Whether you’re creating elearning courses, training sessions or working in blended environments, this guide will help you understand how to deploy these instructional strategies and engage your learners. We’ll explore each principle in turn and provide practical examples and advice for applying them in your instructional design process.

Good instructional design is an art and a science.

Even if you’re new to learning design, chances are you’ll already be practicing some of the learning principles I’ll outline below. In my own practice, I learned from mentors and teachers I admired and through trial and error long before I came across learning theory.

Creativity and experience got me so far, but then I realized that a deeper understanding of how people learn would help me improve the courses and workshops I designed. Instructional design theories and learning frameworks provide a solid foundation that you can build upon with your signature style.

In this guide, we’ll explore Robert Gagne’s 9 principles of instructional design and how to apply them.

By better understanding these principles and how to practically action them as an instructional designer, you can create more engaging learning experiences that will help participants retain and better utilize what they learn after the course is complete. 

What are Gagne’s instructional design principles and why are they important? 

Robert M. Gagne was an American psychologist whose worked centred on educational psychology. He is best known for his 1965 book The Conditions of Learning. There, he demonstrated a nine-step process for creating effective learning called the events of instruction.

The 9 instructional design principles (also known as Gagne’s nine events of instruction) as outlined by Gagne are:

1. Gain the attention of your learners
2. State the objectives 
3. Stimulate recall of prior learning
4. Present the learning content 
5. Provide learning guidance
6. Elicit performance from learners
7. Provide feedback
8. Assess learner performance 
9. Enhance retention and transfer

You’ll find a detailed explanation of each of Gagne’s instructional design principles below alongside practical tips for implementing them in your eLearning course, classroom or live training session. 

Instructional design principles are important because they provide a proven framework for designing an effective learning experience. They successfully incorporate the key concepts and psychological principles at the heart of learning into a practical, easy to follow process.

In my experience, these principles help concretize all the learning theory out there and make it easy for me to ensure the course I’m designing will engage students and achieve the desired learning outcomes. They provide a systematic process that is easy for any instructional designer to follow, repeat and internalize.

While most of these principles will occur in your course roughly in the order presented above, it’s worth noting that these events can overlap and you’ll revisit them at various points in your learning flow. 

For example, it’s common that an eLearning course will present the content of one training block alongside an interactive game that gives learners an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and for instructors to gauge their progress.

Afterwards, you might then go into another learning block that repeats this process, perhaps even restating objectives at certain points and asking learners to remember previous learning when pertinent. 

In most effective courses, many of these instructional principles are repeated throughout and learners will have multiple opportunities to receive feedback, interact with experiential content and practice their skills.

Try thinking of the list as both a rough skeleton of the points you will want to hit in your learning flow as well as practice advice for improving individual sections of your course or training programs. 

When designing an eLearning course outline or instructional design storyboard, it’s helpful to detail how each training block aligns with your learning objectives.

In SessionLab, instructional designers can add colour-coding to training blocks to delineate the learning objective, activity type or even which stage of the learning process it touches upon. This can help ensure you have a balanced learning flow that will be engaging for your learners. 

As Gagne writes, “organisation is the hallmark of effective instructional materials.”

Start by creating a simple course outline that meets your learner needs. Turn that outline into a storyboard by adding detailed text, timing and clear instructions. Attach learning materials, images, links and other multimedia to each training block so that your content team can easily find what they need.   

By combining the following instructional design principles for course creation with SessionLab, you can quickly structure your online course and ensure nothing is missed. 

1) Gain attention

Effective learning can only begin once learners’ attention is in the room or on the course provided. Gagne’s first event of instruction is all about getting the attention of your learners, sparking their curiosity and drawing them into the session. 

In a live setting, gaining attention often means actually starting the session, asking for people to settle into the room and leave what’s outside of the session for later. While this can be as simple as raising your voice and saying, let’s begin, it can be especially effective to engage learners’ curiosity and help them be present in the moment with a game or activity.

For a learning program or online course delivered via an LMS or course platform, getting the attention of your learners also needs to consider a combination of good design and simple, but engaging content.

How to gain attention in instructor-led training

• Call the room to action by using your voice and presence. Often, this looks like standing up at the front of the room, raising the volume of your voice and calling the group to attention. In traditional learning environments, lots of learners expect some kind of formal signal to begin so don’t be afraid to lean into this.
• Use an icebreaker game to help people mentally arrive in the room. Bonus points if it relates to the topic of the day and starts getting people engaging and learning with one another.
• Don’t forget the body! A simple invitation to take a few deep breaths, stretch or do an energizer can help people give their attention to what’s happening in the room, rather than what’s happening on their phone or after the session.  
• Use music or other audio tool to signal the start of the session. One facilitator friend swears by the use of a Tibetan gong!
• Create engaging visuals. Have a thought-provoking cover slide on your visual presentation or have posters or images relating to your topic around the room. 
• Place question cards, quotes or image cards on tables and chairs ready for when people come in. Pique their interest or invite them to start thinking about the session and their own understanding of the topic at hand while everyone arrives.

How to gain attention in eLearning courses

• Share a short, engaging intro video. Video content that features the instructor behind the training can be very effective, adding a human touch to forthcoming material while also introducing the key points of the course.
• Share a story relevant to the topic at hand. Good stories are highly engaging for us as people, whatever the medium. A real world example that engages with the topic of your course is also a great shout – if it’s personal, even better! 
• Have an interactive moment early on, preferably including some element of user choice. Picking an avatar, a favourite colour or simply answering a question in the first moments of the course can help get the attention of learners in this environment. Bonus points if it’s persistent! 
• Use compelling visuals. As above, attractive, thought provoking visual material can be a great way to get attention immediately. Good design can go a long way here!  
• Make a big claim or bold statement to grab learner attention and encouraging critical thinking. Something a learner strongly agrees (or disagrees!) which can be a compelling hook to move forward. On other occasions, using evocative language and restating the ideal goal state or benefit of the course can be a great way to gain learner attention. Let them know what real world problems they’ll solve after taking your course!

2) State objectives

In adult learning, it’s been shown that people learn better when they know why they’re doing a particular activity and what the goals or desired outcomes of a training program are. Gagne’s second event of instruction is all about outlining the goals and objectives of the training they’re about undertake.

Stating course objectives can help learners engage with each step of the learning flow, understanding what the overall goal is and how each step can help them reach that goal. 

This stage is often about building trust too – giving your learners an overview of what they’re going to learn and some sense of how you’re going to help them learn it. Whatever your learning format and audience, try to use language that speaks to them and relates to their personal goals, as well as those of the wider training program.

How to state objectives in instructor-led training 

• Let your learners know the objectives of the training session early in the process. Practically, this looks like having a slide in your presentation to present the objectives or a handout which includes learning objectives close to the top. For some sessions, you might even state the objectives of the training in the invitation email or in a shareable agenda so participants can come to the session fully prepared. 
• Try making objectives personal and aspirational. Statements such as “by the end of this training you will be able to:” can help the goals of a session more concrete. Aspirational statements that invite participants to consider their personal goals can also be effective ways to motivate learners.
• In live environments, it can also be effective to ask learners and trainees what their own objectives are at the beginning of a training session. This can help ensure alignment, create a participatory environment and also create the potential to cover peripheral topics (if able) that learners will respond to. 
• Having learners share those desired learning outcomes with the rest of the group can also be an effective way to cover the objectives of the course and also begin the active learning process. Ask participants to share their own goals with the group and then add any core learning outcomes they’ve missed at the end.

How to state objectives in eLearning courses

• A simple bullet point list or slide that tells learners exactly what they’ll learn on the course is a tried and tested method for stating objectives. This might also come in the form of a course outline where objectives are linked to the main sections of your course. 
• Outlining before and after states is also an effective way to sell the self-paced course they’re on and carry them through the first screens and into the training proper. What will it look like after the course has been completed? How will the learnings benefit their day-to-day work?
• A short video where the instructor introduces learning objectives works well. The human touch can help demystify tricky objectives or help demonstrate an ideal future state. For example, if you were running a course on improving facilitation skills, a video where an expert facilitator tells trainees how achieving learning objectives has improved their personal practice can do wonders to get participant buy-in. 
• I’ve found that including an activity that asks participants to write down their personal objectives is a great way to start people on their learning journey. If you’ve gotten the right people on the course at the right time, most personal objectives will overlap with those of the course, but it’s an effective exercise to get participants thinking about what they most want to get out of the material ahead. 

3) Stimulate recall of prior learning

In Cagne’s principles of instructional design, the recall of previous learning is an integral part of the learning process. By creating connections between new material and their existing knowledge and experiences, it’s easier for learners to retain what they learn. 

In many cases, the recollection of previous material is also a great tool to allow a trainer to assess participants’ existing knowledge or skill level. You can use this to tailor the learning experience and to measure the impact of your course – for example, running a short quiz at the beginning and end of the training and seeing how the results change.

Remember that previous learning doesn’t just mean “what previous courses or training have you taken on this subject?”

If the subject of your training is conflict resolution, it might be more effective to ask participants about recent conflicts and how they resolved them. Personal experience and parallels to real life situations can be very effective at stimulating the recall of prior knowledge. 

How to stimulate recall in instructor-led training

• Group discussions where participants are encouraged to share their experiences around a core training topic is a highly effective method of stimulating recall. In my experience, 1-2-4 All provides the best structure of this kind of discussion. It allows trainees to have some personal time thinking about the subject before a pair and small group discussion. It also ensures that one person doesn’t dominate a whole group discussion and that multiple viewpoints are shared. 
• Experiential activities can also be a great way to stimulate recall. For example, a simple problem solving game might require participants to use skills they’ve learned in order to be successful. In my experience, using an energizer game as an opportunity for people to use problem solving skills related to the topic at hand can also help.
• One simple way to stimulate recall is to simply ask all participants to summarize their knowledge on a chosen topic and present those summaries to the group. 

How to stimulate recall in eLearning courses

• Quizzes and other interactive content are highly effective in a self-paced format. A short quiz can help you engage learners early on, providing variation in your course content while also allowing you to gauge their level of knowledge.  
• Asking learners to recall prior knowledge and summarize can work in a self-paced format, though without peer feedback, it might not suit every training topic or learning format. That said, even as a self-reflection activity it can be effective. You can even begin the process of multimedia learning by asking participants to create a slide-deck or image to summarize their existing knowledge.  
• Referencing previous learning content or well known material in your course material can help gently nudge learner recall. If you know your trainees have engaged in a previous course or will likely have read a well known book on the topic, organically referencing these in your course is a good idea.
• Sending preparatory reading material to your trainees in your invitation or prep materials can give participants an opportunity to prepare and also give you something to refer back to later. Be aware that not every trainee will do this reading, but don’t be afraid to refer back to it to help stimulate recall either. 
• A single great question can also pave the way for this kind of recall. Ask a question that invites participants to reflect (and take time to do so!) on a given topic or an inspiring subject can be all it takes to promote this learning principle. 

4) Present the content

So this is the big one – actually presenting your learning content to your trainees. In most training sessions, this is where the bulk of time is spent. Here, you’ll organize your learning content into a methodical, engaging learning flow that will help learners understand and engage with the learning material. 

In live training, presenting content can often look like a trainer running through a slide deck, asking questions from the group, encouraging reflection and perhaps including an experiential game to demonstrate some of the content in action. 

In eLearning environments, content will likely live in an LMS or learning platform, and be a sequence of interactive slides, games and other material. Using the key principles of multimedia learning and varying your content style is a great place to begin, though you’ll want to go further in order to produce a truly effective instructional design.

In any format, there are some solid best practices for ensuring your learning content is presented in an engaging fashion that will help learners move efficiently to the next stage. 

How to present content in instructor-led training

• Try presenting your content in different ways to engage different learning styles. Standing at the front of the room and simply talking to your trainees without any variation or interactivity can quickly grow stale and lower engagement with your content. Use slides, videos, audio, handouts and images in your visual presentations to cater to different learning styles. You might also encourage active participation in the form of a training activity that involves your participants in presenting content.
• Simplicity and legibility is important. Your content should follow a structured learning flow that makes it easy for learners to follow, understand and synthesize. Be sure to contextualize anything you present and that it’s suitable for the level of understanding your learners have.
  Using SessionLab to design your content flow and storyboards is one effective way of ensuring your content is well structured and follows a logical sequence.
• Summarizing content and describing key points to learners either at the beginning or end of a training block can be helpful at switching your participants into the right mode for learning while also reinforcing the key takeaways. 
• Relating your material to real world contexts can provide learners with a way to relate this new knowledge to their own experience. Try using multiple examples or even ask for examples from your group.
• Encouraging note-taking is another effective method of helping participants engage with the content you’re presenting. In some training activities, you might ask learners to share notes with each other between learning blocks or to summarize the content you just presented using their own notes. 

How to present content in eLearning courses

• Presenting content in different forms is especially important for keeping learners attention in self-paced eLearning. Using a blend of text, video, audio, infographics, slides and other media are all useful at creating engagement.
• Interactivity can be an effective way of presenting your content in a more memorable and experiential manner. Simple learning games developed with the help of subject matter experts can make all the difference when it comes to helping learners actively engage with your content.  
• Ensure that any additional media or interactivity you add is relevant to the topic and learning goals. Making things visually appealing is a bonus, but adding heaps of images that aren’t relevant to your central content can distract the learner. As with everything in instructional design, balance is key. 
• Segment your content into digestible chunks and add simple, measurable goals to each section. This can help keep your learners on track and ensure they don’t lose sight of why they’re being given a particular piece of content. 

5) Provide learning guidance

Gagne’s fifth event of instruction is where the instructor or trainer provides learning guidance. This guidance can come in many forms, though it should always have the aim of helping learners better understand the material provided and helping them learn how to learn. 

In my experience, learning guidance comes in two main forms: 

1. Learning guidance that is baked into the content
2. Learning guidance offered alongside main content by the instructor or course

Making learning guidance present on a content level is often a design decision. For example, instructional designers will often start with simple material before increasing in complexity in order to facilitate learning.

They may distribute handouts which help guide a learner towards answering questions on the training content or include step by step instructions that facilitate deeper comprehension. They might also include practical examples of what is being learned in the form of a case study or training activity. 

Learning guidance offered alongside the main content is often about helping learners improve their own ability to learn.

Instructional designers might include a PDF on best practices for studying, taking breaks and keeping learning alive. In cohort based learning, that guidance might also look like providing office hours or online chat groups where participants can help one another learn too.

How to provide learning guidance in instructor-led training

• Develop step-by-step lessons that start with simple, easy to understand concepts before moving towards more complex material. This allows learners to build on existing knowledge and develop their understanding as they go.
• Break your content into small chunks and create opportunities for the group to ask simple qualifying questions at regular intervals. You might also solicit relevant experiences from the group or step to one side and talk about how to best internalize the content effectively.
• Using an instructional design model such as the ADDIE model to thoroughly understand your learners needs can really help you choose the right method of learning guidance. Ensure you’ve investigated what will wok best for your learners in order to produce the most effective instruction.
• Talking through a question and how you might arrive at an answer for the group can be really effective at demonstrating a learning mindset. You might do this yourself or by doing a pop-quiz and asking the correct respondent to talk more about the process they went through when finding the answer.
• Practical examples are a great tool for providing learning guidance. You might include a real world example or case study in your content that shows how someone might deploy the knowledge being learned in your training. You might also use a training activity involving role play that gives participants an opportunity to practice in a safe environment where you as a trainer can also provide guidance. 

How to provide learning guidance in eLearning courses

• Most content authoring tools offer features like image hotspots or buttons that allow users to explore a subject in more detail. Add links to additional material where you can. Include tooltips on key terms and learning points so that those learners who may need extra help can find it without leaving your course and come out of their learning flow. 
• Add a section with advice on how to get the most out of the course. Set expectations for how long learners should spend on each section, how much extra reading they should do and how they should approach the material. Even something as simple as a reminder to silence phones and give learning material their full attention can help here!
• Peer-support and activities can be effective, even in a self-paced environment. With cohort based learning, give opportunities for learners to discuss material or complete a group task to support your self-paced material. Blended courses are a great way to make this dance between self-directed learning and group discussion a reality – see more in this blended course template! 

6) Elicit performance

Gagné’s sixth event of instruction is eliciting performance. This is typically where learners are able to practice new skills, demonstrate what they’ve learned and begin retaining information. Practical exercises, role playing simulations and quizzes are all common methods trainers and instructional designers will use in order to elicit performance from learners. 

By tapping into experiential learning methods, this stage of the learning process can help learners retain information and file it in their long term memory. 

This is arguably the most important step of the learning process. Whatever the topic or format of your training, you’ll want to ensure you give ample opportunity for participants to practice their skills and demonstrate their knowledge within your course – simply providing lots of informational content isn’t enough, however great that content might be. 

Eliciting performance is also an important step for the instructor. If learners are having continually difficulty with a particular concept, the instructor may want to revisit that topic in greater detail. In a self-paced format, the input you get from participants at this stage can also be used for improving your learning experiences. 

How to elicit performance in instructor-led training

• Role-playing games and training activities where learners must deploy their new skills are great ways to elicit learner performance. In some scenarios such as soft skills training, participants are able to use what they’ve learned in a real-life situation immediately while in others, you may need to offer a simulation – such as for workers operating specialized machinery which may not be available on site. Wherever possible, consider how you can create opportunities to directly employ what’s being learned in a “as true to life” manner as possible. 
• Simple quizzes and Q&A sessions can also be an effective way to give participants a chance to show what they’ve learned. It’s often useful to go beyond repetition and ask learners how they arrived at an answer or how they might use their answer in the real world. 
• Giving participants an opportunity to present what they’ve learned and demonstrate their understanding is another common method of eliciting performance. Put folks into groups and ask them to discuss what they’ve learned, how they might apply it and then presenting those ideas to the rest of the cohort. This is an effective way of encouraging people to not only repeat what they heard, but to start putting those learnings into practice. 
• In a live session, it’s important to consider how a balanced agenda can pave the way for effective practice. Add breaks to your SessionLab agenda and use the automatic timing calculations to ensure participants haven’t been digesting content for 3 hours straight before then being asked to demonstrate new knowledge!

How to elicit performance in eLearning courses

• Interactive activities are the name of the game for this stage of the learning process. Use quizzes and games where participants need to demonstrate their knowledge in order to proceed. You can gate progress or create fail states so that participants can only go to the next step when they provide correct answers and demonstrate their understanding. 
• Simulations are even better if they’re relevant to your learning objectives. For example, if you’re delivering a sales training course, you might simulate a few customer calls and ask respondents to select the best responses.
• If you’re running cohort based training or a blended learning course, get participants to do an activity together or in a facilitated group activity. This provides a great opportunity to practice new skills with the guidance and feedback of peers and an instructor. 
• In some scenarios, using open-ended questions and giving participants an opportunity to respond creatively to a problem and use their new skills can be effective. This approach requires peer or instructor feedback to be effective, and so is best used in a blended format, or at the end of a larger unit of self-paced training. 
• It can also be effective to give participants some homework or ask them to practice what they’ve learned in a real-life environment between training content. Give participants a clear call to action on what to do next with some practical ideas for how to use what they’ve learned. Even with entirely self-directed learning, it’s possible to give direction for employing new skills between training content and then ask participants to reflect on what they did when they come back for the next block.
• Allow participants to retake or repeat key sections, particularly if they’ve not satisfied performance expectations. You might link back to sections contextually or simply provide an index or course overview so learners can go back over what they need to whenever necessary. 

7) Provide feedback

Gagné’s seventh event of instruction is providing feedback. This is where the instructor provides direct feedback on learner progress and how they’re performing in comparison to the desired learning goal. This kind of feedback is most often given in direct response to learner input, such as when they are answering questions about a new learning, conducting a practical exercise or practicing new skills. 

In a training context, feedback is most effective when given immediately following learner action. It should also provide enough detail for the learner to understand what went well or what needs improvement. The idea is not to just tell the learner why they were wrong but also to help them make adjustments and move towards the desired learning goal.

The best kind of feedback to give your learners is often dependent on context, where they are in the learning journey and the relative importance of a given point. Here are some of the different kinds of feedback you might provide to your learners:

• Confirmation feedback: this kind of feedback lets the learner know they did the right thing or gave the right answer. This typically includes a positive affirmation that futher encourages the learner.
• Corrective feedback: the type of feedback tells learners that they did the wrong thing or an incorrect answer was given and explain why. Remedial feedback will typically direct learners to where they can find the right answer or prompt them to try again. 
• Evaluative feedback: this feedback method gives the learner a sense of how they performed, often in the form of a score. You might also include a description of what that score means, often in line with an assessment criteria document. This kind of feedback is often short and to the point, with learners expected to take some ownership of next steps based on the score they received. 
• Descriptive feedback: descriptive feedback can be used in both correct and incorrect scenarios, giving participants a deeper level of feedback that often includes suggestions, additional information and next steps that will help learners improve their performance and progress on the learning journey. 
• Peer feedback: peer feedback is an opportunity for learners to reflect on the performance of others and provide input to one another. This is especially useful during group activities or as a point of contact in a blended learning environment.
• Self evaluation/self feedback: this kind of feedback method involves prompting the learner to self reflect on their progress or performance. Self reflection is a great habit to encourage at various points in the learning process.

How to provide feedback in instructor-led training

• In a live environment, feedback is often given immediately following learner input or during a practical exercise. The faster you’re able to help learners correct their actions, the easier it is for them to make changes and incorporate the desired learning. 
• Create space for learners to ask follow-up questions. The best learning experiences are rarely one way and giving participants a deeper understanding of what to improve, change or why their answer was correct can help deepen the process.
• In many cases, it’s vital for learners to understand why they were wrong, as well as being given the correct answer. Contextualize your feedback and where necessary, detail the process of finding the right answer. This can help ensure participants develop the skills they need, rather than just parroting the correct answer in a training context.  
• When learners are practicing their skills or conducting role-play exercises, ensure there’s an opportunity to course correct and practice the ideal behaviour. This can help switch context from a potentially negative to positive relationship with the training material and help reinforce the desired outcome. 
• Positive affirmation that helps reinforce ideal behaviour is as important as correcting undesired responses. Tell people when they’ve done well and explain why their response was ideal. In a group setting, it can also be helpful to share what a great response or effective application looks like.     

