you. [00:06:55] Thank you so much for listening until next time.