How to provide feedback in eLearning courses

• It’s worth noting that giving people a chance to learn from their mistakes is especially important during eLearning. Just telling people they were wrong and then moving on isn’t an ideal flow for learning. After providing feedback on a wrong answer be sure to then provide the opportunity for participants to give the right answer or demonstrate their knowledge some other way. You might also offer a simpler or adjusted version of the simulation or provide a quiz that offers additional hints or tooltips. 
• As with live training, any feedback should be given in a direct, immediate and clear manner. Your content authoring tool will have everything from tooltips, pop-ups, audio tools and more. Leverage these tools thoughtfully to congratulate participants on a correct response or gently let them know that the response was incorrect and provide them with feedback that can help them do better next time. 
• As a rule of thumb, try to ensure every point of learner input provides feedback of some kind. Whether it’s a positive affirmation of correct practice or an incorrect answer message, each point of input is an opportunity to guide participants to the ideal learning journey.  
• Achieving clarity in a self-paced training course isn’t just about the text. Visual design is a vital element of providing feedback that is easy for the learner to understand and doesn’t create friction. Think about how to make feedback visually distinct from other learning material and try to employ a consistent method of delivering feedback throughout your course. 
• Test your courts and explore how it feels to receive feedback to an incorrect response. If every incorrect answer triggers a warning klaxon and a wall of text, that’s unlikely to feel good for your learner, and may negatively impact the learning journey. 
• Remember that feedback is about guiding participants to the correct response and deepening the learning journey. Messages will want to let people know what went wrong but also guide them towards understanding. It’s not fun to be told you’re incorrect over and over again without context or support! 
• Providing links to additional material or opportunities to revisit content is easily achieved in most content authoring tools. Giving learners an opportunity to improve their understanding by linking to supporting material can help ensure they get the right answer while also reinforcing key points. This can be an effective way of helping learners gain an understanding of the material, rather than just brute forcing your quiz. 

8) Assess performance

Gagné’s eight event of instruction is an assessment of learner performance. This is where trainers officially evaluate how well learners have performed against the desired learning objectives. In practice, this can look like a written or oral exam, practical demonstration, scored quiz or other form of assessment. 

For most learning scenarios, it’s important that trainers do not offer additional guidance or help while assessing performance. Participant ability will typically be measured on individual performance and with a pass/fail model. 

The results of these assessments are used in multiple ways. First, they’re often given back to participants to either congratulate them or provide an opportunity to retake an assessment or deepen their learning.

Assessments are also a great tool for trainers and instructional designers to improve the quality of their materials – if participants struggle with certain elements, it’s potentially a sign you need to make something clearer or cover certain topics in greater detail. 

How to assess performance in instructor-led training

• Demonstrations and practical activities that are supervised or observed by the instructor is a common method of assessment in live training. Typically, those assessing the performance will score or grade each trainee as they progress through a pre-defined scenario. This is especially useful when training participants in practical skills.
• A formative assessment in the form of a written or oral exam is also common. These often include a series of questions that are scored by the trainer in order to determine performance. 
• Individual outputs such as essays, reports or creative products are another tried and tested assessment method – many university courses include essays and other personal outputs to assess learner progress and performance. Note that these can be more difficult and time consuming to assess, and require thorough assessment criteria used by every instructor in order to be fair and effective. 
• Be sure to outline how performance will be assessed at the outset of the course and again just before an assessment. Trainees should know exactly how they’ll be assessed and there shouldn’t be any surprise criteria that doesn’t relate to what they learned. Include it in your training agenda and provide links to supporting material where appropriate.
• In some cases, it can also be effective to assess participants before the course begins and then assess them again at the end. Measuring the improvement in skills or knowledge can provide a finer degree of assessment and also help the trainer understand the true impact of their material. 
• Going further, it can also be helpful for learners to get used to being assessed in some small form throughout the course. You might sprinkle various assessment techniques such as quizzes and group questioning throughout your course to help you and your learners be aware of performance throughout the course. 

How to assess performance in eLearning courses

• Scored quizzes are a common feature of self-paced courses for good reason. They provide an opportunity to cover many learning events in turn and effectively assess the performance of learners. 
• Vary the format of your assessments so that they’re engaging and can’t be brute forced. Using a mix of multiple-choice questions, word games and other quiz formats can help you assess performance while avoiding burnout.
• Challenges and simulations provide an experiential way to assess performance. Remember that even if your assessment method is gamified, participants still need to know how they are being assessed. Clear instructions and good feedback are key here. 
• Include links to assessment criteria and supporting materials in your course introduction and ensure participants can access what they need when preparing for assessment. 
• Clearly signpost when a section of your online course is part of the formal assessment of course progress. You might distinguish these sections visually while also clearly spelling out that this section is important. 
• Milestone tests or short assessments spread throughout the course are especially important in a self-paced environment where the instructor does not have the ability to organically gauge performance. 
• Pre-testing before the start of an eLearning course can be an effective way to tailor the experience for your learners. You might allow them to skip certain sections or draw more attention to others based on the results.

9) Enhance retention and transfer

Gagné’s ninth event of instruction is about enhancing the transfer of knowledge and helping learners retain what they’ve learned during the course so they can apply it in real-life. The goal of any learning experience isn’t to just help participants pass the course – it’s to equip them with skills and knowledge that will be used from here on out.

Instructional designers tend to achieve this in two ways. First, by using activities that improve retention and knowledge transfer throughout the course, often in the form of simulations and practice exercises.

They’ll also provide resources to help participants continue learning once the training is over. Static resources like PDFs, checklists and job aids are helpful, though you might go further and offer feedback loops with line managers or group forums for peer support. 

How to enhance retention and transfer in instructor-led training

• A summary of key points and core topics in the form of a one-pager can be a great resource to provide to learners at the end of a training session. A job-aid that helps demonstrate the connection between what’s been learned and how to apply it in day-to-day work is also an effective resource to share at the end of a course. 
• End your training session with a final opportunity to practice key skills or demonstrate knowledge. You might do a final group role play, quick-fire quiz or practical exercise. 
• Close the session with a group reflection or debrief. Giving everyone the opportunity to reflect on what they learned and share different perspectives how they’ll use what their new skills or knowledge can be a great way to ensure next steps are taken and that learning is retained. Closing activities like Letter to Myself or I used to think…Now I think are proven methods you can use here. 
• Create opportunities to check-in following the training session. You might have line-managers or trainers check-in with trainees to discuss progress and to reinforce key learnings. Alternatively, create an accountability group where a cohort of trainees can share experiences and tips while keeping what they learned alive. 
• Have trainees create an action plan for how and when they’ll use their new skills following the workshop. Setting an intention for a real-life application of what’s been learned can ensure trainees are in a good position to retain material following the course. 

How to enhance retention and knowledge transfer in eLearning courses

• The steps trainees take immediately following the completion of an online course are key. Encourage learners to think about how they’ll apply their new skills and knowledge throughout or ask them to create an action plan with next steps. 
• Ask participants to create their own artefacts related to the course. You might have an activity where they create a one-pager with key points or create a visual that would help others (and themselves) to remember the most important elements. 
• Remind learners of the journey they’ve been on and give them some guidance of what they might do next. If there’s a story at the heart of your training, you might use the end of your course to give that story a compelling ending or show how other learners have achieved great things following the course. 
• Links to further reading and interesting resources related to the course can encourage trainees to continue engaging with the material and go deeper. 
• Repeatable simulations which trainees can use to practice their skills are a great method of encouraging knowledge retention. You might allow participants to simply repeat previous practical simulations or include a more difficult version that encourages them to go further. How about creating a scored simulation where trainees in a cohort might be encouraged to achieve and share a high score?  

Next steps

Now we’ve explored these core instructional design principles, you might be wondering what’s next and how you might go about using these principles to design effective learning experiences.

Beyond these core principles, most instructional designers will use a tool such as the ADDIE model to effectively project manage the process of creating a completed learning experience.

It’s also worth acknowledging that alternative principles of instructional design are out there.

Some learning designers prefer David Merrill’s principles, which includes five principles: task-centered, activation, demonstration, application, and integration. The successive approximation model (SAM model) is also a popular method for creating a learning program.

I would recommend using these instructional design models to get a broader view of how you might progress from conducting a needs assessment to working with subject matter experts and sharing a completed course with participants. 

Whatever instructional design model you use, a storyboarding and learning design tool like SessionLab is a simple and effective way to go from an outline to a fully realized learning design while keeping these principles in mind.

You can invite your subject matter experts to collaborate on your design and attach materials to each learning block, ready for your content team to recreate in your LMS.

Want to learn more? Explore how learning designers at Vlerick Business School use SessionLab to design instructor led training and eLearning courses at scale. 

Working on a blended learning course? See how to apply instructional design principles in a blended environment with this in-depth guide to blended learning design.

Designing instructor led training? You might also find this step-by-step process for creating a training session plan helpful. You’ll find tips on creating engagement and realizing a live training session with the help of a detailed agenda.  

We hope that the above guide and these additional resources will help you take a systematic approach to learning design that also leaves space for your personal touch.

Did we miss anything or is there something we should explore further? Let us know in our community of facilitators and learning professionals!

Training games are a great way to engage trainees with interactive activities that help facilitate the learning process. In this guide, we’ll share our favourite training activities alongside tips for engaging trainees. You’ll leave with practical ideas for improving your next employee training and add new methods to your toolkit. Let’s dive in!

What are training games and activities?

Training games and activities are interactive activities designed to engage trainees and create a more memorable and engaging learning experience.

These games are experiential in nature, and they invite trainees to actively participate in a task or game rather than just passively receive information. These kinds of training activities include group discussions, role-play games, debriefing and sharing exercises, group discussions, hand-on activities and more. 

Training activities are used to help facilitate some aspect of the learning process and often correlate with one or more stages of Robert Gagné’s pricinples of effective learning.

In some scenarios, these activities can go further by asking participants to actively use knowledge they are gaining in the session or to practice soft skills too. These opportunities for interactivity are a wonderful addition to any training program.

For example, if you’re delivering feedback training to a team, you might include an activity where they practice giving each other feedback in the session. This kind of gamified training is a great way to enhance learning and build practical skills that can be used immediately after the training is complete. 

On another occasion, enhancing your corporate training with a fun activity can do double duty in enabling better learning while also building team connections and communication skills.

Why use training games and activities?

According to Seymour Epstein’s cognitive experiential self-theory (CEST), our brains process and retain information in two ways: analytical-rational and intuitive-experiential. 

The intuitive-experiential parts of our brain are more active when focusing on specific tasks, especially those that are physical in nature or which invoke feelings and experiences. Knowledge gained through this kind of experiential learning tends to be retained more quickly and is forgotten more slowly than other methods. 

The analytical-rational parts of our brain are more active when focusing on processes, synthesizing information and making decisions .

In Seymour Epstein’s theory, our brains work best when both of these parts are working in tandem. Great training often employs various methods in order to activate both of these systems and help learners get the most out of the experience.

To simplify, adult learners can learn by passively receiving information but any learning is more effective when paired with experiential activities such as participating in tasks and games. 

Training games are an effective way to bring that intuitive-experiential part of our brains online. They also help create space in an agenda and enhance the learning experience.

For best results, try pairing training activities with a discussion or debrief in order to also activate the analytical-rational part of the brain and help trainees retain and use the training material you provide. 

However you use these games and activities, you’ll want to consider when and where to place them in your training agenda so you can create an effective learning flow and deliver a successful training program.

In SessionLab, it’s easy to create everything from a training program outline to an agenda for an individual training session. Start by dragging and dropping your training content into place.

Colour code your activities according to interaction type so you can build a balanced training session that caters to different learning styles. 

When you’re ready to lead your session, it’s easy to export your agenda in the format of your choice. Create a PDF handout for your trainers and trainees or invite stakeholders to collaborate on your session directly. 

Training icebreakers

Every training session has to start somewhere. After you’ve gotten the group’s attention and outlined the objectives of the training session, this is a perfect time to break the ice and start warming up the group. 

These training icebreaker activities are designed to help loosen up the group and create connections while also creating space to begin exploring the topic of your training programs.

While it might be tempting to jump right into presenting your training materials, using a training icebreaker game can ensure that you truly have the attention of your learners and that they’re best positioned to engage in learning. 

Just the facts

Getting a group of trainees energized at the beginning of a training session while also getting them to talk about the topic at hand is a great use of an icebreaker. In this training icebreaker,  start by defining a topic the group is going to list facts about. 

For example, for training on feedback skills, the topic might be “Facts about good feedback.” Next, invite the group to sit in a circle and have each person in turn contribute a fact about the topic.

While this is easy to start with, it can be difficult to keep going around the circle without repeating a fact or introducing an opinion or unproven theory. When someone breaks the rules of the game, another member should challenge by saying “Just the facts!” and then the group will vote on whether it is a fact or not.  

This is a great training icebreaker to get people warmed up while thinking critically about the topic at hand. 

I Expect

Having the group share their expectations of a training session can help create alignment and spur engagement while also giving the trainer insight into how they might best serve the group.

In this ice breaker for training, start by dividing a flipchart or virtual whiteboard into four quadrants. Then ask participants to respond with what they expect from: 1. The Training, 2. The Trainer, 3. From Yourself and 4. Other Participants.

You can have participants write their responses on sticky notes and add them to the chart, or simply ask for responses and write them in the necessary place. Check back at the end to show the group what they’ve achieved in line with their expectations. 

Magic Box

Training icebreaker games are often at their best when they encourage participants to begin engaging with the topic at hand while also sharing their perspective with the group.

Magic Box is an effective exercise that asks trainees to start by choosing an object from a pre-created box. Next, they’ll tell the group who they are, why they selected the object and what they think it has to do with the training ahead.

Participants are asked to think creatively about the relationship between the object and the workshop they’re about to undertake, creating engagement and allowing space for personal expression. It’s one of my favourite training icebreakers! 

Best and Worst

Sharing personal experiences and encouraging curiosity at the beginning of a training session can help set the stage for learning. In this training icebreaker, start by asking each person in the group to write down one best and one worst question that they want to learn about the group. For example: what’s the worst present you’ve ever been given, what’s the best advice you ever received.

Put all the questions in a hat and have everyone pick 2 at random. Go around the circle and have everyone share their answers and related stories. 

In a training environment, I tend to ask participants to add a third question relating to the topic at hand or put some extras in the hat myself: for example, what’s the worst feedback you ever received or what makes you cringe during a presentation?

One Word Method

Training icebreakers are great for helping your group to fully arrive in the space and relax into the training session to come. One Word Method is one of my favourite ice breakers as it’s easy to run, encourages creativity, and it can also be adapted to serve any topic or training session. 

Start by introducing a topic of theme and let participants know that they’ll collaboratively create a sentence by each contributing one word of that sentence in order. The aim of the game is to create a sentence that makes sense and which also covers the subject or topic you’ve chosen.

This training game is especially effective at encouraging everyone in the group to speak early in the session and can help introduce a difficult subject in an approachable manner. 

Who are you? The pirate ship exercise

Every member of the group brings a unique perspective to any workshop, meeting or training session. In this fun training icebreaker, participants are encouraged to consider their role and perspective and what they’ll bring to the training ahead.

Start by sharing the picture of the pirate ship and ask people to reflect on which character on the ship best represents them. You might also ask, “Which character in the image best represents how you feel about this training? Why? Put your answer in the chat”. The ensuing discussion can help break the ice while also getting the group to think about how they’ll engage with the training to come. 

Training games to enable effective learning

Helping learners to learn is the goal of every educator and trainer. These training activities are designed to help create an ideal learning environment and can be used to support your main training content and get your trainees engaged early in the process.

Often, employees learn as much from each other as from a presentation, and these activities are designed to enhance employee engagement by encouraging participation and the sharing of experiences among the team.

Catch All

In Robert Gagné’s 9 principles of instructional design, he notes the importance of asking participants to recall previous learnings. This training activity from Thiagi Group is a simple game where participants are asked to recall something relevant to the topic at hand and share it with the group. 

Start by getting participants to stand in a circle and choose a category relevant to your topic or training materials. Next, throw the ball to a participant who must respond by recalling something they know or have learned about the topic before throwing it to another participant. You can use this at the start of a session to gauge existing knowledge or use it after lunch to help the group recall what they did in the morning.

Walking Questions 

In many training scenarios, one of the best sources of information and insights is from trainees themselves. In this training activity, you’ll invite groups to answer one anothers questions in order to close knowledge gaps and encourage proactivity in the group. 

Start by giving each participant a sheet of paper at the end of a training block. Each trainee writes one open question on top of a sheet of paper. They then hand the paper to the person to their right. On the new sheet they receive, each trainee will read the question and write down any ideas or insights they might have before handing it onto the next person. The activity ends when everybody has their original sheet back, complete with ideas from everyone else in the group. 

Angry Customers

The fourth stage of Kolb’s learning cycle is Active experimentation, where participants get to practice using the skills they’ve learned during the training. Role-play or simulation games are an especially effective training activity to encourage this in trainees. While the specific role-play you use will need to reflect your training topic, Angry Customers is a great example of how it’s done.

In this training game, split your team into two groups. One group will brainstorm examples of angry customer statements while the other group will brainstorm statements that might help defuse such a situation. Next, pair people from separate groups together and roleplay an angry conversation. Debrief at the end to help the group identify what worked best and how they might use these insights in real-life situations.

Pecha Kucha

It’s common for trainers to ask trainees to present learnings or summarize discussions in small groups during live training. Such a presentation can help enable knowledge retention and to ensure participants have a good understanding of the material.

Pecha Kucha is an effective training activity that asks participants to create a presentation with 20 images that they present for 20 seconds each. It provides a great framework for sharing information in a fast but comprehensive and visually interesting manner that can help enable knowledge retention and recall. 

As an added bonus, it’s also a great way of building presentation skills and teaching employees simple ways of sharing information with other teams.

Fun with Snowballs

Creating an opportunity for participants to recall and share information while also having fun can enhance learning and create a memorable training experience for all. In this training game, start by distributing paper to each participant. Next, ask a question relevant to your training topic or material presented and ask each participant to write their response on the piece of paper. 

Next, get everyone to move into an open space and have a snowball fight using the responses they’ve made. After a few minutes, blow a whistle and have each participant grab the snowball closest to them and read the answer or information out loud.

Variations for this game include asking participants to write a key takeaway or learning, or to use this at the start of training to ask participants what they know about the subject before you begin.

You might also award points for a correct answer to a question or keep a record of correct and incorrect answers so you can adjust your training materials accordingly.

Triz 

Adult learners and trainees are typically more goal oriented than child learners. Getting your trainees to think about their personal goals, as well as those of the training at large can help pave the way for engaged learners. 

Triz is an effective training activity that asks participants to list all the things they must do in order to fail at their goals. For example, you might ask, “What should you do to make sure that you achieve the worst result imaginable during this training?”

By flipping perspectives, its often easier to surface key barriers to learning and create space for a considered reflection on how to engage and make progress on their goals. 

Mixed Up Sentences

Passive presentations with no interactivity or space for trainee engagement can be a drag for participants to sit through. While it’s often necessary to present information in this way, there are ways to enliven the process and also reinforce learings too. 

With this training method, start by creating a sequence of sentences that summarize the main points of your presentation. Next, put those sentences out of order and remove one from the list. During your lecture or presentation, invite participants to take notes and at the end of the session, split them into teams who will use their own notes and the sentences to recreate the missing sentence and also put the sentences back in order. 

1-2-4 All

People learn in all sorts of different ways. While some people enjoy lively group discussions and interactive presentations, others need some quiet time alone with the material. 1-2-4 All is an effective way of catering to multiple learning styles while also creating space for personal reflection and small group discussion. 

Start by inviting participants to silently reflect on a question or topic of the training. Next, ask participants to form pairs and build on the reflection or ideas they each had. Finally, ask participants to form groups of four and discuss further before presenting their main learnings or ideas to the group. 1-2-4 All is a simple training activity but it’s also one of the most effective ways of creating space for everyone to be heard and contribute to a group discussion. 

Collaborative and fun training games

One of the fundamental principles of adult learning is experiential learning, which gives participants the chance to use skills and knowledge in a practical way.

Asking trainees to utilize their creative or critical thinking skills in the form of a game can help create an experiential learning experience and enliven the group. They’re a great way to enhance group dynamics and improve communication between trainees too.

Marshmallow challenge with debriefing 

Marhsmallow Challenge is a classic team building game that works well in a training environment by asking participants to work together as a team and engage their problem solving skills. 

Start by briefing the team on the task: they must build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string, and one marshmallow, which needs to be on top. After each team has presented their marshmallow tower and a winner has been crowned, conduct a debriefing where participants will reflect on what went well, what could have been improved and what learnings they will take from the exercise. 

Human Machine 

Effective collaboration is an important aspect of how groups operate. Collaboration and camaraderie is important in a training environment too, and this training game is an effective way of engaging a group collaboratively. Start by getting the group into a circle. Let them know that together, they will be creating a human machine where each person will be a part of that machine. 

Start by asking one person to enter the middle of the circle while making the sound and physical movement of one part of the machine. After 5 seconds, another person enters the circle and connects to the first person, also making a sound and a movement.

Continue until everyone has been connected to the machine. In small groups, you can also deconstruct the machine one piece at a time. Use this training game when you’re looking to encourage creative thinking and collaboration in your trainees. 

Blind Square – Rope game

Fun training games where participants need to engage their problem solving brain while working as a team can be a great counterpoint to heavier training material and presentations. In this training game, start by tying a long piece of rope into a circle. 

Instruct trainees that they’ll need to turn the circle into a square but must do so while blindfolded. They’ll have 15 minutes to plan their actions but must not touch the rope. They’ll then have 10 minutes to create the square as a team while wearing their blindfolds.

This is a simple but effective training game that builds communication skills and can also be used to start a conversation about collaboration, planning and problem solving.  

Helium Stick

Training activities don’t need to be complicated in order to create engagement in your group and help pave the way for collaborative learning. Helium Stick is a fun and engaging training game that is a simple and effective way to encourage presence and collaboration in the group. 

Start by asking everyone in the group to form two rows, facing each other. Next, ask them to put their index fingers out and rest a long, thin rod on everyone’s fingers, ensuring its level. Finally, ask the group to try moving the rod down while ensuring everyone’s fingers remain in contact with the rod. The result is a fun, engaging game that helps trainees land in the session and create some levity in your agenda. 

Human Knot

This physical training game is a fun energizing game that also doubles as an exploration of the differences between self-organization and command-control management. For any training that contains elements of group dynamics and human systems, this is a great choice of training icebreaker or energizer. 

Start by getting trainees into groups of 7-16 people. Next, ask everyone to get into a circle and close their eyes. Next, they should link hands with two different people in the group and then open their eyes. The group must then untangle themselves without breaking any links. This training game often results in a lot of laughter and fun, while debriefing it can help give groups an understanding of how certain dynamics can manifest within a group. 

Virtual Scavenger Hunt

Scavenger hunts on a specific topic can be a great way to get participants engaged in their own learning and encourage proactive exploration of a training topic. Start by creating a list of items that participants need to find that relate in some way to the topic of your training. 

For example, if you were running training on conflict resolution, your list might include finding a series of quotes or articles to cover each step of the resolution process, finding or taking photographs to represent four emotions experienced as a result of conflict, collecting the social media profiles of 3 thought leaders in the space, or even creating a spotify playlist of songs relating to core feedback principles.

Creativity is vital here, but the end result can be an engaging exercise that not only reinforces learning but also creates lots of space for fun. 

Games and activities for closing a training session

The closing stages of your training session can be among the most important when it comes to reinforcing learnings and helping your participants retain the key points of your training.

These training activities are designed to give trainees space to reflect on the session, reinforce their learnings and debrief with the group. They can be especially useful if you want to encourage trainees to take action following the training session or create a sense of closure too. 

If you’re following the ADDIE model of training design, these closing activities can also help you evaluate the effectiveness of your material and provide crucial feedback for future training sessions. 

Letter to Myself 

The best training sessions often result in positive change, whether that’s solving a problem or enabling trainees to do something they couldn’t do before. That said, it’s not uncommon for some participants to struggle to retain or implement learnings after the training. This training activity is a great way to avoid that issue.

Start by handing out pens and postcards/paper to the group and explain that everyone is going to write a letter to their future selves. In that letter, they’ll explain what they wish to achieve by the time their future selves open the letter.

You can add additional prompts such as, “I want to remember…” “I want to make a positive change because…” or “The biggest takeaway from today is…” to help guide the group and ensure participants are well positioned to retain and use their new knowledge in the future.

I used to think…But now I think…

Effective training is all about creating positive change. In this closing training activity, participants are asked to reflect on what they’ve learned and how their knowledge or perspective has changed as a result of what they’ve learned. Giving immediate feedback in this way can help surface valuable insights and cement learning too.

First, trainees will consider what they thought or knew about your training topic before the session, then they’ll reflect on what they think or know now. Give a few minutes for solo reflection before group sharing so that everyone is able to gather their thoughts before also enjoying the collective wisdom of other team members. 

Artful Closer 

Closing a training seminar by asking participants to create a visual representation of something they’ve learned can be an effective way to aid knowledge retention, share insights and create a memorable experience. Start this training activity by asking participants to close their eyes and think about the highlights of the session and choose one of the key lessons they learned. 

Next, participants will create an abstract image to represent that learning and which captures the essence of what they’ve learned. After they’re done, trainees then share the images in small groups and try to interpret what each image represents. For a closing activity with a visual edge, Artful Closer is a great choice that can prompt interesting discussions and aid knowledge retention too! 

Magical Gifts 

Having the members of your group share their takeaways from a training session is a great way to reinforce learnings and create a sense of closure.

In this paired training activity, one person starts by sharing their favourite takeaway from the training session or what action they’re going to take next. The second person listens carefully and then hands them an imaginary gift in response and describes what it is. 

For example, if I say that my next step after receiving training on emotional intelligence is to reflect on my experience and prepare for a tough conversation with my boss, the other person might hand me a magical pillow to help me rest and prepare for that conversation or a megaphone to help my voice be heard. After receiving the gift, the first person shows appreciation and explains how they will use the gift before switching. 

For particularly heavy training topics, this closing activity can be effective at introducing some levity and kindness while still ensuring people meaningfully reflect on what they’ve learned. 

Conclusion

Whether you’re designing live training sessions or blended learning courses, training games and activities can be an effective way to enhance the training experience and create space for experiential learning. Use them alongside tools like Gagne’s instructional design principles in order to design the most effective learning experiences possible.

These games aren’t just about using up time or giving people a break (although that’s also a worthy cause!) – activities like these can help engage participants and create a memorable experience that ensures learning is retained long after the session is over. 

Want to go further? Check out our guide on how to design a training session plan and create an agenda that will set the foundation for an effective session. 

Looking for an example training agenda? Explore this training plan template based on Kolb’s learning cycle and adjust it to your needs. 

Designing engaging learning flows 

Whether it’s guiding a team through a strategic planning session or running NGO leadership training, the journey begins with a well-designed agenda. 

While Tucker had previously used Excel to design his sessions, after using SessionLab, Tucker says he couldn’t go back.

“Excel is not a great tool for professional workshoppers designing a lot of experiences. I wondered what other agenda tools were out there and found SessionLab. I looked around in general and I thought oh, no, SessionLab. This is the agenda tool. We use it every day.”

For visual thinkers like Tucker, SessionLab’s simple overview and color coding is a massive boon to the workshop design process. 

“I love the color coding because it helps us know what we’re looking for in all of our experiences. It lets me quickly see what each section of the workshop is doing at a glance.”

In SessionLab, you can flexibly color-code every block and instantly see a visual breakdown of your session in the mini-map. color code by activity type, learning style or whatever taxonomy suits your needs. 

Tucker and the team at Thrive Impact use a standardized color scheme across their agendas to keep all their designers and co-facilitators on the same page. 

“For example, green is for breakout rooms where participants are connecting with one another while yellow is for group sharing in the main room. Purple is a video or large group activity and blue is when a facilitator delivers content and training. Then we have red for a break or reflection.”

By color coding in this way, Tucker is able to easily see the ratio between different activity types and create a balanced and effective learning flow.

“We’re looking for a good ratio of green, purple and blues activities. If we have too much blue, that means we have too much content and we need to re-balance the agenda, because we already know based on the data around learning experiences that people don’t always learn well that way.”

For Tucker, well-designed and balanced experiences are the foundation of an effective workshop, especially when working in a virtual environment. By using SessionLab, the team is able to quickly create sessions that engage their clients in a spirit of co-creation and problem solving. 

Effective co-creation

Effective collaboration and team alignment is a key aspect of any successful NGO. Similarly, Tucker and his team use SessionLab to co-create their agendas and collaborate on the design together in one-place. 

“We all pull up Session Lab and go through the agenda at the same time. We start with a high level overview of where we’re going and then go down to the nitty gritty details.”

Once a high-level design is agreed upon, the team at Thrive Impact will assign each team member to the section or block they’re delivering so each facilitator can work on their script or content and easily get feedback from colleagues.

At the top of each agenda, they’ll add a note with important links and team roles to ensure everyone is aligned going into the session. With everything they need in one-place, Tucker and his team are able to deliver exceptional learning experiences, every time. 

Creating a repeatable, systematized process in SessionLab has also helped the team streamline their workflow, save time and focus on what matters most.

“We have people on our team who love to systemize the process in SessionLab and it’s immensely important because it saves so much time.”

A big part of this process is about institutionalizing knowledge and making previous agendas and activities available to the team.

Not only does using templates and a team library help the team at Thrive save time, but it also helps them transfer knowledge and train new members effectively.

“With our SessionLab library, we can go in and say, oh yeah, I need to do that paired interview. Let me drag and pull that into my agenda and then I can make it my own. We can say, hey, go into the templates and take a look. That kind of internal collaboration and institutionalization is great.”

Supporting session delivery 

When Tucker first started using SessionLab, what stuck out to him most was the ability to stay in control of time and dynamically update session timing during a workshop.

“The thing that was initially really helpful was the fact that you could have dynamic time in SessionLab. There are many times in the room where we actually add time as we go. So we’re like, wow, this section went way over and we’ll add extra minutes and adjust activities directly.”

In SessionLab, every block has a set time allocation. When you make changes in real-time, your total time and schedule will update automatically, giving you the confidence to make changes and see the impact on the rest of your agenda. 

Tucker is also able to understand how he’s performing against schedule and make informed decisions on what to change while facilitating. 

“We know in real time where the train is on the track from a schedule perspective. That’s an important benefit of using SessionLab for us, too.”

Time-locks have also been useful to the team at Thrive Impact. By locking time sensitive items in place, they’re able to ensure that there’s time left for reflection or breaks and that they cover everything needed. 

“We always put a time lock at the very end of a session for five minutes. We know we always want to end a session with heart, which is really ending with space for reflection. Time-locking blocks gives me a good sense of how long I have.”

Conclusion 

When NGOs are given the tools to plan strategically, reduce burnout and solve core problems, they can create impactful and lasting change. 

For the team at Thrive Impact, that change all starts with a balanced and engaging session design. SessionLab plays a part in helping Tucker and the team design effective learning experiences and help NGOs achieve their goals and make change in the world. 

“We love SessionLab. We run so many workshops that we literally use it, almost every business day.”

Whether you’re a team leader, business professional, or facilitator, knowing how to plan and run a virtual workshop effectively is a valuable skill in today’s digital landscape. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll walk you through how to run a virtual workshop that is engaging and impactful.

What is a virtual workshop?

A virtual workshop is an interactive and collaborative process that is conducted entirely online. Unlike traditional face-to-face workshops held in physical spaces, online workshops take place in a virtual environment. 

During the virtual workshop, the facilitator will lead participants through an agenda including activities, discussions, and exercises with the intention of reaching a desired outcome.

Common outcomes for a virtual workshop can include improving team collaboration, solving tough problems or creating innovative ideas. Workshops can cover almost any topic you can think of, and they are especially effective at unleashing collective intelligence and bringing people together around a shared goal.

Virtual workshops are typically run by a workshop facilitator or team leader, all within an online setting. Facilitators will use digital tools to host the session, encourage engagement and collect input from participants. Using breakout rooms to hold small group discussions or using quizzes and polls to collect input are just some of the ways that facilitators might use digital tools during the workshop. 

Check out our workshop templates to see some example agendas you can use for inspiration or to get started when designing your virtual workshop.

How to plan a virtual workshop

The process for planning online workshops isn’t all that dissimilar from planning an in person workshop. Generally, the facilitator will follow a workshop design process from idea to completed agenda by thinking about objectives, audience and good design principles.

That said, facilitating in a virtual environment has a number of differences that factor into how you design, organize and host your virtual workshop.

The below list serves as an outline of a virtual workshop planning process, though you’ll find more in-depth tips in our section on best practices.

Want to go deeper? Check out our full step-by-step guide to planning a workshop.

1. Define the goals of the workshop
2. Define your target audience
3. Draft the initial concept of the workshop
4. Get approval from any stakeholders
5. Draft your virtual workshop agenda
6. Establish time, place and participants
7. Choose your virtual workshop platform
8. Create supporting materials such as visual presentations and interactive elements
9. Share completed agenda with any stakeholders
10. Refine your agenda based on feedback
11. Brief co-facilitators and technical team
12. Send invitations to participants or begin promotion of your virtual workshop
13. Test your technology
14. Set up your virtual space in your virtual workshop platform
15. Take a deep breath and run your session!
16. Report back to stakeholders
17. Follow up with participants
18. Reflect and consider improvements for your next virtual workshop

Want to see how such a planning flow can work in practice? Explore our workshop planning template to see a sequence of five working sessions where workshop organizers can come together to create an effective virtual workshop.

What are the benefits of running a virtual workshop?

Virtual workshops have become increasingly prevalent as both individuals and organizations turn to digital tools to help facilitate learning and growth. Being able to connect and collaborate with others in a dedicated session wherever you are located can be incredibly impactful. 

In this section, we’ll explore the benefits of running virtual workshops and why you should consider running them in your group or organization.  

Accessibility and inclusivity

One of the primary advantages of virtual workshops is their accessibility. Participants can join from anywhere in the world as long as they have an internet connection and some basic tech. This can help eliminate geographical barriers and allows individuals from diverse backgrounds to engage in learning or collaboration opportunities that may not have been accessible otherwise. 

With the right online tools, virtual workshops can also be inclusive in other ways. Consider how automatic transcription, description and translation software might widen your audience and make it easier for people with different needs to participate. 

The accessibility and flexibility of a virtual workshop makes it possible to bring people who might not otherwise be able to attend together. Different time zones become less of an issue. Inviting an expert speaker or coach to your session becomes possible. Think of a virtual workshop as an opportunity to do more and include more people too! 

Cost-effective

Hosting or attending virtual workshops is often more cost-effective than traditional in-person workshops. There are no expenses related to travel, accommodation, or renting physical venues. This makes virtual workshops an attractive option for individuals and organizations looking to optimize their budgets.

There’s also a reduced impact on less tangible costs that might otherwise be absorbed by participants or a team. Even time is saved when hosting a virtual workshop! This can help create an environment where participants are happy to attend and aren’t compromising some other aspect of their work or life.

Diverse learning tools

The digital environment of virtual workshops allows for the use of a wide range of learning tools and technologies. From virtual whiteboards for brainstorming to breakout rooms for group discussions, these tools enhance the learning experience and make it more dynamic and engaging.

Using specific tools for your use case can improve things further. Running a design thinking session? Use Figma and prototyping tools to supercharge your workshop. Running an ideation session? Encourage the group to bring in inspiration and resources for everyone to explore together, then use AI to summarize and cluster ideas.

The possibilities for a virtual workshop are vast and can be tailored to your audience. Be creative and use all of what’s available to make your virtual workshop something special. 

Get results, fast 

Workshops are proven methods for solving problems, creating change and driving innovation. Often, a team can get more done in a few hours of a well-designed workshop than they can in weeks of unfocused work. 

If your organization discovers a need for deep collaboration, why wait until the next team retreat? Run a virtual workshop with an effective facilitator to unblock your team and get results now, wherever you’re located.

If you have time in your calendar, putting together an agenda and bringing people together in a common goal can be done quickly and effectively. Just remember to plan effectively, have a clear goal and where possible, bring a facilitator! You might also save time by using a tried and tested workshop format based on the results you want to achieve. 

Recordings and reusability

Many virtual workshops are recorded, allowing participants to revisit the content at their convenience. This is especially beneficial for individuals who may have missed a session or want to reinforce their understanding of the material. Additionally, recorded workshops can be reused or repurposed for future training or reference.

The outputs of a virtual workshop are often collected in online documents and collaboration tools. Having these ready to go immediately after the workshop can help your team take action quickly. It can be so gratifying to pick up exactly where you left off, often using the same tools!

Reduce environmental impact

In an era of heightened environmental responsibility, virtual workshops align with sustainability goals and allow teams and individuals to practice what they preach. Virtual workshops significantly reduce the carbon footprint associated with travel, accommodation, and physical resource production. 

By embracing virtual workshops, organizations and individuals can contribute to a greener future while still enjoying high-quality learning experiences.

Connect remote teams 

In remote teams where possibilities for connection can be limited, a collaborative workshop can be a great way to get to know one another more deeply while working on a shared goal.

You might even include workshop activities expressly designed to improve connections and bring your group together. While online meetings are great to share information, think of a virtual workshop as a place to truly get things done as a team.

You’ll also find working together in real-time, rather than asynchronously, can be a refreshing change of pace. In our remotely located team, workshops offer a chance to have fun, as well as get things done! 

Tips and best practices for engaging virtual workshops

Virtual workshops have become an integral part of how remote teams collaborate, grow and solve tough problems together. Finding the right platform and bringing your team together is a great start, but the success of your virtual workshop depends on more than just the technology.

In this section, we’ll explore a range of tips and strategies to help you run virtual workshops that captivate your audience, facilitate active participation, and leave a lasting impact. 

Define your goal

Before you dive into planning your virtual workshop, it’s crucial to define clear workshop objectives. Ask yourself, “What do I want participants to achieve or learn by the end of the session?” Your objectives will guide every aspect of your workshop, from content creation to engagement strategies. Clear objectives help participants understand what’s expected of them and motivate them to actively engage.

For instance, if you’re hosting an ideation workshop, your objectives might include fully exploring a problem, brainstorming possible solutions, choosing the best and them coming up with action items that ensure next steps can take place. With these objectives in mind, you can structure your content and activities accordingly.

Be sure to include your objectives in your agenda and let participants know the objectives of your workshop too! If anything unexpected comes up on the day, your objectives can also provide a clear north star you’ll use to stay aligned. 

Choose the right tool(s)

Selecting the right tools is essential for a smooth and engaging workshop. Depending on the design of your workshop, you may need anything from a simple video chat software through an online whiteboard and even a dedicated platform. 

When choosing tools, workshop organizers should start by asking what is needed to run the workshop. Next, consider what you and your participants are already familiar with. The right tools are often those that satisfy the technical needs of your workshop design while also being easy to learn and use. 

You may also want to consider the following factors when selecting your tools:

• User-Friendly Interface: Ensure that the platform is intuitive and easy to navigate for both hosts and participants. This might also include asking your participants or client what they’re familiar with and whether they already have a platform for running virtual workshops. 
• Features: Evaluate the platform’s features, such as video quality, screen sharing capabilities, breakout rooms, chat functionality, and the ability to record sessions. Make sure the platform aligns with your workshop’s requirements.
• Scalability: Check if the platform can accommodate the number of participants you expect. Some platforms have participant limits or work best with smaller groups. 
• Cost: Review the pricing structure to ensure it fits within your budget. Some platforms offer free basic versions with limited features, while others have subscription plans.
• Security: Assess the platform’s security measures to protect your workshop from unwanted disruptions or unauthorized access.
• Your workshop design: Finding tools that meet the needs of your design is an integral part of the process. If you’re running small groups in parallel, support for breakouts that’s a must. If you want people to collaborate visually, perhaps you’ll want an online whiteboard tool as well. 

Need more help? Our post on the best online tools for workshops and meetings is a great resource for finding the right platform and toolset for your needs. 

Create an agenda (and share it!) 

A well-structured agenda forms the backbone of your online workshop. Without an agenda, it’s all too easy to go off track, waste time and be unproductive.

Start your process by designing an agenda that includes a clear timing, instructions and a structured flow of activities. This will keep you on time, ensure you meet your goals and keep you organized too!

In SessionLab, it’s easy to build a step-by-step agenda in minutes. Drag and drop blocks to structure your session. Add timing, instructions, attachments and links to each block so you can facilitate your virtual workshop with confidence. 

Remember that your agenda is also an invaluable tool for co-facilitators and participants too. Share your agenda with anyone helping you run the workshop so you can stay aligned and ensure that the session runs smoothly.

It’s also a great idea to share your agenda with your participants so they can prepare for the workshop and clearly see a breakdown of the session. With SessionLab, create a customizable printout or share an online agenda your participants can follow during your workshop.

Finally, when it comes to running your virtual workshop, have your agenda on a second screen, on a mobile device or in an easily accessible window.

Make it interactive 

Virtual workshops are highly interactive in nature. Rather than lectures or webinars where information flows in one direction, workshop participants are actively encouraged to engage and collaborate in the process.

The result of this interactive format is an engaged group who are actively contributing to the learning process and outcomes of the session. When designing your workshop, aim to include interactive elements and activities that allow your participants to collaborate and actively participate. Here are some of the ways you can make your virtual workshop more interactive.

• Discussion and Collaboration: Virtual workshops include facilitated discussions, group activities, and collaboration among participants. Facilitators often use breakout rooms and whiteboard tools to create space for participants to collaborate and share ideas alongside the plenary session. 
• Interactive Tools: Workshops often employ a variety of interactive tools such as polls, quizzes, virtual whiteboards, and online games. These tools promote participant engagement and encourage real-time interaction. Use what’s appropriate but remember that often, the best thing you can do is simply get people talking and collaborating. Keep it simple and always keep your goal in mind when choosing interactivity tools. 
• Feedback Mechanisms: Facilitators actively seek and incorporate feedback from participants, creating a dynamic learning environment where input is valued.This might look like asking for emoji reactions, responding to a poll or using text call chat to give input without disrupting the speaker. 
• Hands-on Activities: Many virtual workshops incorporate hands-on activities, exercises, and simulations that require active participation, problem-solving, and application of knowledge. Use breakout rooms and collaborative online tools to help your participants engage experientially and work on something in real-time. 

Finding a virtual workshop platform that supports interactivity and real-time collaboration will help make your session more engaging but remember that simplicity is also important.

Simply using engaging workshop activities and getting people talking and collaborating can be enough. Explore facilitation methods that match your goals and encourage your group with games and discussions.

Test your technology and set-up 

Technical issues can derail a virtual workshop, so it’s essential to test all your equipment and software before the event. Here’s a checklist of things to consider:

• Internet Connection: Ensure that you have a stable internet connection with sufficient bandwidth to handle video streaming and other online activities.
• Hardware: Check your computer, camera, microphone, and headphones to ensure they’re in good working order. Ensure your laptop is charged and that you have all your cables! 
• Software: Update your video conferencing software and any other tools you plan to use. Test screen sharing, chat features, and breakout rooms.This is especially important if you’re using any integrations or jumping between tools. A smooth experience can enhance the workshop while any delays or issues can be frustrating. 
• Location: being able to clearly see and hear the host is an important but often overlooked part of a virtual workshop. Consider lighting, background noise and what else is in your camera frame before the session.  
• Backup Plan: Have a backup plan in case of technical difficulties. This might include a secondary device, a mobile hotspot, or alternative communication methods. 

By addressing potential technical issues in advance, you can minimize disruptions during your virtual workshop. And when things fail? Own it and be honest and open with your participants. I’ve often found that using issues as an opportunity to be vulnerable and connect can help create a collaborative atmosphere where everyone is in it together.

It’s also helpful to bring an assistant or co-facilitator to help with technical aspects of your workshop. This person might help with any requests from participants, or even step-in if you are disconnected suddenly.  

Facilitate effectively 

Good facilitation is the key to a successful virtual workshop. As the facilitator, it’s your responsibility to create an interactive and participatory environment. You’ll direct the flow of conversation, keep the workshop on track and ask important questions too. 

While learning how to be an effective workshop facilitator takes practice, here are some simple strategies you can use to engage with your participants effectively:

• Start with icebreakers and check-ins: Start your workshop with icebreakers or introductions to help participants get to know each other. This sets a friendly and welcoming tone. Asking participants to check-in is also a great way to get everyone’s voice in the room and become aware of any needs or issues nice and early. 
• Active Participation: Encourage active participation through polls, chat discussions, and interactive activities. Ask open-ended questions to stimulate discussion. Most facilitators have their own preferred form of encouraging participation, but however you approach it, remember that workshops are collaborative in nature. Create plenty of opportunities for collaboration between workshop participants and participation will follow.
• Encourage Diverse Perspectives: Foster an inclusive environment where participants feel comfortable sharing diverse opinions and ideas. In practice, this can mean using breakout rooms where everyone has a chance to speak, and also being aware of who has and hasn’t spoken in plenary. 
• Use Breakout Rooms: Speaking of breakout rooms, they are a valuable tool for group discussions and collaboration. Use them strategically to divide participants into smaller teams for focused activities where everyone gets space to contribute.
• Manage your time: Try to keep discussions within the allotted time to maintain the workshop’s schedule. If something deserves more time or space, go back to your agenda and see what can shift to ensure you cover the ground you need to while also reaching your objectives. 
• Take breaks when needed: Maintaining energy levels when working virtually can be difficult. Aim for a break every 90 minutes, and ask your group if they need a break if energy levels are flagging. Either getting up from your desk or having a brain break or stretch can do wonders for engagement. 
• Be present: Just as you might ask your participants to close other tabs and be present in the virtual workshop, be sure to do the same. Take a breath and center yourself before the session so your attention is on delivering an engaging workshop and helping the group achieve their goals.

Facilitation is an important skill for anyone leading workshops and meetings. If you’re looking to improve as a facilitator, our article on facilitation skills is a great place to start. You might also find our guide to virtual facilitation useful for navigating the challenges of facilitating an online session.

Use multimedia where appropriate

To enhance understanding and engagement, virtual workshops often incorporate multimedia elements such as presentations and videos. These visual and interactive components add variation to your agenda and cater to different learning styles. 

Used well, these items can elevate a humdrum virtual event into something special and memorable. Here are some of the multimedia elements you might add to your virtual workshop. 

• Visual Slides: Presenters use visually appealing slides with images, diagrams, and bullet points to convey information effectively. Read more on how to create effective visual presentations here. 
• Videos: Short videos or animations are used to illustrate concepts, demonstrate processes, or provide real-world examples. While these can be effective, it’s worth making them short and to the point. Use Youtube timestamps or trim video content so you can engage your audience without making it feel like a trip to the cinema. 
• Screen sharing: Walking participants through something by sharing your screen can be more effective than simply telling them to do so themselves. As with the above, use sparingly and keep things to the point. Watching someone navigate a database for an hour is unlikely to engage your participants!
• Interactive Whiteboards: Virtual whiteboards allow presenters and participants to draw, diagram, or brainstorm collaboratively. Recreating the feel of writing ideas on a whiteboard during an in-person session can be a great way to engage the group. 
• Polls and Quizzes: Sharing the results of interactive polls and quizzes on-screen can be an effective way of making your workshop more engaging and visual. Use tools that do this in real-time to add an element of excitement to proceedings! 

Set clear expectations at the outset

From the outset, set clear expectations for your virtual workshop. Let participants know what they can anticipate in terms of the agenda, timing, and expected participation levels. Communicate any pre-workshop materials or requirements so that everyone is prepared.

Setting expectations also involves defining ground rules for behavior. For instance, you may establish guidelines for muting microphones when not speaking, using video cameras, and respecting others’ opinions in the chat or discussions. 

Virtual workshops are at their most effective when everyone is aligned on ground rules and expectations. Demonstrate the values you want people to embody throughout to set an example for others to follow. Set expectations when you first send out an agenda and then remind people at the beginning of the session for best results. 

Brief Co-facilitators

If you have multiple facilitators, ensure that everyone is well-versed in the agenda and comfortable with the virtual platform. Practice transitions, interactive activities, and troubleshooting scenarios to ensure a smooth workshop flow.

In most case, virtual workshops benefit from the addition of at least one facilitator or technical helper. Check out this guide to co-facilitation to see best practices for digital collaboration on a virtual workshop.

Clearly communicate with workshop participants

Provide workshop participants with clear instructions on how to join the workshop, use the virtual platform, and participate in interactive activities. Often, this means sending an invitation email with a copy of the agenda and major points attached. Be sure to include any relevant links to everyone can join with ease!

Establish guidelines for communication, such as using the chat for questions and comments, and encourage active participation throughout the workshop.

Evaluate and adapt

Continuous improvement is key to running engaging virtual workshops. After each workshop, take the time to evaluate its effectiveness. Gather feedback from participants through surveys or direct conversations and also reflect on your own performance as a facilitator.

Identify what went well and areas that need improvement. What changed in your agenda? What sections were especially effective and which need work?

Use this feedback to adapt your future workshops. Make adjustments to your content, engagement strategies, or technical setup based on the lessons learned from each session.

By constantly refining your approach, you can ensure that each workshop is better than the last. In SessionLab, you can save time by reusing your existing agenda, keeping the structure and whatever worked while also making any necessary changes in a snap. 

Practice and rehearse

It’s invaluable to find time to practice and rehearse your virtual workshop before the actual event. This includes running through your content, interactions, and technical setup. Pay attention to your pacing and timing to ensure that you can cover all the essential material within the allotted time.

If possible, conduct a test run with a small group of colleagues or friends to get feedback and identify what worked well and what could benefit from another pass. 

If short on time, I find it useful to practice the opening of the workshop, any interactive elements and any places where you introduce new tools, share your screen or otherwise switch from a straightforward set-up. These are the places where complications often occur and where rehearsal can help you feel confident and prepated. 

Follow up

After a virtual workshop is complete, that doesn’t mean your work as facilitator is over. An effective session will be supported by follow-up actions that will make it easy for participants to cement learnings and take next steps.

Send a follow-up email to participants with a summary of key points, additional resources, and contact information for further questions or assistance. You may also use this opportunity to ask for feedback or let participants know what’s coming next. 

You might also create a repository of resources related to the workshop’s content and share it with participants for ongoing learning. If applicable, you might also include a recording of the session or any working documents and materials. If there were any agreed actions or next steps, reiterate these or send links to where these actions will be logged and tracked. 

Remember that your workshop is just one part of an ongoing process. Use the follow-up to prepare your participants for whatever comes next and to take the great work of the workshop forward.  

Conclusion

Running a successful virtual workshop requires careful planning, effective facilitation, and adaptability to technical challenges. With this comprehensive guide, you can ensure that your virtual workshops run smoothly, engage participants effectively, and achieve your defined objectives.

Want to learn more about how to run effective virtual sessions? Check out how facilitators use SessionLab to run engaging online workshops that deliver results and supercharge collaboration. 

Whether you’re a project manager or team leader, the right meeting management software can make managing efficient meetings easy and save you valuable time.

In this guide, we’ll explore the best meeting management software, each offering unique features to help you plan, execute, and optimize your meetings effectively.

Good meetings are how the best teams align, make decisions and discuss what’s important to them. The majority of employees spent up to one third of their work week in meetings. Doesn’t that time deserve to be spent well?

An effective stand-up meeting can set your team up for success. On the other hand, bad meetings can feel like a waste of time. So how do you go about ensuring you have productive meetings that also stay on time?

The best meeting management software will not only help you create agendas and stay on time, but they’ll help you streamline your entire process. These tools make it easy to organize your meetings, share the agenda with participants and run the session effectively.

But how do you choose the right tool? In this guide, we’ll share some of the most effective meeting management tools on the market, outlining key features and benefits. Let’s explore!

What is meeting management?

Meeting management is the systematic process of planning, organizing, facilitating, and following up on meetings to ensure they are productive, efficient, and valuable.

In a professional or organizational context, meetings play a crucial role in decision-making, collaboration, communication, and problem-solving. However, without proper management, meetings can easily become time-consuming, unproductive, and frustrating for participants.

Whether it’s a daily stand-up, company all-hands or decision making meeting, every session benefits from being well structured and managed.

One important point when it comes to choosing meeting management software is considering your existing toolset and ways of working. For some remote teams, you may want a complete meeting platform with all the bells and whistles. For others, using an agenda planning tool will be enough to supercharge your meetings alongside your existing video conferencing tool.

In any case, remember that your meeting management solution works alongside the person leading and facilitating the meeting. Think of the solution you use as a way to streamline your process, make tedious tasks easier and save you time. Choose your tool accordingly!

SessionLab: Streamlined Meeting Agenda Planning and Facilitation

Best meeting agenda software

SessionLab is an agenda planning tool that makes it easy to quickly create and share your meeting agendas. Drag, drop and reorder your blocks to create your meeting agenda in minutes. Support your meeting process by adding notes, links and attachments to agenda items. It’s a powerful, easy-to-use tool for anyone looking to create well-structured and engaging meetings.

Automatic timing calculation: SessionLab handles timing calculations for you, so you can focus on creating a tight meeting schedule. Create meeting agendas with minute-perfect timing with ease. As you make changes, SessionLab will automatically update your timing, no need to manually calculate your time schedule.

Collaborative Meeting Planning: Collaborate with your team to design effective meeting agendas and plans, ensuring that everyone is aligned and able to contribute. Invite team members to leave their comments and work together in real time on collaborative agendas.

Access to a Library of Meeting Templates: Save time by utilizing a library of pre-made meeting templates for various types of meetings, from brainstorming sessions to project retrospectives. Running recurring meetings? Create your own agenda templates so you and your team can quickly and consistently run more productive sessions.

Beautiful printouts: Create materials that help you prepare and conduct meetings. Export your meeting agenda in a format that works for you. Customize your printouts to include the information you and your team members need.

Time-tracking during your meeting: Use Time Tracker to keep your agenda on track during your meeting. See where you are against your plan and effectively timebox each item in your agenda. Add meeting minutes and notes to your agenda so everything you need is in one place.

Key Features of SessionLab:

• Fast, effective agenda design.
• Automatic timing calculation.
• Collaborative meeting planning.
• Access to a library of meeting templates.
• Beautiful printouts.

How much does SessionLab cost?

SessionLab is absolutely free to get started with, including ten sessions and everything you need to starting creating better agendas and having more productive meetings. Want more robust features that can enhance team productivity? SessionLab Pro starts at $15 per month, with unlimited sessions, real-time collaboration, exports to Word and much more.

Microsoft Teams: Microsoft-powered collaboration

Best corporate meeting management solution

Microsoft Teams is an all-in-one collaboration platform that combines real-time messaging, video conferencing, and robust meeting management capabilities. It’s an ideal choice for organizations already invested in the Microsoft ecosystem and who want to link meetings to projects and documents easily.

Teams is an effective, collaborative platform where remote teams are able to chat, file share and host video meetings, all in one-place. While it may lack some advanced agenda management capabilities, Teams is a great all-rounder that is a natural choice for PowerPoint and Office 365 users.

Key Features of Microsoft Teams:

• Real-time collaboration and messaging.
• Video and audio conferencing.
• File sharing and integration with Microsoft 365 apps.
• Task and project management.

How much does Microsoft Teams cost?

Microsoft Team has a free version to get started with. Paid plans for Microsoft Teams begin at $4 per user, per month.

Hypercontext: One on one meetings All-star

Best one on one meeting software

Hypercontext is a meeting management tool with a strong focus on helping managers have productive 1:1 meetings and performance reviews with their team members.

Hypercontext integrates with popular calendar apps like Google Calendar and Outlook to help ensure that meeting schedules are synchronized and up-to-date. It also includes tools to aid collaboration and engagement such as discussion boards and action item tracking. Syncing with project management software is a great benefit here.

We also loved the meeting analytics on offer. Hypercontext provides data on meeting frequency, duration, and engagement, enabling teams to make data-driven improvements to their process.

Key Features of Hypercontext:

• Meeting agenda creation and distribution.
• Integrations with calendar apps.
• Team collaboration tools.

How much does Hypercontext cost?

Hypercontext has a free plan if you want to take it for a spin, though if you want to start using more advanced features, Hypercontext starts at $7 per user, per month.

Zoom: Interactive Virtual Meetings and Webinars

Best video meeting software

Zoom is renowned for its video conferencing capabilities, making it an excellent choice for hosting interactive virtual meetings and webinars. Zoom is great at helping your run productive meetings online. Share screens, collaborate on documents, and annotate shared content in real-time. Use breakout rooms for group discussions or activities. You can also record meetings for later reference and take advantage of automatic transcription to easily generate meeting minutes.

In our experience, Zoom works best when paired with other meeting management tools that can handle your meeting agenda or help with engagement. We’ll often have a SessionLab meeting agenda in the second screen and integrate with a Miro board for collaborative work

Whatever other tools in your stack, you’ll absolutely need some meeting software that will actually host your team meetings and allow you to communicate over video. Zoom is a great choice for this!

Key Features of Zoom:

• Video and audio conferencing.
• Screen sharing and collaboration tools.
• Recording and transcription features.
• Virtual background and breakout rooms.

How much does Zoom cost?

Zoom starts out with a free plan. When you start running larger meetings or need some advanced hosting tools, plans start at $15.99 per month.

Meeting Booster: Effective Meeting Minutes Program

Best meeting minutes software

Meeting Booster is meeting software designed to help teams have more productive meetings and . While Meeting Booster offers a full meeting management solution, we found it a great choice of meeting minutes tool.

With its minute taking features, you can easily record actions in a meeting and then send the minutes and actions to meeting attendees without any fuss. Document sharing and meeting notes are streamlined with a common view of the discussion and action items that can be shared during the session.

We especially loved the features for formatting minutes. It makes it easy to create professional materials and get approval on your meeting minutes from necessary stakeholders.

Key Features of Meeting Booster:

• Take, format and distribute meeting minutes
• Meeting action items and task management
• Meeting analytics and reporting

How much does Meeting Booster cost?

Meeting Booster has a free trial with paid plans starting at $17.

Miro: Visual Collaboration and Brainstorming

Best visual meeting tool

Miro is a versatile visual collaboration platform that helps teams brainstorm, plan, and manage meetings with a focus on visual aids. It’s widely used among facilitators who answered the State of Facilitation survey, and with good reason!

In many of our remote meetings, we’ll work together in a Miro board, often collecting ideas, voting on solutions and collaborating visually.

A good meeting management tool helps during both the planning and running of your session. In Miro, you can use mind maps, flowcharts, and brainstorming templates to encourage creativity and problem-solving during your meeting. Getting people into a shared whiteboard can make it easy to illustrate ideas and recreate that in-person vibe among team members.

Top tip: when inviting participants to join a shared whiteboard, you’ll need to send them the right link, in most cases through a chat function. Make the experience seamless: when designing your meeting, add Miro links to the relevant parts of your agenda to make sure you keep everything you need at hand!

Key Features of Miro:

• Digital whiteboards and visual collaboration.
• Mind mapping and brainstorming tools.
• Integration with popular project management and productivity apps.

How much does Miro cost?

Miro has a limited free plan with up to 3 editable boards. Their paid plans start at $10 per user/per month.

Otter.ai: Transcription and Note-Taking

Best meeting notes software

Otter.ai is an AI-powered transcription and note-taking tool that is ideal for capturing meeting minutes, making them easily accessible and shareable for your team.

With Otter, you can automatically transcribe your online meeting in real-time or upload a record to create a transcription afterwards. It’ll automatically identify speakers and create accurate meeting minutes with ease.

Creating resources to support your meetings and make it easy for participants who couldn’t attend to catch-up is a great way to support your team. Meeting management tools like Otter can prove to be a wonderful addition to your toolset.

Key Features of Otter.ai:

• Real-time transcription and note-taking.
• AI-powered voice recognition.
• Searchable and shareable transcripts.
• Integration with calendar and communication apps.

How much does Otter.ai cost?

Otter starts with a free plan. The paid plan’s start at $10 per user, per month and include features like advanced collaboration and exports.

Calendly: Simplified Meeting Scheduling

Best meeting software for scheduling meetings

Calendly is an efficient scheduling and appointment booking tool that simplifies the process of arranging meetings, consultations, and appointments. It’s especially effective for arranging 1-1s or external meetings with clients.

Share your Calendly link, and participants can book appointments based on your availability. Easily set your working hours and specify when you’re available for meetings to get organized with ease. Calendly integrates with popular calendar apps like Google Calendar, Outlook, and iCloud too!

Calendly sends automated reminders and notifications to both you and participants, reducing the likelihood of no-shows. For us, this has been especially useful during hiring processes or when conducting user interviews. Scheduling meetings without extra busy work is exactly what meeting management solutions are good for. Use Calendly alongside an agenda planning tool like SessionLab to effectively plan and arrange your meetings.

Key Features of Calendly:

• Automated scheduling and appointment booking.
• Personalized meeting availability.
• Integration with calendar apps.
• Customizable meeting types and durations.
• Meeting reminders and notifications.

How much does Calendly cost?

Calendly also has a free plan. Unlock more advanced features such as unlimited event types and integrations starting at $10 per seat, per month.

Fellow: Collaborative Team Meetings

Best meeting management software for teams

Fellow is a specialized meeting management tool with a strong focus on team management, feedback and ongoing collaboration. Easily assign clear action items and takeaways to your meetings and track interactions and feedback over time.

Fellow has an agenda builder that is great for simple meetings that may not require more robust time-tracking. You can easily schedule follow up meetings after running a session too. It also integrates with task management tools like Asana, Trello, and Slack to help streamline your workflow.

Key Features of Fellow:

• Meeting agenda creation.
• Meeting prompts.
• Action item tracking and follow-up.
• Integrations with productivity tools.

How much does Fellow cost?

Fellow’s paid plans start at $9 per user, per month, with a minimum of 5 users. You can also try it for free.

Slido: Engage Your Audience with Live Polls and Q&A

Best engagement software for meetings

Slido is an audience engagement platform that enhances meetings and events with live polls, Q&A sessions, and real-time interaction. It’s a great tool to add to your all-hands meetings or workshops.

Slido makes it easy to engage participants with live polls and Q&A sessions, making meetings more interactive. It’s great for gathering feedback, asking questions, and getting opinions in real-time from your audience.

Integrate Slido with popular presentation software like PowerPoint or video conferencing tools to seamlessly incorporate audience engagement into your meetings. You can also access valuable data and insights about participant engagement and meeting performance.

Key Features of Slido:

• Live polls and Q&A sessions.
• Real-time audience engagement.
• Integration with presentation software.
• Analytics and reporting.

How much does Slido cost?

Slido has a free plan with simple engagement tools. For bigger events and more advanced features, plans start at $12 per month.

Stormz: Effective Facilitation Platform

Best meeting productivity tool

Stormz is a platform designed to facilitate engaging workshops and meetings, making it easier to brainstorm, collaborate, and reach decisions as a team. If you’re looking for meeting management software that helps you visually collaborate and run exercises in one spot, Stormz is a good shout!

In essence, Stormz works a lot like a simple, stripped-back online whiteboard designed for simplicity and ease use. Facilitate real-time brainstorming sessions and decision-making processes with intuitive, tools. Engage participants with interactive activities and exercises that encourage collaboration and creativity. Collect meeting notes in the parking lot and return to them later.

In Stormz, you can really feel that the tool has been built with facilitators in mind. For move involved meetings and interactive sessions, we definitely recommend it as a bespoke alternative to Miro and Mural.

Key Features of Stormz

• Digital workshop and meeting facilitation.
• Collaborative activities and exercises.
• Real-time brainstorming and decision-making tools.

How much does Stormz cost?

Stormz has a 10-day free trial and then costs $10 per month with 10 participants per session.

ClickUp: Meeting Task and Project Management

Best project meeting platform

ClickUp is a versatile task and project management software that can play a significant role in meeting management by streamlining task assignments, tracking progress, and facilitating collaboration.

If you’re looking for an all in one solution that can help you keep your team organized more broadly, ClickUp is a great tool to consider.

You can easily assign tasks and manage projects, and initiatives. Tailor workflows to match your meeting management processes. Customize task statuses, assignees, and due dates.

Foster teamwork with communication tools, such as comments, task discussions, and file sharing. You can even track the time spent on various tasks and generate reports to assess productivity and resource allocation.

Key Features of ClickUp:

• Task and project management.
• Customizable workflows.
• Collaboration and communication tools.

How much does does ClickUp cost?

ClickUp’s paid plans start at $10 per user, per month, though it also has a free plan if you wish to test the platform.

Klaxoon: Transform Meetings with Interactive Tools

Best tool for interactive meetings

Klaxoon is a versatile meeting management software that focuses on transforming traditional meetings into interactive and engaging experiences.

Klaxoon offers a range of interactive tools such as quizzes, surveys, word clouds, and brainstorming boards to keep participants engaged and encourage collaboration. For online meetings where you want to encourage active participation, meeting management tools that include quizzes and polls are a wonderful place to begin.

You can also collaborative boards to gather ideas, feedback, and input from participants, making it easier to make informed decisions. Collect real-time feedback and conduct surveys to gauge participant opinions and measure meeting effectiveness.

With Klaxoon, you can take your meetings to the next level by leveraging interactive tools and collaborative features, ultimately improving the overall meeting experience and driving better outcomes.

Key Features of Klaxoon:

• Interactive meeting tools and activities.
• Collaboration and brainstorming boards.
• Real-time feedback and surveys.
• Integration with various apps and platforms.
• Analytics and reporting.

How much does Klaxoon cost?

Klaxoon has a free plan to help you get started with 50 participants. Paid plans for Klaxoon’s more robust features start at $24.90 per month.

Why is Meeting Management important?

Meetings have long been a staple of business and organizational life, providing a platform for collaboration, decision-making, and communication. However, not all meetings are created equal.

Organized badly, meetings can be a waste of time that leaves team members feeling drained and less aligned. Plan and organize a meeting well and your team can achieve great things and stay on time while doing do. This is where effective meeting management comes into play.

Meeting management refers to the process of planning, organizing, facilitating, and following up on meetings to ensure they are productive, efficient, and valuable. It might seem like a straightforward task, but there are several compelling reasons why effective meeting management is of paramount importance.

When a manager or facilitator uses the right meeting management software, meetings tend to flow. Teams are aligned on the agenda, meeting materials are easily created, meeting notes are collected and managers have everything the need to run the session.

In this section, we’ll share the benefits of using the right tools during every step of your meeting process and explore why you should start using a solution to help support your process.

Optimizes Time and Resources

Meetings take time to plan, organize and run. Good meetings are those that feel like an effective use of the collective time and resources of everyone involved. When thinking about running a team meeting, remember that the time used is cumulative for everyone in the session. A one-hour meeting with ten team members can cost your hundreds of dollars in working time. That time should be spent effectively and productively!

Meeting management software is designed to optimize the process and save you time in the process. For example, reusing and adapting a SessionLab meeting agenda can help you create a perfectly-timed agenda in minutes, rather than hours.

Planning and structuring your team meetings effectively can ensure you discuss what’s important, rather than going off on tangents that take you further from your goal. Effective meeting management ensures that meetings are focused, concise, and end on time, making the best use of everyone’s time.

The best meeting management software also makes it easy to do all the tangential tasks relating to your meeting. There’s always something for managers to do, and so saving time here can be a life saver. Whether its collating meeting notes, sending invites, creating beautiful meeting materials or assigning tasks, using meeting software can help optimize this process.

Enhances Productivity

Well-planned and managed meetings help teams get more done. They have a clear agenda, defined objectives, and a structured flow. This allows participants to stay on track, make decisions efficiently, and accomplish the meeting’s goals. Unproductive meetings, on the other hand, can lead to frustration and reduced morale among participants.

I often think of meeting management software as the second facilitator in the room. Have a question about what comes next? Check your agenda. Want to quickly poll participants? Use the engagement features of your tool to make the process quicker. Want to timebox each activity to make sure you cover everything needed? Use a time tracker connected to your session plan.

Meeting management tools are a great way to support your process and improve meeting productivity, all while saving you valuable time and effort.

Promotes Accountability and Ownership

Accountability and Ownership are cornerstones of successful organizations. Get your team behind a new initiative and have team members assigned to follow-up tasks and your projects will be more successful as a result. Good meetings and workshops are often where this accountability and buy-in begins.

Have you ever been in a meeting where you had a nice chat about an upcoming initiative, but it felt like you had no clear idea about what you should do next? Effective meetings enable your team and incentivize action. Great meeting management software can help you by making it easy to set action items, responsibilities, and create clearly defined and documented deadlines.

You can go further by inviting collaborators to co-create your agenda, lead sections of the meeting or give feedback on your plan. A great agenda is one that everyone involved believes in. Getting your team involved in shaping your agendas can have profound effects on team productivity and buy-in.

Encourages Participation and Engagement

Ever been in a meeting where you unintentionally got distracted, just because it was dull? Or perhaps you were trying to get feedback on a new project and were met with silence? Managing a great meeting also includes encouraging active participation and finding ways to engage your audience as necessary.

You can achieve this on multiple levels. Designing your agenda with space to check-in and warm-up participants with activities is a great first step. You might also consider how each item of your meeting flows into the next and tailor your plan to the task at hand. Sending your agenda to participants ahead of time can also ensure they’re prepared to contribute and engage with the topic of your session.

Meeting management software can help encourage participation during the meeting too. You might use a whiteboard for team members to collaborate in real-time. Using quick polls or idea generation games can make a session more intriguing. Something as simple as sharing videos or slides while video conferencing can help hold participants’ attention.

Remember that dropping everyone into a video conferencing tool and talking at them for an hour without variation or participatory activities is a surefire way to have a bad meeting. Use a meeting management tool to help facilitate engagement and active participation throughout the process.

Transparency and knowledge sharing

Transparency is vital for creating a sense of trust and credibility within your team. In the context of meetings, being transparent means making sure that the agenda and supporting information are shared openly and that decisions and notes are documented clearly. Management software can help support this process by making it easy to control who sees what and making it easy to invite people to your agenda and meeting notes.

A meeting management tool like SessionLab can be a great place to keep all your meeting agendas organized. You can reuse your best agendas, share notes and ensure consistency across your organization. Of course, you may have meetings that want to remain private or within certain groups, such as one on one meetings or executive sessions. A good meeting management solution allows you to control who sees what, and invite only those people you want to each agenda or workspace.

Your organization and team will likely create your own rituals and best practices around your meetings. The way you manage meetings in your team doesn’t need to be the same as everyone else (though there’s lots to learn from others) but it does help to be consistent within your group. Your meeting platform will help you achieve this with templates, instructions and by taking the pain out of sharing your best practices.

Conclusion: Optimize Your Meetings with the Right Software

There’s more to an effective meeting than simply getting people in the room. Video calls without structure or planning are rarely productive and seldom help a team achieve their goals.

Effective meeting management software is an essential component of the process, enabling meeting leaders to plan, organize and run sessions with confidence.

Whether you need help with agenda creation, note-taking, scheduling, collaboration, or engagement, the right tools can significantly impact your meeting outcomes. SessionLab is an effective way to start creating and sharing better meeting agendas and supercharging your entire meeting process.

Have thoughts or recommendations? Let us know how you get on in the comments below. Want more help with the cultivating the skills you need to run your meetings? Learn how to become a better facilitator and improve how you hold the space and execute meetings.

Looking for inspiration? Check out our workshop and meeting templates to see how to structure an effective session and use it as the basis for your next meeting.

Using SessionLab to design learning flows and collaborate with subject matter experts has helped Vlerick save time, be more efficient and create programs that engage learners – whether as part of a degree program, executive learning or bespoke company training. Here’s how.

Structured, efficient learning design

An effective self-paced course, training session or blended learning program starts with a well-crafted learning flow informed by the needs of potential learners. At Vlerick, the process begins with a conversation and an outline in SessionLab.

“First, we analyze the needs of the customer or the audience. Then we talk with faculty and discuss learning objectives, learning activities, topics and the learning journey. When we have an idea of what we need to have in there, that’s the moment we would start using SessionLab.”

Even before they begin to use a content authoring tool or set things up in an LMS, Vlerick uses SessionLab to create a learning flow that serves as a foundation for all of their programs. 

“We use SessionLab as our skeleton before we start creating digital assets and finally add them to our learning management system. The day SessionLab came into my work life I was so happy because it felt so structured.” 

Vlerick starts the process by adding blocks with simple titles to quickly create an overview of their program. By reorganizing blocks and iterating quickly in SessionLab, they’re able to quickly craft a skeleton curriculum that meets the needs of their target audience.

Whether a course is self-paced or delivered in a blended learning environment, a well-balanced program with a mix of different interaction types is a vital part of engaging learners.

Vlerick uses SessionLab’s color coding to ensure they find the right balance and make informed decisions about their curriculum.

“We use the color coding in SessionLab to indicate the different sort of interaction methods and that helps at every stage. We know that if a block is blue, it will be a video, if it’s red, it will be an interactive resource or multimedia. This ensures we create a good balance: not to have five videos in a row, not to have five articles in a row, to have the right interaction moments. It’s very visible.”

SessionLab is designed to be flexible, so whatever kind of learning program Vlerick is designing, they’re able to co-create quickly and with confidence. 

Effective collaboration with subject matter experts

Once a learning design has been drafted in SessionLab, it’s time to get involvement from subject matter experts and members of the faculty.

Finding time in the busy agendas of their faculty poses one of the biggest challenges for the team at Vlerick but thankfully, SessionLab is able to help here too.

“With SessionLab, it’s easy for us to have a meeting where we go through the learning design with our content experts and it helps in the collaboration. We collect their feedback and make adjustments in real time.”

In SessionLab, it’s easy to share your agenda and collaborate in the best format for your collaborators. Invite subject matter experts to leave comments and add materials directly to the relevant learning blocks. Co-create in real-time or stay aligned asynchronously with track changes and comments. 

Subject matter experts at Vlerick often have their own ways of working. However you and your colleagues choose to work, SessionLab’s flexibility allows you to move forward efficiently and save time in the learning design process.

“Sometimes we have faculty who go into SessionLab themselves and add text to blocks or leave comments. Other times, we get the input for the storyboard in a meeting and make notes. Often, we receive a Word document or a PowerPoint from a subject matter expert and we put it into the specific block in SessionLab and brainstorm how we can add activities related to that and analyze how they fit into our storyboard.”

Attaching course materials and content from subject matter experts to your learning design in SessionLab is an effective way to keep everything organized and in one-place.

Never lose a crucial Powerpoint or Word document from a member of your faculty again. Attach key materials to specific blocks in your learning flow so it’s easy for everyone collaborating to find what they need.

Designing and iterating on learning flows as a result of feedback is also common for most learning designers. Rather than having endless versions and iterations of their sessions lost in folders and emails, Vlerick uses SessionLab to collaborate and consolidate their learning designs in one place.

“In SessionLab, workflows with ‘final final version two documents’ are a thing of the past.”

By creating a single source of truth, Vlerick is able to design confidently, save headaches and ensure all their collaborators are able to find what they need.

Saving time and improving organizational efficiency 

Building an entire learning program from scratch is a lot of work. With SessionLab, Vlerick has been able to optimize the process of creating a new program. They’ve also been able to save valuable time by reusing and adjusting their programs and learning material.

“We run a five module program for one of our clients with four reruns every year. Previously, I would know the program by heart and go through every module every time. I would go into the Word document, find the steps where I need to make changes, then write them on an email, add the link to the platform, send it to my colleague and she would go in the platform and make those changes but every time I had to review module by module so it would take me a whole day. Now I have all the content in SessionLab and it doesn’t even take me one hour anymore.”

In SessionLab, Vlerick can simply duplicate their previous course and make notes of what needs to change. Rather than needing to redo the whole program and resend document versions, Luisa and all the learning designers at Vlerick will make changes in SessionLab and invite colleagues to work with her on the specific sections which need their attention. 

The learning designer will mark blocks for the attention of the content builder to use when creating assets and another for her colleague in the admin department. Everyone in the workflow knows exactly what’s expected of them and can collaborate efficiently. 

By switching to SessionLab and improving their workflow, Luisa has been able to make a whole day’s work fit into just one hour of focused collaboration. 

SessionLab is also helpful when it comes to helping Vlerick keep organized records of all their programs in one-place. When creating their materials, learning designers at Vlerick sometimes reuse specific activities or they’ll review previously run programs created for returning clients. 

“Previously, if we had to recreate, rebuild or review the program, it was impossible to find those documents again. One of the values of SessionLab is that if I left tomorrow, and in two years, a colleague has to go back to one of the programs I worked on, she could just find it in SessionLab.” 

By reusing existing designs and creating templates, Vlerick has been able to save time and also unify their style and increase efficiency across the team.  

“We work with a lot of builders and designers who have their own ways of working and we have our own style too. Creating templates in SessionLab has helped us to align more.”

In SessionLab, you can add sections and checklists for each stage of your learning flow. Most of Vlerick’s learning programs have common elements that need to be filled in every time.

By adding sections for each key item to their templates, they can ensure nothing is missed and that their content team has everything they need to quickly add the flow to their LMS.

Leave notes to the template to make it easy for trainers and content experts to follow. Add checklists and color coding to create an efficient workflow and transfer knowledge across your team easily.

For Vlerick, this has been a vital part of onboarding new team members and getting them up to speed with creating learning flows. 

“SessionLab is helpful with alignments and processes. As our team grew a lot and we added new colleagues, it’s now much easier to adapt the process, because it’s all there in SessionLab.” 

Storyboarding and instructional design made easy 

Creating learning programs, whether for a self-paced course or blended learning format can often feel like a balancing act. Instructional designers need to manage the input of subject matter experts, carefully craft a learning flow and collaborate with content designers – all before moving material to an LMS.

When designing materials for their degree programs, executive learning courses and bespoke trainings, Vlerick Business School needed a tool that helped them design effective learning flows and improve efficiency across their team. 

With SessionLab, Vlerick has been able to streamline the process of creating their initial learning designs and storyboards. By also optimizing their collaborations with subject matter experts and templating their programs, they’ve been able to save time across the board – all while delivering exceptional experiences to their learners. 

“SessionLab is the one place where everyone can find all the storyboards for all the programs we designed within the school. It really helps with efficiency and time saving.”

But how do you choose the right activity, and where do you get started when trying to encourage team bonding or alignement? We’re here to help with this collection of simple and effective team building activities!

Building a highly effective team takes effort, consideration, and the deployment of a thoughtful group process. Remember that teams are composed of relationships between people and all relationships need care and attention. The team-building activities below are a great place to start!

That said, some employees may bristle or cringe at the mention of team building activities, and with good reason. Done badly, team building at work can be frustrating, unproductive, or a waste of time for all involved. 

We’ve put together a collection of proven team-building activities, games, and exercises that cover everything from communication and collaboration to alignment and vision. 

Whether you’re working in a small team or as part of a large organization, taking the time to develop your team and enable everyone in your group to do their best work is time well spent. Let’s take a look!

What are team building activities? 

Team building is an activity or process designed to help build connections between members of a team, create lasting bonds, and enable better teamwork and working practices.

Team building activities might include running team games and activities, holding group discussions, hosting away days, or simply doing things together as a team. They key is that the exercise is designed to bring your team together in a fun and engaging way.

What is the main purpose of a team building activity? 

The main purpose of any team-building activity is on improving some aspects of how a team works together while bringing everyone together in a shared experience.

This might include working on communication, collaboration, alignment, team values, motivation, and anything else that can enable a group to work together more effectively. It might also include resolving conflicts, sharing skills, or simply bringing your group together in a shared experience.

Broadly speaking, any team building effort should be designed to help bring team members closer or find ways to first define and then move towards your shared goals as a group.

As Forbes notes, team building is “most important investment you can make for your people.” On this point, it’s worth noting that team building doesn’t just happen during the activity and so being purposeful your choice of exercise is important.

The best team building activities hold space for building connections in a way that spills over into day-to-day work and creates lasting bonds. It’s not enough to throw your team into an escape room or scavenger hunt without first thinking about why or how this will benefit your team!

After you’ve chosen some engaging team building activities, it’s time to design a complete process that will engage your team while achieving your desired outcomes.

SessionLab makes it easy to build a complete team building agenda in minutes. Start by dragging and dropping blocks, add activity timings and adjust your session flow to create an effective session.

What are the main types of team building activities?

Team building activities are games and exercises that help a group collaborate on a shared goal, discuss important issues constructively, share in a fun experience or find better ways of working together.

These activities can take forms – from quick and funny games you use in your regular meeting, or the may be part of a larger process or team development workshop.

Being purposeful and knowing the objective of your session means you can choose an activity accordingly. Sometimes, your team will come together because they have problems to solve, or you might just want to have fun and celebrate your wins. Pick the right activity for the right time to ensure your team is onboard and ready to engage!

Here are the main categories of team building activity that you might want to use with your team. We’ve made it easy to get started with the right activity for your team by including the length of each game, how many participants can play and how hard it is to run alongside clear instructions.

Team building activities for work

Starting the team building process can be difficult, especially if you’re working with a new team who don’t yet know each other well. The activities in this section are focused on helping teams and employees get to know each other better and start to develop bonds and trust.

Even if your team has been around a while, learning more about one another and building deeper bonds is useful for both team cohesion and group happiness. These are also great activities to use when trying to improve employee engagement and company culture – any organization is only as strong as the bonds between its people!

Try these team building games for work to encourage conversation and break the ice – especially if you’re working with a remote team who might not be in the office together.

3 Question Mingle

Conversation is often the best starting point when it comes to team building, but without structure, it can be difficult for groups to get moving. In 3 Question Mingle, each team member writes three questions on sticky notes and then has a one minute meeting with another person. They each ask another one question and then trade those post-its. Invite the group to move around the room asking questions in pairs and swapping questions afterwards. 

Not only does this team building activity help an entire team get to know each other, but it also invites the group to ask the questions they want to ask. By combining structure with self direction, you can get your team building workshop off to the right start! Bonus points for adding those sticky notes to a memory wall for later reflection!

9 Dimensions Team Building Activity

Building better team relationships and improving group dynamics often means sharing something about ourselves and finding space to discuss and be honest. In this team building exercise, give each team member a set of red, green, yellow and blue dots alongside the 9 dimensions you’ll be looking at. Each participant puts a dot on each dimension based on whether they believe they’re crushing it or need to do more work. 

By sharing some of their 9 dimensions, your team gets to surface things they’re proud of, as well as those that need work. You’ll explore what your group is aligned on in the debriefing section and then move forward together as a team.

Awareness Circle

Getting to know people is easier for some members of a group than it is for others. While extroverts can start chatting to new team members with ease, introverts may find it more difficult to bond with their team and create meaningful team bonds.

In this activity, you’ll encourage a group to get to know each other without speaking and show that everyone in a team has a connection. Another great takeaway from this activity is to take note of the diversity (or lack thereof) in the room and consider this as a point for future team development. 

Break the Ice with The Four Quadrants Activity

Sometimes pictures are better than words when it comes to helping a team get to know one another. Creative games like this one can also be especially effective at helping introverts or distanced teams share with the group.

Start by handing out sheets of paper and inviting each participant to draw a 2×2 grid and pose four questions to the group. Each team member draws their answer in one of the grid squares and once the time limit is up, invite the group to share. If you’re looking for a fun game that encourages creative thinking while being visual and memorable, look no further! 

Just One Lie

Not all team building games need to reinvent the wheel. Particularly with new teams or groups that aren’t used to team building, keeping it simple with a tried and tested method can be your best bet.

Just One Lie is adapted from the well-known icebreaker two truths and a lie, though encourages participants to mingle and share lots of facts about themselves with one another – great for breaking the ice and getting to know one another too!

Life Map

Both groups and individuals go through many twists, turns and changes throughout their life. At its best, team building not only helps create better teams but allows time for reflection and deeper sharing between participants.

With Life Map, encourage your group to draw or create a collage of their life story they can then share with the team. This kind of deeper getting to know your exercise can really help bring a team together and allow for meaningful self-reflection too! 

Personal Presentation

Team building is all about building trust and openness between teammates. Sharing personal experiences and enlarging the social aspects of the group with presentations not only allows everyone to get to know each other but also encourages team development skills too.

For this team building method, ask each participant to prepare a presentation including three things that have shaped who they are as a person. Encourage creative thinking by asking teams to use simple drawings and words to visualize their presentation too.

Passions Tic Tac Toe

Helping employees get to know each other more deeply and connect beyond the scope of their job roles is a great space to explore with a team building exercise. In this activity, your entire team fills in a 3×3 grid with a passion or core value in each of the boxes. Then, ask your group to mingle and compare passions.

When someone finds a match, they each sign for the other person in that square of the grid. Declare your first winner as the person who gets three passions in a row. This team building exercise works well for remote workers and is a great way for your entire team to get to know each other a little better.

Quick team building activities

Team building doesn’t have to take all day. While running dedicated team workshops like a team canvas workshop can have a profound effect on team dynamics, you can also run team building exercises in as little as 5-10 minutes.

In this section, we’ll share some effective yet quick team building activities you might use to warm-up your group or inject some team building into the start of a meeting or event. If you’re looking for 5-minute team building activities to easily slot into your meetings and events, this is a great place to start!

Best and Worst

Teambuilding activities are often at their most effective when you ignite the passions of everyone in a group and bring up talking points that enable people to share something of themselves with the team.

Best and Worst asks each participant to ask one question about the best and worst thing they want to learn from the group. For example, “What’s the best recipe you know?” or “What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had?” After putting all the questions in a hat and choosing a random pair, invite the group to share their answers and related stories.

Group Order

Supporting the get-to-know process at the start of a session or with a new team can be as simple as asking participants to group themselves together based on what they know about each other and inviting them to find out what they don’t.

This activity requires nothing more than getting your group together in a room and asking them to line themselves up in an order based on a criterion such as distance from home to the workplace, birth date in the calendar year or number of different countries visited. You’ll be surprised at how easy it is to get people talking and sharing when in pursuit of a common goal.

Happiness Exercise

Good teams know how to appreciate one another and share joyful, happy experiences. When a new team is getting to know each other, using an exercise that encourages the sharing of positive stories and experiences not only allows people to connect but also builds a positive atmosphere in the room.

You might also use this team building activity at work or with a more established team. If your team has been going through a challenging period, it can be transformational to share things that make everyone happy and defuse stress or tension as a team.

Name Juggling

Working with new teams means having new names to learn. Team building starts with getting to know everyone, but how can we make this more fun and dynamic than simple introductions?

In this get to know you game, start by having everyone stand in a circle and introduce themselves by name. Introduce a ball and have people state someone’s name before throwing the ball to that person. That person thanks the person who passed the ball by name before then passing the ball on to someone else. Once people get comfortable, spice things up by introducing more balls and trying to keep them in the air!

Open Fist

Finding you have things in common with other team members is one of the cornerstones of effective teamwork and communication. While conversation games or other team building activities might ask for an in-depth approach, Open Fist helps teams bond with a simple, effective activity.

Sharing little known facts about ourselves can help teams be more cohesive and by limiting the number of shared facts to the amount of fingers on a hand, this quick team building activity can fit into an agenda with ease.

Cross the Circle

Finding common ground and shared experiences across a diverse group is what team building is all about. In this playful team building activity, participants are encouraged to cross the circle in response to questions posed by a person in the middle.

For example, “Cross through the circle if you have worked here more than 5 years.” or “Cross through the circle if you can play an instrument.” After each stage, a new person gets to pose a question and your team gets to know one another and their commonalities in a simple, effective way.

Sync Claps

This fast-paced exercise is fun but gently challenging game that helps create focus and presence in a group. Get started by getting your team into a circle and ask them to move a clap around the room quickly by having two members clap at the same time.

By asking your group to synchronize and move quickly, sync claps is a fun way to energize the room and help your group feel more connected.

Fun team building activities

In an increasingly stressful environment of deadlines and meetings, it’s worth remembering the value of joy, play and simply have fun as a team.

Injecting fun and laughter into your team building event is effective on many levels. We often recommend starting a session with one of these activities, as they can help set a more relaxed and personable tone in an instant.

We’ve also found that some of the more memorable moments of our sessions have come out of these kinds of activities. It’s lovely to have something funny to reference in future meetings too!

Bringing team members out of their shells and loosening them up with a funny game can also help prevent existing hierarchies or team structures from affecting the team building session. 

You can also use these funny team building activities to kick off your session, or when the energy levels drop and you need to get your team re-engaged for the team workshop ahead. Let’s take a look.

Bang

Having fun and energizing your team is a great way to kick off your team building event. Bang is a simple and effective game that encourages quick reactions and fun – perfect for both new and established teams to play together! 

Start by electing a sheriff and having the rest of the group stand in a circle around them. The sheriff spins around and points at one person in the circle and says “bang!” That person then crouches as quickly as possible. The two people on either side of the person crouching must quickly point at each other and shout the other’s name. Whoever does not react quickly enough is eliminated. Try using this one at the beginning of a team building event to really loosen up the group!

Build-a-Shake

Creating a secret handshake was something many of us did as kids. This team building activity taps into that same sense of creativity and also encourages team members to get to know each other while sharing and building on their handshake in pairs. By moving between pairs and teaching others the steps of your handshake, this also helps create group closeness and cohesion. We love team building activities or office games that encourage people to bring a little of themselves to the table and Build-a-Shake is a great example of that!  

Count Up

Simple tasks that require team focus, cohesion, and awareness are great for any group working on team building. In Count Up, a team has to come together and count up to twenty with their eyes closed and without any other communication. People cannot say more than one number at a time, and if two people speak at the same time, the group must start over. 

Though it seems simple, this team building exercise can really demonstrate the power of effective teamwork and is a great opener for a team building workshop. 

Follow the Leader

When performing online team building, simple activities are often the best strategy in ensuring participation and removing frustration. Follow the Leader is a great team building energiser suitable for online and offline teams.

In virtual settings, put Zoom into gallery view and invite people to perform an action in the frame of their screen that other participants have to follow. Being a little silly is encouraged and this team building exercise often results in laughter and energy as a result! 

Portrait Gallery

Creative team building activities are great for breaking the ice or energising a team via play. In Portrait Gallery, you and your team will collaboratively create portraits of everyone in the group and have a fun, electric set of portraits to display afterward.

Start by splitting your group into two teams. Team B will draw portraits of Team A, though every 10-15 seconds, they’ll pass their current drawing to the next person to continue. By the end of this team building game, you’ll have a set of eclectic portraits for everyone in the group and have broken the ice significantly too! 

Snowball

Fun team building games are a great way to start any group development process, and they’re even better if they energize the team too! Snowball is a great activity for getting people out of their seats and moving around while also breaking the ice. 

Start by asking a question relevant to your group and ask each participant to write an answer on a piece of paper. Once that’s done, invite everyone to crumple their paper and come to the centre of the room to have a snowball fight! After a few minutes, ask everyone to keep a snowball and find the person who wrote the answer. Not only does this team building exercise invite energy into the room, but it encourages people to get to know each other too.

Celebrity Party

You’ve likely played the game where you stick the name of a random celebrity on your head while then asking questions to help you guess who it is. (Or at least seen a film where someone else does it!) It’s simple, but it absolutely works when you want to break the ice or just generate some laughter and conversation.

This classic team building game is a great way to warm up large groups, encouraging mingling and have fun too. Ask participants to be creative, keep it light and not to give hints and you have all the makings of an effective team building exercise.

Non-verbal improv

Whether you’re working with remote teams or co-located groups, having fun when you get together should never be undervalued. We love simple games that are also ways to begin conversations about how we’d like to work together more effectively.

This improv game is easy to touch and is a great way to build team connections while raising some smiles. Start by preparing some actions on post-it notes, such as drinking a glass of water or eating pasta. Next, invite participants to mime the action without speaking. Include more difficult and amusing scenarios to challenge the group and create some funny opportunities for team connection!

Rock, Paper, Scissors (Tournament)

Encouraging team members to play and have fun is an often overlooked aspect of building better teams. Play is an inherently human activity, and by doing this as a team, we can start to see ourselves as more than just a group of people who work together.

In this version of Rock, Paper, Scissors, large groups pair off until only two players remain for a final showdown. We love that losing players become fans of the winners and cheer them on. This is a quick and easy team game that can build excitement and get the group ready for deeper team building activities to come!

The Viking

Fun team building activities often ask the group to let go of their inhibitions and find space to be playful and silly. This game from Hyper Island encourages the group to perform some loud, exuberant moves to emulate our favourite historical raiders – the Vikings.

You might use this activity during a longer workshop or meeting to energize a group and create a memorable moment with your team. For bonus points, have a group photographer capture those moments and put them on a history wall for reflection later!

Wink Murder

We love team building exercises that include space for friendly competition and laughter. Wink murder is a variation on a classic party game that asks every team member to try and catch the wink assassin, whose job it is to eliminate the other players by winking at them without being caught.

We especially like the fact this game makes team members to use creative thinking while playing. Run multiple rounds with extra rules such as adding an accomplice to spice things up and have even more fun!

Corporate team building activities

Running team building games in the office can be a great way to finish up the week, onboard new team members or just boost employee engagement.

While all of the activities in this post are suitable for the office, the team building games in this section are especially effective in a corporate environment where some team members may need some coaxing or you want to gently introduce important topics.

Try these activities if you want to add an opportunity for your team to bond during a corporate training session, all-hands or other office event.

Appreciations Exercise

Office trivia can be fun, but you know what’s better? Taking a moment to appreciate each team member and uplift everyone in the group.

This method is designed to help everyone in a group receive appreciative feedback on their strengths from others. Start by sitting the group in a circle and having each participant write their name on a piece of paper and pass it to the person on their left. Each person writes down what they have most valued about the person whose name is on the sheet before passing it along.

At the end, share these appreciations and celebrate everyone in the group! You might even include this activity during a happy hour to truly celebrate one another!

Cover Story

Bringing an activity that encourages creative thinking and imagination can be an effective method for getting team mates involved at your next corporate event. In this game, small groups create a magazine cover with your team on it and add headlines and taglines that show the best possible version of your team.

By defining the ideal future state for the organization your group can see what actions they might take today while also creating a fun and useful artefact for the team. Use as many sheets of paper as you need!

Coat of Arms

Even established teams have more to learn about one another. A corporate team building activity is a great time to encourage groups to go deeper and share who they are as a team.

In Coat of Arms, each team member begins by drawing a personal coat of arms and then sharing it with a partner. The partner interprets the coat of arms and then presents it to the rest of the group. This kind of getting to know you activity taps into group creativity and is a fun way of helping your team bond. 

My Favourite Manager

Leaders and managers can be a deciding factor in creating a great company culture and employee happiness. In this game, get started by bringing your team together to discuss their favourite and least favourite managers.

This corporate team building activity is great at creating a safe space to discuss management styles and create empathy between teams. You’ll often find team members can shift their perspective, learn something about how they relate to their leaders and have fun too!

Who are you? The Pirate Ship exercise

Explore team roles and responsibilities in a lighthearted manner is a great way to spend time during an office event.

In this simple but powerful team building exercise, share the image of the crew of a pirate ship. Next, invite participants to reflect on who they most identify with on the ship. Who is the captain? Who is looking out for land or maintaining the deck? By reflecting together around a fun premise, you can encourage meaningful discussions with your grop.

History Map

Building effective teams is often a process of ideation, reflection and iteration over time. Sometimes, it’s easy to lose sight of just how much a team or organization has grown. With this corporate team building activity, invite your group to reflect and build on their collective experience with a memory wall that collects moments over a fixed period of time.

It’s a great way of reinforcing major takeaways, celebrating the highlights and creating a sense of closure and progress. By also encouraging the creation of a shared visual resource, History Map also enables creativity and a sense of fun that can provide the perfect end to a project or working session. 

Birds of a Feather

It’s not uncommon for teams to naturally form sub-groups with common characteristics. This exercise effectively shows how consciously creating more diverse groups can make teams more resilient and productive.

Get started by giving each team member an index card with a single letter on it. Then ask people to form a group of five people as quickly as possible without any further instructions. Next, ask the groups to form the longest word possible from their cards. It will quickly become apparent that the best way to win the game is with a team that has diverse cards.

This simple game is a great introduction to a wider conversation about diversity or inclusion. As always, debrief learnings and invite deeper conversation in the group to make this activity a success.

Human Knot

Corporate meetings can sometimes be heavy going, but they don’t need to be. In this fun teambuilding game, encourage your group to loosen up while working together to solve a puzzle that involves their bodies!

Start by getting your team members into groups of 7-12 people. Ask each group to stand in a circle, close their eyes and then link hands with two other people in the circle. Next, ask each group to work to untangle the human knot they have created without breaking the chain. This is a really fun game that requires clear communication, collaboration and a little flexibility too!

Team building activities for small groups

Team work doesn’t always come naturally, and effective team collaboration needs attention, reflection and work in order to happen. It’s not enough to just assume your team members will be able to work together efficiently: all teams can benefit from a strategic and well-thought approach to how they communicate and collaborate.

Whether you’re having a team away day or using methods expressly designed to improve collaboration and communication in small groups, you’ll find inspiration in the activities here!

These team building games are helpful whether you’re trying to solve miscommunication or collaboration issues, or just want to strengthen your company culture or communication skills in small groups.

Conflict Responses

It’s important to remember that every team is made up of individuals and sometimes, conflicts or disagreements can arise. While its regular working practice to disagree, our responses to conflict and how we deal with them when they arise are in our control and can be improved.

In this exercise, reflect on previous conflicts as a team and collectively create a set of guidelines to use in the future. Resolving issues effectively is a massive part of team collaboration, and by including all team members in this process you can get more meaningful results too.

Heard, Seen, Respected

Team empathy is a vital ingredient of good team work though whatever the size of your organization, it can sometimes be difficult to walk in the shoes of others and see things from other perspectives.

Heard, Seen, Respected is a team building activity designed to help participants practice deeper empathy for colleagues and build the kinds of bonds and working practices that can improve team collaboration. By inviting participants to notice patterns in the stories shared and find common takeaways, it’s a great way to get everyone involved on the same page and improve communication skills too.

Myers-Briggs Team Reflection

One potential obstacle to effective team collaboration is when members of the group don’t fully understand one another. Team building activities for work that encourage participants to not only try and understand their colleagues but themselves can be especially helpful when helping a team be more cohesive.

In this activity, invite your group to first take a version of the Myers-Briggs personality test. Start by asking each team member to reflect on their own personality type before then moving towards small group discussion. 

When using this activity, it’s important to correctly frame the usage of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) framework: This can be a useful framework to understand different communication preferences between people, but team members should not be labeled or put into boxes based on their self-reported preferences. 

Strength Building exercise

Exercises for team building come in many varieties. In this activity, the emphasis is on the team championing one another and increasing confidence, self esteem and mutual trust.

Start by asking team members to share an event where they accomplished something that made them feel good about themselves. The rest of the team chimes in to suggest two to three strengths they must have exhibited in order to achieve the accomplishment. Team collaboration often means helping others on the team achieve their best, and this activity helps the group uplift one another meaningfully and effectively.

Strength Envelopes

All members of a team have unique strengths, capabilities and working preferences. When working as a group, you can improve engagement and group workflow by having each participant utilize their strengths and do work that interests them the most.

With this team building activity, ask participants to write their name on an envelope and invite other members of their team to spend a few minutes writing down strength statements for that person. Place these in the envelope and pass them along so at the end of the session, each person has a set full of strengths they can use as the basis for reflection. 

Team of Two

Whether you work in a small startup or a multinational organisation, the reality is that a large part of your working day will be spent working in pairs and interacting on a one-to-one basis. Whether in-person, over email or on video chat, finding ways to work together more effectively is vital for effective teams.

Try this team building exercise to help empower your groups toward more effective communication skills and have more meaningful interpersonal relationships at work. As a member of a remote team, I’ve found this method to be personally useful time and time again.

What I Need From You (WINFY)

Some of the best team building activities focus on helping your group improve their teamwork skills and communicate and collaborate better as a team. A sometimes overlooked part of working as a team is clearly articulating what you need from other people and knowing how to ask for it.

What I Need From You is a team building method designed to help team members better articulate their core needs and be transparent with the group. This leads to a more cohesive team that works together with integrity and understanding.

Team building games for problem solving

Teams often come together to solve collective problems as a group. Whether these are large projects or simply finding better ways to work together on a day-to-day basis, solving problems is something all teams should do – in or out of a conference room!

Improving problem solving skills with a game that asks for communication, collaboration and creative thinking is a wonderful way to bring everyone together. We love using these kinds of team building exercises to bring large groups together to solve a fun, simple problem.

By engaging team members in this way, they not only have fun, but they learn how to work together more effectively and reflect on how they can take that learning back to their day work.

In this section, we’ll look at team building exercises you can use to encourage creative thinking, build problem solving skills and teamwork in an experiential way!

Blind Square – Rope Game

Nothing energizes a team workshop like a seemingly simple problem that also gets everyone moving and engaged. In this team problem solving game, start by tying a length of rope into a circle and invite the participants to plan how to make the rope into a perfect square while blindfolded.

After planning time, team members is blindfolded and has ten minutes to form a perfect square. By debriefing afterwards, your group will find communication, planning and attention to detail are all important aspects of creative problem solving – all while having fun too!

Crocodile River

We love team building activities that challenge the group to work together in inventive ways and also help energize a workshop setting. Crocodile River is a team problem solving exercise that challenges team members to support one another physically as they look to move across a wide outdoor space and reach the finish line together.

By changing the setting and inviting problem solving and strategic thinking to solve a challenge, your group not only stretches their problem solving muscles but also works on team communication, leadership and cooperation. As with any more abstract team building game, be sure to debrief afterward for best results!

Egg Drop

Classic team building games like Egg Drop offer tried and tested ways to encourage teams to solve problems together while improving the way they communicate. This game often generates a bunch of laughter and creative thinking too – how can we save this poor egg!

In this team problem solving activity, invite small groups to build a freestanding structure that can support the dropping of an egg from seven feet. Include some caveats and challenges to make it more difficult and encourage an even greater degree of team collaboration. Just make sure you bring a mop for afterwards!

Helium Stick

Bringing team members together with problem solving activities that also encourages play can perform multiple functions. Not only do you encourage teamwork and the building of various team skills but you can have fun and promote laughter too.

Helium Stick is an example of a simple team building game that does double duty by encouraging fun, physical activity while introducing and exploring some core team building concepts. Ask the group to lower a long pole to the ground while keeping all of their fingers in contact with the pole at all times – more difficult than it first appears!

Lego Challenge

Creating something is often the purpose of bringing your team members together. Tap into the engaging process of co-creation and collaboration with this team building game using LEGO.

Building on the concept of LEGO Serious Play, this exercise is a great way of encouraging play, out-of-the-box thinking and creative approaches to existing problems. Additionally, each team member has a secret assignment which increases the challenge and encourages finding inventive ways to cooperate effectively and achieve both personal and team goals. 

Marshmallow Challenge with Debriefing 

Real-life challenges are often time-sensitive and need to be considered thoughtfully and pragmatically. Team building activities for work are especially effective when they help create this same sense of urgency while encouraging team work.

In just eighteen minutes, groups must build the tallest free-standing structure out of materials including: spaghetti, tape, string, and one marshmallow, placing this last item on top. In this version of the team building game, there’s a debriefing section which encourages reflection on the roles of everyone in the team. 

Spider Web

Getting outside and doing fun, physical activity can be a great way to bond teams and mix up a normal working routine. In this team problem solving game, participants are asked to work to make holes in a grid of string and rope that can safely and effectively accommodate everyone in the group getting through at once. Team members are not allowed to touch the string or rope and with diverse groups, the difficulty this presents makes for an interesting problem solving challenge for teams to solve. 

Stress Balls

At one point or another, most teams will be asked to perform effectively under pressure, whether that’s generated by internal or external stressors. By using team building games that help participants work together and communicate effectively even under difficult circumstances you can prepare your team members for almost anything!

Stress Balls is a fun game to help start exploring team resilience and problem solving under pressure, and it’s easy to run with large groups too! Start by simply passing a single ball around the room before adding more complex rules to help team members learn a valuable lesson about communication and teamwork!

Scavenger Hunt

Activities that encourage groups to use teamwork and communication to achieve their goals are great ways to build team spirit. A classic scavenger hunt is a wonderful way to bring large groups together and have fun doing something a bit different!

Be sure to use office trivia, inside jokes or aspects of your company culture to inform this fun team building activity. You’ll find it much more effective if it’s tailored to your group. Bonus points if you can mix in activities that speak to the various departments or skillsets in the group during your scavenger hunt!

In the virtual-friendly version below, you’ll also find rules to help you run this activity with a remote team.

Team bonding activities

Mutual trust is a vital ingredient for any group of people working together, though it doesn’t always emerge organically. Taking the opportunity to build team bonds and create trust creates benefits for team connection, happiness and your company culture too!

While many of the fun team building activities above will bring your team together in some way, these methods are designed to expressly create better team bonds and build trust.

When working on improving team trust, we recommend being open about the goals of the exercise and encouraging the group to be honest. Being intentional during these activities can really help bring the group together!

Trust Battery

Great teamwork isn’t just about bringing a group of people together into the same space. Without honesty, openness, and trust, your team can’t collaborate effectively and can lead to frustration or frazzled relationships.

Trust Battery is a team building activity designed to help all members of your group reflect on their trust levels and rebuild those batteries with lower levels. By encouraging all members of a team to meaningfully reflect, you can enable better team collaboration and help your team feel closer and more cohesive too.

Telling Our Stories

Everyone has a story to tell, though without a framework or guiding principles, surfacing those stories in a way that makes everyone feel safe and head can be tricky – especially for new teams. Team building activities that combine self reflection, sharing and structure are great for helping people to get to know each other deeply and build better bonds.

In Telling Our Stories, invite participants to reflect on childhood, young adulthood and today while answering questions on colored post-it notes. By sharing from the full gamut of our experiences, your team can get to know one another meaningfully and create trust too. 

Better Connections

Great teamwork and collaboration is all about building stronger relationships and connections and this often means taking the time to see each other as more than just our job title. Once we get a fuller picture of who we are outside the office, everyone can feel more seen and understood. This is one of the cornerstones of team bonding and trust!

Encourage people who know each other the least to pair up and create space for meaningful reflection too – your team culture will thank you for it! It’s also a great way to improve communication skills and break down silos.

Feedback: Current Strongest Impression

Giving and receiving feedback is a great team building activity that sees benefits long after your session. When we find ways to be more open with one another and say what we really think, the results can be transformative for any group.

This activity is a great one to bring to any event where you want to improve team bonding, as it creates a safe and simple way to start practicing more honest feedback. The next time you think about how to improve the way your team works together, think about whether you have a good feedback culture. The trust that good, open feedback can create is a fundamental part of any high performing team!

Trust

When a team doesn’t trust one another, the atmosphere and culture of a team suffers. Creating space to align and create a shared understanding of what trust means to your team is a great way to build team bonds and improve the way you all work together.

Start this activity by bringing together a set of trust cards containing characteristics, behaviours, attitudes, habits, values, and beliefs associated with trust in the workplace. Next, ask participants to create their own trust cards and move towards creating three core trust cards for your team.

By co-creating the output together, this team building activity is great for ensuring buy-in and creating long-lasting trust.

Translated Rant

Team building workshops are a great place to give your team room to have fun, vent and be honest with one another. Creating space for honesty while also building communication skills is the goal of this fun team building activity!

Split your group into pairs and have one person rant about a pet peeve for 60 seconds. Next, have the other person translate this rant while focusing on what the person really cares about. This kind of deep listening activity is fundamental to creating team trust, and sharing some of our annoyances in the group is great for building bonds too!

Team building exercises for purpose and alignment

Even the best teams can have differences of opinion and approach. While different viewpoints and perspectives are useful in many situations, it’s also vital that everyone is aligned on team purpose and vision.

Aligning on how the team will work together is an important part of helping the team be happy, productive and pulling in the same direction.

In this section, we’ll look at team work activities to help improve team alignment and get everyone working towards the same purpose. Let’s get started!

Alignment & Autonomy

Activities that help improve each member of your team work more effectively and feel empowered to operate autonomously can be great for improving employee happiness and productivity. If we feel aligned on the core purpose and goals of our team while also being given the space to work in the way that is right for us, we can boost employee engagement and job satisfaction too! 

In Alignment & Autonomy, invite participants to reflect on times when they felt aligned and autonomous versus non-aligned and non-autonomous. By sharing, reflecting, and then ideating on solutions, your whole group can move forward together.

Engineering Your Team OS

When seeking to improve teamwork, it can be useful to think of your team as a system with complex, interlocking parts which may need a gradual refresh and redesign. This kind of abstraction can help prevent discussions from becoming too personal or difficult and ensure that your team alignment efforts are a success.

In this activity, your team designs an ideal working system by making aspirational statements and then methodically chooses a single statement to work towards ahead of the next meeting. By making positive changes incrementally, your team can achieve alignment and better working practices in a meaningful and sustainable manner. 

Generative Relationships STAR

Better working relationships start with shared reflection and the discovery and discussion of existing working patterns. This team alignment activity invites participants to assess their team along four vertices: Separateness, Tuning, Action and Reason and jointly shape next steps and future actions.

By including the whole team in the alignment process from start to finish, you can get meaningful buy-in and see real results! We love using this on an online whiteboard too. It can be a great way to help remote workers consider their inter-personal relationships!

Team Canvas Session

Team alignment isn’t always straightforward. The more large, complex or multi-discipline your team is, the trickier it can be to help the group mesh and understand their roles and responsibilities to the team and each other.

In Team Canvas Session, you and your team create a shared visual resource for understanding and articulating your goals, values and roles of your team. It can be used for general alignment, for onboarding new team members and even for defining the structure and purpose of a brand new team – simply recreate or download the team canvas and get started today!

Team Self Assessment

All groups need to go through a period of reflection and self-assessment in order to grow. But without structure or a guiding framework, these discussions can become bogged down or unproductive. With this reflective team building activity, you can enable a thoughtful and thorough team self-assessment along six guiding dimensions.

Start with individual reflection before bringing everyone back together to debrief and see what you’re aligned on and what needs more work. By then narrowing these down to the most important elements, you can align and enable better co-working practices quickly and efficiently!

Letter from the Future

Without a cohesive shared vision, teams can become unproductive or harbor frustration on team direction. By spending time with visioning activities, you can help everyone push in the same direction while still utilizing their unique talents.

In Letter from the Future, invite your team to imagine all the changes that might impact them in the next 5 years and write a letter back from that point. Ask your team to cover what’s been accomplished in those five years, and what kind of challenges and obstacles were overcome to make this happen. Remember to remind teams that good letters have a beginning, middle, and end and that they should read clearly – this will help during the sharing and debriefing section of this method!

Team Purpose & Culture

Defining your team’s purpose and culture is an integral part of team building. By clearly articulating why your team exists and how you will all work together to fulfill that purpose, you can align and bring focus to all the work you do. This team values and vision activity aims to create a shared visual resource that your team can refer to in the future.

It also uses wisdom from other successful organizations to help enable meaningful conversation and move from individual purpose statements to a single one for the whole team. If you’re looking for a complete process that can guide your team values and vision efforts, this method from Hyper Island is worth a try!

Checkout and recap activities for your team building workshop

The process of team building and enabling a group to work together more effectively can be involved and exhaustive.

As with any group process or workshop, taking the time to reflect, recap and check out can ensure the lasting impact of what was covered in the session.

You’ll often find that finding time to close team building activities creates space for further employee engagement and reflection. Getting team members involved in choosing the next activity or coming up with a theme for the next round of office trivia!

In this section, we’ll take a look at some great team building activities for closing a session and for recapping the main learning points. Let’s dive in!

Check-in / Check-out

Ensuring everyone in a group is present, focused and committed to the work of a session is a vital ingredient in making a team building session a success. With this workshop method from Hyper Island, you can not only start and end your session the right way, but you can help everyone in your group be seen, heard and understood by the rest of the team.

This is especially useful with a remote team, where ensuring clear connection between team members who don’t share a physical office is especially important.

This activity also helps encourage reflection and brings the workshop to an effective close – be sure to give it a try!

Bus Trip

The trip back from a team building event is a great place to share feedback and appreciate one another. Don’t have a bus? No worries! Create a few rows of chairs and simulate the experience for this reflective closing activity.

Once you’ve gotten the chairs of the bus set-up, ask participants to speak the person next to them and share: what they like about the other person, what they appreciate and what about the other person makes them happy. Speak for just 45 seconds each and then ask the group to switch seats.

One Breath Feedback

In particularly large teams, it can be tempting to forgo the closing activity or individual feedback steps just because it will take so long and it can be hard to maintain energy and interest. One Breath Feedback solves this problem by giving each participant the space of a single breath to check out and reflect on the session. By ensuring that everyone has room to speak and be heard while also placing a time limit on the reflection, you can cap off a team building workshop effectively and intelligently.

Team building workshop templates

Building better teams often starts with designing an effective group process. Whether this takes the form of a workshop or meeting, you’ll want a balance of activities, ice breakers and reflective methods in order to help your group align and grow together.    

In this next section, we’ll take a look at some example processes with a complete workshop template you can use to get started. Let’s take a look.

Team development day for a new team

Helping new teams to bond and find a shared purpose and value system is often best achieved with a well designed group process. Try the team development day template when working with a brand new team or one which has seen large growth and is in need of development.

Here, you’ll find a complete one-day group process full of team building activities that can take a group from getting to know each other all the way through to defining their needs and making commitments. 

Emotional Culture Workshop

Good teams are empathetic and in touch with their emotions. Using the emotional culture deck, this workshop can be run in under 3 hours and helps your team define and improve working relationships and the emotional culture of your team.

Taking the time to articulate and define these items ensures that everyone in your group is seen, understood and valued, and that you have a shared language for moving forward.

Team Dynamics Workshop

Cohesive teams that work well together are those with an understanding about what makes a team and how it functions.

Support your team building activities with this half-day workshop template and guide your group through a process of understanding and building on the dynamics of working together. 

Team building sessions made easy

Designing an effective team building workshop means creating a balanced agenda of activities and group discussions while also keeping everything on time.

With SessionLab, you drag, drop and reorder blocks to build your agenda in minutes.

Your session timing adjusts automatically as you make changes and when you’re done, you can share a beautiful printout with your colleagues and participants.

Explore how teams use SessionLab to collaboratively design effective workshops and meetings or watch this five minute video to see the planner in action!

Over to you

Enabling better teamwork and building stronger, more cohesive teams isn’t easy. Whether you’re running a team building day, team workshop, or simply adding some team building activities to your meetings, we hope that some of the methods above can help you and your group come together and do better work. 

Got a team workshop to plan? Check out our complete guide to workshop planning to make the process a breeze. Want to start creating your agenda quickly? Use a meeting or workshop template to save time designing or get inspiration.

Which of these team building activities is your favourite? Is there anything missing from the list above? Let us know in the comments! We’d love to hear about how we can all improve our team building efforts.

In this post, we’ll share the best icebreaker questions for work and any other scenarios where you might want to help people get to know each other. We’ll also share some tips for ensuring your icebreakers are productive and help the group bring themselves to the table without anxiety or frustration. Let’s jump in! 

What are Icebreaker Questions?

Want to go beyond asking someone what they did at the weekend? Icebreaker questions are conversation starters designed to break down social barriers, encourage interaction and help individuals get to know one another. When chosen well, icebreaker questions can help supercharge a team building process and open up conversations that can create bonds and connections.

They are particularly useful when people are meeting for the first time, such as team-building activities, networking events or virtual workshops and meetings. They can also be effective when kicking off a project or injecting something different into a recurring team meeting. These questions are meant to be light-hearted, inclusive, and thought-provoking, fostering a positive and open atmosphere for communication.

Icebreaker questions range from fun and creative prompts to more reflective and personal inquiries, providing participants with opportunities to share aspects of their personalities, experiences, and perspectives. They can also be incorporated into dynamic games like those featured in our icebreaker games collection. 

Whatever the format, the best icebreaker questions create a simple and effective opportunity to get people talking and help people feel welcome and included at the start of a session.

What Makes a Good Icebreaker Question?

A good icebreaker question possesses certain qualities that contribute to its effectiveness in initiating meaningful conversations. Here are some key attributes:

• Relevance: The question should be relevant to the context and purpose of the gathering. Whether it’s a team meeting, a virtual workshop, or a social event, the question should align with the overall objectives.
• Inclusivity: An ideal icebreaker question is inclusive, ensuring that everyone in the group feels comfortable participating. Avoid questions that may make individuals feel singled out or uncomfortable.
• Versatility: A good icebreaker question is adaptable to various settings and audiences. It should be versatile enough to spark engagement among diverse groups with different interests and backgrounds.
• Open-ended: Questions that invite more than a simple “yes” or “no” answer encourage deeper and more meaningful discussions. Open-ended questions provide individuals with the opportunity to share more about themselves.
• Positive Tone: Icebreaker questions should set a positive and light-hearted tone for the interaction. Funny icebreaker questions or humor can be a great addition, but it’s crucial to be mindful of cultural sensitivities and preferences.
• Icebreaking Potential: The primary goal is to break the ice and create a relaxed environment. A good icebreaker question should help people feel more at ease, paving the way for smoother communication and collaboration.

Often, the best icebreaker is one that sets the stage for the workshop or meeting to come. They typically help a group start thinking about the topic or theme of the session before the facilitator then guides the group to deeper discussions or activities.

In SessionLab, it’s easy to create a structured session flow in minutes. Create your ideal meeting agenda by dragging and dropping blocks into place in the Session Planner. Easily transition from an icebreaker into a group discussion and add additional activities and items as you need them!

Ensure your session stays on time by adding clear timing to your chosen icebreaker and additional activities. And when you’re done, create a beautiful PDF or Powerpoint export to help you facilitate with confidence.

Team Icebreaker Questions

Even established teams can benefit from using icebreakers to get to know each other more deeply and open up a conversation about they’d like to work together.

These questions are especially effective when used alongside team building activities where you might focus on helping align the team or improve collaboration.

1. If our team was a landscape, what would it be and why?
2. What would you like the team to look like in one year from now? 
3. What fictional team from a movie or TV show do you think our team resembles the most?
4. If our team had a theme song, what would it be?
5. Where in the world would you most like to go with your team and why?
6. Share a team achievement or project you’re most proud of and why.
7. What’s one word you would use to describe our team culture?
8. If our team were a sports team, what sport would we play, and what would be our team name?
9. Share a team-building activity you’ve enjoyed in the past and why it was memorable.
10. If our team had a mascot, what would it be, and why?
11. What’s one skill or talent you bring to the team that others might not know about?
12. If our team were a superhero squad, what powers would each team member have?
13. If you were to give your team an alignment score from 1-10, what would it be and why?
14. What does the rest of the team need to know this week?
15. What’s the best advice about how to work well with others you’ve received?
16. How would you prefer to receive feedback from someone else on the team? 
17. What piece of gratitude would you like to express to someone else on the team?

Want to get your team on the same page and align on how you’d like to work together? The Team Canvas Workshop is an effective session where you and your team will co-create your working culture.

You’ll cover your team goals, roles, responsibilities, rituals and more while working towards creating a more cohesive and connected team. 

Check-in Icebreaker Questions 

Checking in at the beginning of a workshop or meeting is something many teams miss, but it can be an essential element of a productive session.

These check-in icebreaker questions can help set a positive tone for meetings, allowing team members to share their current state of mind and create a supportive atmosphere.

They can be especially helpful for team leaders and facilitators who may want to gauge how the group is feeling before launching into deeper topics. 

1. What are you hoping to get from the session today?
2. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your energy levels today?
3. Share one thing you’re looking forward to this week.
4. If today were a weather forecast for your mood, what would it be?
5. What’s a small victory or accomplishment you’ve had recently?
6. Share one positive aspect of your day so far.
7. If your day had a theme song, what would it be?
8. What’s something that made you smile today?
9. Is there a goal you’re aiming to achieve by the end of the day?
10. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your work-life balance this week?
11. Share one thing you’re grateful for right now.

Most effective workshops and meetings start with an icebreaker of some description.

Whether it’s in the form of a question or an experiential icebreaker activity, checking in is an effective way of ritually opening a session. Try Hyper Island’s Check-in/Check-out activity to bring this concept to your next session.

Fun Icebreaker Questions

For many meetings, the intention of an icebreaker is to loosen people up and help create a lighthearted atmosphere. These funny icebreaker questions are designed to do just that.

You might use these fun icebreaker questions in a round-robin format to kick-off a team meeting or simply to break the ice at a networking event without resorting to talking about your job. 

1. How would your primary school teacher have described you?
2. What’s the most unusual talent or party trick you have?
3. If you were a meme, which one would you be?
4. What’s your plan in the event of a zombie apocalypse?
5. Share a funny or embarrassing work story that still makes you laugh.
6. If you could swap lives with a cartoon character for a day, who would it be?
7. What’s your weirdest food combination that you secretly enjoy?
8. If aliens visited Earth and you were the first person they met, how would you explain your job?
9. What’s the worst ice cream flavor you can come up with?
10. What item of clothing are you wearing that could start a new fashion trend? 
11. Share a joke or funny anecdote related to your profession.
12. What’s the silliest goal you’ve ever set for yourself?
13. What actor would play you in a film about your life?
14. What’s the last TV show or film you hate-watched? 

Icebreaker games are a great way to help your team have fun and get energized at the beginning of a session.

If you’d prefer using a more experiential activity to get your team engaged and having fun, try a simple icebreaker activity like Soundball or a Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament to generate some laughter while warming up your group. 

This or That Icebreaker Questions

Would you rather and this or that style icebreaker questions are a favourite of many teams who want a quick way to get to know a little more about someone and not get too deep. These are typically fun icebreaker questions that elicit silly answers and can be run in pairs or larger groups.

As with any of the icebreaker questions on this list, be sure to consider your audience with these questions. What might work well for college students might not be right for a group of executives. Even better, tailor your choice of question to start the process of engaging your group in the topic of your session.

1. Coffee or tea?
2. Morning person or night owl?
3. Beach vacation or mountain retreat?
4. Fiction or non-fiction?
5. Cat person or dog person?
6. Sweet or savory?
7. Phone call or text message?
8. Introvert or extrovert?
9. Early bird or night owl?
10. City living or countryside escape?
11. Netflix or YouTube?
12. Reading or watching TV?
13. Summer or winter?
14. Indoor or outdoor activities?
15. Movie theater or streaming at home?
16. Cake or pie?
17. Android or iPhone?
18. Travel by car or plane?
19. Comedy or drama?
20. Facebook or Instagram?
21. Home-cooked meal or takeout?
22. Fictional or documentary films?
23. Mac or PC?
24. Music or podcasts?
25. Formal or casual attire?
26. Pen and paper or digital notes?
27. Classical or pop music?
28. Sunrises or sunsets?
29. Books or e-books?
30. DIY or hire a professional?
31. Pizza with pineapple or pizza without cheese?
32. Sneezing glitter or farting confetti?
33. Always feeling itchy or always feeling sticky?
34. Communicate only in GIFs or speak in rhymes for a day?
35. Only be able to whisper or only be able to shout?
36. Have a pet dinosaur or a pet unicorn?
37. Wear socks with sandals or a clown wig to work?
38. Have a personal theme song that plays everywhere you go or have a laugh track follow you?
39. Eat chocolate-flavored broccoli or broccoli-flavored chocolate?
40. Have a third eye or a third arm?
41. Communicate with interpretive dance or through charades?
42. Live in a house made of jello or have a floor made of bubble wrap?
43. Accidentally send a text to your boss that was meant for your friend or to your friend that was meant for your boss?
44. Have a talking pet fish or a pet parrot that only speaks in movie quotes?
45. Eat dessert for every meal or never have dessert again?
46. Be able to teleport but always end up in a random bathroom or fly at a snail’s pace?
47. Have a conversation with a talking plant or a talking lamp?
48. Accidentally like a post from your ex on social media or accidentally send a screenshot of your conversation about them to them?
49. Speak in puns for a day or use emojis instead of words?
50. Have the ability to mute people in real life or fast forward through awkward situations?
51. Eat a sandwich with every condiment imaginable or a plain sandwich with no condiments at all?
52. Sneak into a private VIP party or accidentally photobomb every picture you’re not supposed to be in?
53. Have a personal theme song that plays loudly every time you enter a room or a drumroll before you speak?
54. Eat a bowl of cereal with ketchup or a peanut butter and pickle sandwich?
55. Dance like no one is watching whenever someone says your name or burst into song when you hear a specific word?
56. Be chased by a swarm of bees or a troop of angry squirrels?
57. Have a wardrobe that only consists of neon colors or mismatched socks every day?
58. Always have a piece of food stuck in your teeth or a perpetual bad hair day?
59. Communicate only through interpretive dance or have your life narrated by Morgan Freeman?
60. Have a pet rock that tells dad jokes or a pet cloud that makes puns?

Want to go further in this format? Stand up if is an effective icebreaker game that works in a similar manner to this or that icebreaker questions, but can be used to engage entire groups at the same time.

Icebreaker Questions for Work

Whether you’re running an all-hands meeting or training session at work, there are times when you may want to break the ice in your group and prepare them for the session ahead.

These icebreaker questions for work are especially effective at getting groups to start thinking about workplace culture and their role in an organization. Try bringing them your next culture workshop to get things started on the right foot.

1. What did you want to be when you were growing up?
2. If you could choose any historical figure to join the company, who would it be?
3. If you could change the name of the company, what would you change it to? 
4. What’s the first thing you do when you start work in the morning?
5. What’s the most unexpected skill or experience you’ve brought to your current role?
6. If you could redesign our office space, what changes would you make?
7. Share a challenge you’ve overcome at work and the lessons you learned.
8. If you had a work-related superpower, what would it be, and how would you use it?
9. What’s your favorite aspect of your job, and why?
10. If you could implement one new workplace policy, what would it be?
11. What’s the best piece of career advice you’ve ever received?
12. Share a project or accomplishment that exceeded your expectations.
13. If you were the CEO for a day, what changes would you make?
14. What’s one thing you wish everyone knew about your role or department?
15. What’s the hardest thing about your role?
16. What was your worst ever job? 
17. What was your first job and what did you learn from it? 
18. Which of your competitors do you most admire and why? 

Workshops designed to improve workplace culture or bring a group together to solve key organizational challenges can especially benefit from questions like the above.

Such workshops also benefit from a clear structure and robust planning. Discover how to create and run an effective workshop in our comprehensive guide. 

Unique Icebreaker Questions

When we’re able to reveal something unique about ourselves to the people around us, it can pave the way for deeper connections and bonds. They’re also a great way to get people to think outside of the box and engage the creative part of their brain.

If you’re running an ideation workshop or brainstorming session, these questions a great way to warm up your group and help them to start thinking creatively. 

1. If you could have a conversation with any animal, which one would it be, and what would you talk about?
2. If you could eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?
3. What hidden talents or skills do you have that people might not expect from you?
4. If you could choose any historical era to live in for a week, which one would it be, and why?
5. Describe your job using only emojis.
6. If your life was a movie genre, what would it be?
7. Share a unique fact about your hometown or place of origin.
8. If you could have a dinner party with three fictional characters, who would they be?
9. How many countries have you visited and which was your favorite?
10. Describe your personality using three unrelated objects.
11. What’s your favorite word in a language other than your native one?
12. If you could be an expert in any field overnight, what would it be?
13. If you could have a conversation with any historical figure, but they had to wear a silly hat the entire time, who would it be?
14. Describe your current mood using only emojis.
15. If you could live in any fictional world, which would it be and why? 
16. Share a funny childhood nickname or a story related to your nickname.
17. If you were a flavor of ice cream, what would you be, and why?
18. If your life had a theme song that played every time you entered a room, what would it be?
19. Invent a holiday and describe its traditions and celebrations.
20. Share a made-up fact about yourself, and let others guess if it’s true or false.
21. If you could have a conversation with an alien, what’s the first thing you would ask them?
22. What’s your earliest childhood memory? 
23. If you were a punctuation mark, which one would you be, and why?
24. Share a talent you have that no one at work knows about.
25. If you could bring one fictional character to life for a day, who would it be, and what adventures would you have?
26. Describe your dream job title and what it entails.
27. If you were a type of transportation, would you be a hot air balloon, a submarine, or a hovercraft?
28. Share a unique item from your bucket list that others might find surprising.
29. If you could have a dinner party with any three people, living or dead, who would they be, and what’s on the menu?
30. Describe your work style using a weather metaphor (e.g., I’m a brainstorm with occasional creative thunderstorms).
31. If your pet could talk, what do you think they would say about you?
32. If you could swap lives with any fictional character for a week, who would it be, and why?
33. Share a strange or interesting fact about your hometown or place of origin.
34. If you had a magic remote control that could pause, rewind, or fast-forward your day, how would you use it?
35. Describe your ideal day off without using the words “work” or “responsibilities.”
36. Share a metaphor for your life using an object commonly found in a kitchen.
37. If you were a plant, what type of plant would you be, and why?
38. Invent a new word and provide its definition.
39. If you could have a conversation with your future self, what advice would you ask for?
40. Share a fictional scenario: If you were the protagonist in a movie, what would be your mission or quest?
41. Describe your dream house workspace—include colors, decorations, and any unique features.
42. If you could have a one-hour conversation with any animal, which one would it be, and what would you discuss?
43. Share a fun and unexpected use for a common household item. 

Running an event with various small groups? Try using the Common and Unique icebreaker to encourage participants to discover what they have in common and what is unique among members of the group. It’s a great way to help create team bonds and get people talking in breakout rooms too. 

Thought-Provoking Icebreaker Questions

When a team knows each other deeply, they tend to be more connected, resilient and able to support each other in their day to day work.

While fun icebreaker questions have their place for teams getting to know each other for the first time, with established teams, you may want to go further. These thought provoking icebreaker questions are a great method of creating space for deeper sharing, vulnerability and team bonding. 

1. If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be and why?
2. Share a personal or professional goal you’re currently working towards.
3. If you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?
4. What’s the most challenging ethical dilemma you’ve faced at work, and how did you handle it?
5. What mentor figure had the greatest influence on your life? What did they tell you?
6. If you had to teach a class on any subject, what would it be?
7. Share a book, TED Talk, or podcast that has had a significant impact on your perspective.
8. If you could solve one global issue, what would it be and why?
9. What’s a lesson you learned from a failure or setback in your career?
10. If you could have a conversation with your role model, what would you ask them?
11. Share a quote that inspires or motivates you in your professional life.
12. What is your definition of success? 
13. What is your definition of happiness? 
14. What question would you like other people to ask you?
15. What’s something you’d like to do in life but don’t know how to start?
16. What do you most value in a relationship?
17. What cause or purpose do you deeply believe in?
18. What do you wish you understood better?

Stories about our lives and who we are as people have long been effective ways to bring people together and deepen the bonds between them.

Use an icebreaker game like Telling our Stories to take this concept further and build relationships and trust among your team members. 

Icebreaker Questions for Virtual Meetings

While most of the questions above work equally well in an online setting, it can often be effective for workshop facilitators to use questions that reference the virtual environment or ask people to bring their experiences of working remotely to the table.

Shared experiences are a great way to bring people together. Opening a conversation about how to cope with the ups and downs of remote working can have a positive effect on team culture too! 

1. Share a virtual background that represents your ideal workspace and let us know why you chose it.
2. If your webcam froze on the last facial expression you made, what would your colleagues see?
3. What’s your morning routine when working from home? 
4. What’s one positive thing that happened to you this week, even if it’s small?
5. If you could swap offices with a colleague for a day, whose workspace would you choose?
6. Share a fun fact about your hometown or current location.
7. What’s the most interesting thing within arm’s reach of your workspace?
8. If you could choose a virtual background for the entire team meeting, what would it be?
9. Share a virtual meeting etiquette tip that you find helpful.
10. What’s the most unusual item in your home office?
11. If you had a virtual reality headset for work, how would you use it?
12. What’s the best thing about working remotely? 
13. Where are you calling from? 
14. What’s the favourite thing on your desk? 
15. What did you last eat and what are you going to eat next?

Running icebreakers and other activities in an online setting can sometimes require bespoke software or engagement tools. Check out our post on online tools for workshops and meetings to explore how you might enrich your tech stack and find the best tool for your needs. 

Looking for dynamic games you might run in an online setting? In this post, you’ll find dozens of effective virtual icebreakers you can bring to your next virtual meeting. 

Diversity and Inclusion Icebreaker Questions

A diverse and inclusive workplace is one which celebrates and champions every member of the team equally. While creating a diversity and inclusivity conscious organization is often the work of many workshops and changes in policy, bringing such topics into the awareness of your team can be a good way to start.

These questions can be an effective way of opening a diversity workshop or to engage your group in thinking about these important aspects of workplace inclusivity. 

With these questions, it’s absolutely essential that you consider the context of your session and the participants of the group. A wider conversation about inclusivity in a diverse group is one thing, but essentially asking people from minority groups to educate the rest of the team on their culture is a no-no. Bring in an expert facilitator where possible and consult people from across the team on topics of diversity and inclusion before jumping into the deep end.  

1. What does diversity mean to you?
2. What does inclusion mean to you?
3. What does equity mean to you?
4. Share a cultural tradition or celebration that is important to you.
5. What’s one thing you wish more people understood about your cultural background?
6. If you could travel to any country to experience its culture, where would you go?
7. Share a personal experience where you felt included and valued at work.
8. What’s one way we can create a more inclusive workplace for everyone?
9. What’s one thing you appreciate about the diversity in our team?
10. If you could attend any cultural festival in the world, which one would it be?
11. What’s a book, movie, or TV show that you believe promotes diversity and inclusion effectively?
12. Where did you grow up and how do you think it shaped you as a person?

Approaching inclusion in the workplace can be a challenging prospect without a solid knowledge of group dynamics, DEI and facilitation. Brush up on your facilitation skills in order to best lead a group through a productive discussion on DEI principles.

Wellness Icebreaker Questions

A common focus of many organizations is improving the wellbeing and general wellness of people on their team.

A dedicated workshop on various aspects of wellness can be an effective way to get people thinking more consciously about their wellbeing, and these wellness icebreaker questions can be a great way to get those sessions started! 

1. What’s guaranteed to make you smile? 
2. Describe your perfect relaxing day. 
3. Share a self-care ritual or activity that helps you recharge.
4. What’s your favorite snack or comfort food? 
5. If you could have a wellness day at work, what activities would you include?
6. Share a mindfulness or meditation technique that works for you.
7. What’s your go-to method for relieving stress during a busy day?
8. If you could have any wellness amenity in the office, what would it be?
9. Share a wellness goal you’re currently working on.
10. What’s your favorite way to stay active during the workweek?
11. If you could take a wellness retreat anywhere in the world, where would it be?
12. What’s one small change you’ve made to improve your overall well-being?
13. What book or podcast has had a positive impact on your wellbeing and what was a major takeaway? 
14. What’s a wellness technique that doesn’t work for you and why?

Emotional intelligence and our overall wellbeing often go hand in hand. When we are more self aware and able to recongise our emotions, we can then take action, whether that’s taking time to check-in with ourselves or practice self care.

This blog post on emotional intelligence techniques is a trove of effective exercises you can use to help a team build their EQ skills. Want to go further? You might even run a self awareness workshop to help your team practice and build those skills as a group! 

Tips for asking Good Icebreaker Questions

Whether you’re asking weird icebreaker questions about plans for the zombie apocalypse or going deeper, there are some best practices for asking effective questions that can help people feel safe, included and able to converse freely. Let’s take a look!

• Know Your Audience: Tailor your icebreaker questions to the preferences and demographics of your audience. Consider their professional backgrounds, interests, and cultural diversity.
• Balance Fun and Professionalism: Strike a balance between fostering a fun atmosphere and maintaining professionalism. Choose questions that are appropriate for the setting and the nature of the group.
• Test the Waters: Start with less personal or intense questions to gauge the comfort level of the group. Gradually progress to deeper or more creative inquiries as the atmosphere becomes more relaxed.
• Mix and Match: Incorporate a variety of icebreaker questions into your repertoire. This ensures that you have options suitable for different occasions and preferences.
• Be Mindful of Time: Consider the time available and the overall agenda. Icebreaker questions should be engaging but not overly time-consuming, especially in a work-related setting. The icebreaker you run during a week long training course can (and likely should) be more involved than the one you run for a weekly stand-up, for example. 
• Encourage Active Listening: Emphasize the importance of active listening during icebreaker activities. This fosters a culture of respect and attentiveness within the group. Remember that the purpose of these activities is to create connection and this requires the presence of others in the group. 
• Create a Safe Space: Establish an environment where participants feel comfortable sharing. Emphasize that there are no right or wrong answers, promoting a non-judgmental atmosphere.
• Make non-participation an option: Even when we know people quite well, we can’t possible know everything that’s going on for them or what has happened in their past. Some questions can be difficult or triggering for some people and in addition to carefully considering the questions you use, it’s also important that you leave space for people to non-participate or answer another question if they don’t feel comfortable.

By understanding what makes a good icebreaker question and following these tips, you can enhance the effectiveness of these prompts in your professional and social interactions.

Conclusion 

Creating a powerful connection with another person often begins with a single good conversation.

Icebreaker questions serve as valuable tools for creating connections, fostering collaboration, and building a positive group dynamic. Whether you’re running a virtual workshop, a conference or a recurring team meeting, we hope these questions help you get your session off to a fun, engaging start.

Want to go further? Explore our selection of team building activities to discover experiential ways of building group connections. You can also find more examples of icebreakers in our comprehensive collection of effective icebreaker games.

Was there a game or question style we were missing in this post? Let us know in the comments below!

In this blog post, we’ll explore ten meeting agenda examples that cater to various meeting types and objectives. By the end of this article, you’ll have a toolbox of ideas and agendas to help you plan and facilitate more effective and efficient meetings.

The process of planning and organizing meetings can bring up challenging questions. What are the best practices for meeting design? What agenda items should you include? How do you ensure your meeting stays on time while also covering everything your team needs to be productive and aligned?

Whether you’re a seasoned manager or new to running meetings, exploring some example meeting agendas and learning from others is a great way to save time and improve your meeting practice. Keep reading to explore 10 effective meeting agenda templates you can start using in your next session.

You’ll find a Word agenda template for each session, alongside a SessionLab meeting agenda templates you can use to take your agenda design to the next level.

Let’s dive in!

What should be included in a meeting agenda template?

Before we dive into specific agenda examples, let’s discuss what elements you should include in a meeting agenda template, regardless of the meeting type. A well-rounded agenda typically contains the following components:

• Meeting Title: Give your agenda a clear, concise title that will make it easy to understand what it is when consulting your calendar or when searching for your agenda later.
• Meeting Goal: All good meeting agendas have clear meeting goals, objectives or a meeting topic in mind. The goal can be simple or complex. For example, your meeting goal may be to provide status updates, improve team dynamics or solve a challenge. Use the goal while designing your agenda to ensure your meeting is fit for purpose. While running your session, refer to the goal to ensure everyone is aligned and that the group stays focused.
• Date, Time, and Location: Specify the date and time of the meeting, as well as the meeting location (physical or virtual) so that its easy for participants to attend. Also include how much long the meeting is expected to run for so that everyone can organize their calendars and plan their working day.
• Attendee List: List the names and roles of participants who are expected to attend. This helps in identifying who is responsible for what during the meeting and ensuring all important stakeholders are present.
• Agenda Overview: Provide a simple, high-level overview of the meeting’s flow. This helps participants understand what to expect and prepares them for the meeting’s structure.
• Discussion Topics: Break down the meeting into specific discussion topics, talking points or agenda items. These items should each have a clear title and a little supporting information if necessary. It can also be helpful to put all agenda items in order according to priority so that if you run out of time, you’ve done the most important items first.
• Time Allocation: Assign time slots for each agenda item. Time-boxing in this way ensures that the meeting stays on schedule and that each topic receives adequate attention.
• Presenter or Facilitator: Assign responsibility for each agenda item to a specific individual. This person will lead the discussion on that particular topic or facilitate the activity.
• Materials and Preparation: Mention any documents or materials that participants should review before the meeting. This ensures that everyone is well-prepared. Where possible, attach meeting materials or links to your agenda so they’re easy to find!
• Action Items: Allocate time at the end of the agenda for summarizing actions, next steps and assigning responsibilities for follow-up tasks.
• Open Floor or Q&A: If applicable, reserve time for open discussion, questions, or feedback from attendees.
• Check-out or closing: Effectively bringing a meeting to an end is an important part of the process. You’ll use this time to reiterate key points, leave on a positive note or give feedback on the meeting.

Every example meeting agenda below contains everything you need to run the session. You’ll find instructions, a meeting objective, time allocation and other items you need to get started. We’ve also included tips and details that can help ensure your meeting will be success.

Of course, you’ll want to add your own content and customize your agenda to your needs. In SessionLab, it’s easy to drag, drop and reorder blocks to create a perfectly timed agenda in minutes. SessionLab handles the timing calculation automatically so you can stay track without needing to manually calculate your times.

When you’re ready for feedback, invite your collaborators and clients to refine your agenda. On the day of the meeting, create beautiful meeting materials by customizing a printout to your needs.

Need more help with finding tools to support the management of your meetings? Check out our guide on the best meeting management software to explore how dedicated tools can supercharge your meetings.

Meeting agenda examples

In this next section, we’ll share a selection of meeting agenda templates you can use to run your next team meeting. They’re a great source of ready-to-go agendas designed by facilitators. We hope you find these free templates a useful source of inspiration and practical design tips.

Download your chosen team meeting agenda template in Word or use and edit the SessionLab agenda to make it your own. SessionLab also makes it easy to create minute-perfect sessions, invite collaborators and create beautiful printouts of your meeting agenda templates too!

Team Meeting Agenda

Great meetings tend to follow a clear structure. This effective meeting agenda is a proven structure for bringing a team together and pragmatically covering what is in your agenda.

This team meeting agenda template starts with a quick check-in to help your meeting participants get settled in. You then take a moment to share the intention, desired outcome, agenda, rules, roles and responsibilities, and time allocated for the meeting. By clearly outlining these items with IDOARRT, you can very quickly create the conditions for a productive meeting and get everyone on the same page.

When it comes to running your team meeting, use the following guidelines for choosing the order of your agenda items:

• start with announcements and quick updates;
• next, introduce the one or two main points of discussion;
• have a “parking lot” space to set off-topic conversations aside for another time;
• 10/15 minutes before the meeting end time, move to action points. Closing a meeting takes some time!

Agendas for a regular meeting or team gathering will differ depending on the group, setting, project and the time available. Use this team meeting agenda template as a solid skeleton for any such gathering and adjust to your needs!

Download the Team Meeting Agenda – Word

Download the Team Meeting Agenda – PDF

Use the team meeting agenda template in SessionLab

Tips for running the Team Meeting Agenda

• Going for longer than 1 hour 30 minutes? Add a break! You might also add a short break between particularly heavy items if energy dips or you feel like people need a moment to reflect in silence. In the SessionLab agenda template, simple add an extra block or drag and drop existing items to make space.
• When outlining action points, try to briefly reiterate any decisions or dependencies that have been noted earlier in the meeting. Be sure to take meeting notes to support this process. This can help your team prioritize follow-up actions and assign the right person too.
• Attach a simple PDF overview or online version of your agenda to your invitation emails or calendar invites. This will help your team adequately prepare for the session.

Board Meeting Agenda

The classic agenda is a simple, time-tested board meeting format. Designed for boards and committees, this meeting format typically includes sections like “Call to Order,” “Approval of Minutes,” “Old Business,” “New Business,” “Discussion Items,” “Action Items,” and “Announcements.”

This meeting agenda template structure is suitable for formal meetings, such as board meetings and corporate gatherings, though it can easily be adapted to suit other needs.

This board meeting template runs for 2 hours, though depending on the maturity of your board, your meeting time may differ. Most board meetings can run for 3-4 hours, with a break somewhere in the middle.

In SessionLab, you can easily adjust the agenda and the overall timing will automatically calculate. Want to change the items in the agenda? Drag, drop and add new blocks to quickly tailor your agenda to the needs of your board. You’ll even find space to add meeting notes, meeting minutes and even attach reports or a presentation to each agenda item.

Download the Board Meeting Agenda – Word

Download the Board Meeting Agenda – PDF

Check out the agenda template in SessionLab

Tips for running this Board Meeting Agenda

• You can speed up the process of approving changes to the agenda and approving previous minutes by sending these items out to board members ahead of the meeting. Share your SessionLab agenda to allow members to make any suggestions directly and keep all changes in one place.
• Aim for brevity when creating and giving reports. Try quick summaries to help keep the meeting lean and aim to keep presentations to one or two slides where possible. This doesn’t mean omitting key details, but aiming to present key information without the fluff.
• Keeping on track during your meeting agendas often means effectively time-boxing discussions and gently moving the group through your agenda items. A good meeting agenda template will help keep the session on track, though you can go further by using SessionLab’s time tracker to keep a running timer throughout your meeting.

Daily Standup Meeting Agenda

Stand-up meetings are all about brevity and focus. A typical stand-up meeting agenda might include sections for everyone on the team to check-in, share status updates, challenges and what they’ll be working on next.

This team meeting agenda template is based on the daily scrum of an Agile team, though it’s suitable for any team doing a daily check-in! After a brief introduction, teams go through a process of answering three questions:

• What did you do yesterday?
• What will you do today?
• What’s in your way?

By working through these three simple questions in just fifteen minutes, you and your team can quickly get aligned and start the day effectively! In this template, you’ll find a round-robin variation and a step-by-step version ready to tailor to your needs. Running weekly team meetings rather than one-a-day? This agenda template serves as a great foundation for a weekly alignment too.

Download the Daily Standup Meeting Agenda – Word

Download the Daily Standup Meeting Agenda – PDF

Check out the team meeting agenda template in SessionLab

Tips for running a Daily Standup Meeting Agenda

• Remember the purpose of the meeting. It can be tempting to go off topic, but this meeting is about getting quickly aligned, covering major talking points and moving forward. Be focused, but add interesting items to the parking lot to look at asynchronously or in a follow-up meeting of their own!
• Take meeting minutes or notes and share them with your team. These meeting notes can be especially useful when it comes to the next meeting or for people who couldn’t attend. You can speed this process up too by creating a meeting minutes template alongside your agenda.
• Recurring meetings should be systemized. Create and adjust a meeting agenda template of your own to save time running your next sessions and to ritualize your meetings.

Brainstorming Meeting Agenda

Brainstorming sessions are a great setting for unleashing a group’s collective intelligence and getting creative juices flowing. While this format encourages creativity and innovation, it doesn’t mean you don’t need structure. A good brainstorming session creates space for the unexpected though also helps your team stay focused, goal oriented and on-time.

In this team meeting agenda template created by Sabrina Goerlich, you and your team will spend just over an hour on a process based on Google’s design sprint, a proven structure for creating innovation and solving tough problems.

You’ll start by setting the stage with expert insights and a problem statement to help orient your team. Next, you’ll use a round of lightning demos to find inspiration before each team member individually brainstorms ideas and shares with group before a second round of ideation. After a round of voting for the best ideas, this brainstorming team meeting will be brought to a close by setting actions and assigning responsibilities.

The One Hour Brain Sprint is an effective meeting agenda template for any organization that wants to surface new ideas and solve tough problems. It’s especially effective if your problem does not have a clear solution, and you want to encourage creative input from everyone in your team.

Download the One Hour Brain Sprint Agenda – Word

Download the One Hour Brain Sprint Agenda – PDF

Check out the meeting agenda template in SessionLab

Tips for running a Brainstorming Meeting Agenda:

• Be sure to review action items and assign steps for the next session before the end of the meeting. It’s easy to miss this step and lose momentum so make sure your entire team knows what to do next before you close.
• Document everything. Being able to review what was discussed and all related ideas can help unblock teams later in the process.
• Have a clear decision maker in the room to break ties or make final decisions on what to move ahead with. While the voting round often ends with a clear frontrunner, when there isn’t consensus, it pays to have a stakeholder there to unblock your team.
• Come prepared with data or insights to clarify the problem you are trying to solve. Any solution is only as good as your understanding of the problem. Try to prepare some slides or supporting information and bring it to the meeting so your team can make data-informed decisions.

Decision Making Meeting Agenda

This decision making meeting agenda template is all about working together to make a decision and move forward as a team. It might be about a trying to solve a tough problem, working on innovative ideas or simply choosing the best solution from some you’ve already prepared.

This half-day team meeting agenda illustrates a complete flow from ideation to decision. You will find information and details on the following steps:

• presenting a problem to a team
• brainstorming on multiple solutions (divergence)
• selecting one or more proposals to work on using dot-voting (convergence)
• using consent-based decision-making to refine the proposal
• turning the proposal into a decision you make as a team

If you struggle with running team meetings where all attendees can feel involved while also ensuring the decisions made are high quality, this is the team meeting agenda you need.

Download the Decision Making Meeting Agenda – Word

Download the Decision Making Meeting Agenda – PDF

Check out the meeting agenda template in SessionLab

Tips for running the Decision Making Meeting Agenda

• Try to get familiar with consent-based decision making and Sociocracy before running this kind of decision making model. A thorough knowledge of the methodology will help you lead this team meeting agenda template effectively.
• Meeting minutes that effectively detail the process and discussions around the decisions that were made can be a massive boon when it comes to explaining to others or simply improving your process. Assign someone to take meeting minutes or notes at the outset of your session.
• Ensure you clearly document what decisions were made so you can share with people outside of the meeting and track progress on next steps.

Project Kickoff Meeting Agenda

When starting a new project, running a kickoff will help your team get aligned and start on the right foot. If you’re working with an Agile methodology, this meeting agenda template is a proven process that adheres to Agile principles and gives a team everything they need to get started on their next sprint or project.

This template is designed to support teams new to Agile, as well as seasoned Agile organizations. Start with a refresher on Agile principles and agreements before moving into the kickoff proper. You’ll cover the project overview, set roles and responsibilities, set a timeline and define success criteria before closing with action items and a Q&A.

This team meeting agenda is one you’ll likely run with your Agile team again and again. Save time by reusing your session or making a template of your own. Include any variations or team rituals to ensure your team meeting is fit for purpose and successfully enables a smooth kickoff.

Download the Agile Kickoff Meeting Agenda – Word

Download the Agile Kickoff Meeting Agenda – PDF

Check out the template in SessionLab

Tips for running the Project Kickoff Meeting Agenda

• For teams new to Agile, be sure to include the section outlining Agile principles. Got a team who knows how to run sprints and scrum meetings already? Give a brief reminder and jump in to scoping the project.
• While the broad meeting objectives for an Agile kickoff don’t change from sprint to sprint, it’s always worth reiterating what is part of a kickoff session and what is not. Seasoned teams can sometimes wish to jump ahead on exciting projects and without alignment, this can get messy.
• Add the dates for any key meetings or check-in points to your calendar. Choose a time that works for the majority of people on your team for your daily scrum meeting so you can easily update one another on progress made.
• Detailed agendas like this benefit from an easy-to-understand structure and time-boxed sections. Use SessionLab’s Session Planner to set clear timings and stay in control of your agenda.

Training Session Agenda

A clear and organized training sessions helps ensure participants get the most out of the experience. In this training session agenda template, you’ll use find an easy to amend structure for a basic training session. The agenda is based on a learning framework designed by American educational theorist David Kolb which follows four steps:

• Concrete experience, with room for practical, experiential activities;
• Reflective observation, a time to debrief, form opinions on what the exercise revealed, and discuss them with others;
• Abstract conceptualization, when it’s up to the trainer to offer models, theories and frameworks conducive to deeper understanding and, lastly
• Active experimentation, in which participants are guided to begin applying new learnings to real-world situations.

Before you dive into delivering your experiential training materials, you’ll have space for an opening section designed to orient participants. At the end of the session, you’ll also find time to collect learnings (a key step in ensuring training material sticks!) and effectively close your training session.

One common complaint of employee training is that the skills learned in a session rarely get applied after the trainer has left. This training agenda avoids this risk by including real-world examples, case studies, and giving participants time to reflect on what steps they will take, in practice, to apply what was presented at the training. Want to learn more? Explore our guide on how to design an engaging training session.

Download the Training Session Agenda – Word

Download the Training Session Agenda – PDF

Check out the meeting template in SessionLab

Tips for running the Training Session Agenda

• Clarify expectations at the outset. The presence, attention and participation of meeting attendees is a key aspect of a successful training.
• Don’t skip the debriefing. Giving participants time to reflect together and synthesize learnings can be when a topic truly comes to life and sticks.
• Collect feedback. Especially if you plan on running future meetings, ask participants and co-facilitators for feedback and amend your program accordingly. Add notes to your SessionLab agenda during a training session so you don’t lose any insights.

Workshop Planning Agenda

A great workshop doesn’t happen without adequate preparation. In this series of client meetings, we outline a process that allows you go from an idea to a completed workshop. Paired with our guide on how to plan a workshop, it’s a great resource for practically making a workshop or more carefully orchestrated team meeting happen.

This series of meeting agendas is divided into five parts, each lasting an hour. 

The first part, Sharing a vision, is an agenda for the first meeting with your client (and/or their team) to set clear expectations, get on the same page and start shaping the future workshop. You can also download a ready-to-use canvas to help support this important first meeting!

The second part, Defining the agenda is the stage at which you will define your draft agenda using the information gathered in your previous meeting. For more information on agenda design, check out this post on how to design a workshop agenda!

The third part of this meeting agenda template, Refining the agenda, is about sharing your proposed agenda design and collecting feedback.

In the fourth section, you’ll get ready for the day of the workshop by briefing the team, host and speakers. Finally, after the event is over, get together once again for a retrospective meeting focused on learning.

Download the Workshop Planning Agenda – Word

Download the Workshop Planning Agenda – PDF

Check out the template in SessionLab

Tips for running the Workshop Planning Agenda

• Each step of this agenda has a clear set of action points and a checklist for what needs to be achieved by the end of each meeting. Add your own items to the session or the individual agenda items in order to stay on track and ensure you meet your goals.
• When running recurring meetings or workshops, it can be helpful to know when each one is expected to transpire so you have a clear schedule for the entire project. Be sure to put each meeting or project stage into the calendar. SessionLab’s multi-day sessions feature can help you easily visualise an overview of connected series of meetings like this one. Note that this is a great place to keep meeting notes, too!
• Workshop planning doesn’t need to be lonely! The success of your session can often be attributed to how thoroughly you and your stakeholders clarify the goals and collaborate at each stage of the way. Invite collaborators to co-design your agenda or try making what might have been a solo experience into a team meeting. The results will often be much better for it!

Retrospective Meeting Agenda

All projects and initiatives should be reflected upon and learned from. In this team meeting agenda template, you’ll take a group through an efficient project retrospective that will help you collect learnings, improve as a team and set clear next steps.

While this meeting agenda template is designed around the principles an Agile retrospective, it can be used for reflecting on any project or period of time, sprint or not!

Start by checking-in with the group and reiterating key facts and figures for your recently closed project. Next, lead the group through a process of reflecting on what happened at each stage of the project and recording feedback and insights.

After generating insights and identifying the root causes of things that went well and could be improved you’ll collaboratively decide what to do next time. Record takeaways and learnings and then close with a round of feedback and a final debrief.

Tips for running the Retrospective Meeting Agenda

• Retrospectives should be run at the end of each project, quarter or initiative your team completes. Find a format that works for you and create a template so that you and your team can save time and effort running this important session.
• Preparing key metrics and an overview of what was done to present at the beginning of a meeting is a key step. Even a single slide of useful information can help orient your team effectively.
• Short on time? It can often be affective to ask each person to note what they liked, learned and lacked asynchronously in a Mural board or a virtual meeting tool like Team Retro.

Download the Retrospective Meeting Agenda – Word

Download the Retrospective Meeting Agenda – PDF

Check out the template in SessionLab

Online Event Agenda

Whether you’re running a formal meeting with a virtual audience or creating an informal networking session, an agenda helps you stay organized. This simple meeting agenda template is designed for anyone running an online session. It has space for presenters or speakers to share content, as well as blocks for general networking and breakout groups.

This agenda template begins with space to welcome attendees and introduce a guest speaker before moving into networking and a featured presentation. Add breakout rooms to the agenda in SessionLab to easily organize parallel discussions and tailor this session to your group.

Download the Online Event Agenda – Word

Download the Online Event Agenda – PDF

Check out the template in SessionLab

Tips for running this Online Event Agenda

• Add presenter information or a script to your agenda template to take some of the pressure out of hosting. Even a few simple prompts can make it easy to present with confidence.
• Keep all of your links and supporting materials in one place. Add the links to any Miro boards, slideshows or Mentimeter polls to the relevant point in your agenda. Scrambling to find the right link in front of your attendees isn’t fun! (See more best practices for virtual sessions in our guide on how to plan and run a virtual workshop.)
• Invite co-presenters or facilitators to your session so they can stay in sync and have a clear idea of your running order. You might even share an online version of your agenda or meeting template with your audience members so they know what’s coming too.

Conclusion

A well crafted meeting agenda is an essential element of a successful meeting. Paired with effective meeting facilitation, using a team meeting agenda template can help you and your group achieve your goals and finish on time too! Whatever your purpose, we hope the agenda templates above serve as a useful starting point.

Remember that a structured meeting agenda template not only keeps the meeting on track but also sets the tone for a productive and meaningful gathering. Adapt and customize these agenda templates to suit your needs, attach the agenda to your calendar invites and refer to the agenda throughout your session to start hosting more efficient and engaging meetings.

Want to see more? You can explore our complete template collection to find inspiration or a proven process for your next workshop, meeting or training session.

Ready to start designing your own meeting template? Explore how SessionLab can help save you time and effort when designing your next agenda.

Innovation is important for many businesses, but what brainstorming activities might you use to help make true innovation a reality? Find out in this collection of effective brainstorming techniques!

In this post, we’ll explore a host of effective brainstorming techniques in categories such as creative exercises and visual idea generation games, all of which can be used to help your group brainstorm be more effective and gratifying for all involved.

We’ll also explore talk about the benefits of group ideation and share some examples of brainstorming sessions that utilize these methods. Let’s get started! 

What are brainstorming techniques?

Brainstorming is a process of enabling people to think freely and creatively when trying to come up with ideas, solutions, or sharing knowledge.

Brainstorming techniques are proven activities and frameworks for coming up with lots of ideas quickly. They’ll often include steps to shift perspective, facilitate team collaboration and refine initial ideas into something even better.

Some examples of brainstorming activities include classic mind mapping and brain writing where you quickly try to generate as many ideas as possible.

Teams often use these techniques to generate creative ideas to tough problems and to explore possible solutions. They can also be used as part of more in-depth brainstorming workshops where team members then refine and choose ideas to put into action.

Some of the core concepts of brainstorming include: reserving judgment, go for quality over quantity, listen to all ideas, and think outside of the box in the pursuit of radical new ideas and creative solutions. Bring these concepts and a proven technique to your session and you’re already on the route to success!

If you’re finding your team with a problem they don’t know how to solve, a technique that encourages creative thinking might be just the ticket! Use these activities as part of a complete workshop process to refine those ideas into something actionable.

In SessionLab, it’s quick an easy to create an effective agenda for a brainstorming workshop in minutes. Drag and drop blocks in the session planner to create your structure. Add timing for each item to ensure you stay on time. Color-code your blocks to get an instant sense of your learning flow.

Core group brainstorming techniques

Brainstorming has been around as long as individuals and teams have tried to find creative and innovative solutions, or come up with new ideas or products. Whether a group is ideating on how to solve an organizational problem or generate ideas for new features or initiatives, getting people together to quickly ideate and come up with something new is time well spent.

In this section, we’ll first explore some of the core techniques that have been used time and again to create meaningful results and great ideas.

Popcorn Brainstorming

One of the classic brainstorming techniques, chances are you’ve done a popcorn brainstorm already. It’s been used by everyone from school teachers to CEOs to generate ideas and create energy around new initiatives – much like the popping of corn in a microwave!

Start by posing a question or problem statement and invite participants to take a minutes silence to think on it. Once the minute is up, start a timer and invite everyone to contribute ideas out-loud and build on each other’s ideas too. Have a single person take notes and encourage quality over quantity: no evaluation, no criticism or discussion yet – just rapid ideation!

Round-Robin Brainstorming

A tried and tested idea generation technique, Round-Robin Brainstorming provides a little more structure and ensures everyone in a group can contribute to a brainstorm by ensuring the discussion isn’t dominated by the loudest voices. 

In this group method, seat everyone in a circle and hand them an index card. In silence, everyone writes an idea on their index card before passing it to the person to their left. Each participant then writes an idea based on their neighbour’s card and passes that along.

The result is a more relaxed session that encourages a combination of idea development and co-creation while ensuring everyone is heard. Perfect for teams with big personalities!

SWOT analysis

A SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) is a tried and tested technique that teams often using when planning new initiatives or solving problems. It also happens to be a great tool for generating new ideas while also taking into account potential problems and opportunities.

The act of brainstorming around your weaknesses or threats can result in innovative solutions and ideas you might not have otherwise come up with. Try using each point of the process as a jumping off point for ideation or explore a topic from each of the different angles for best results.

Brainwriting

No single person is as smart or as creative as a group. With the brain writing technique, tap into the ideas and approaches of multiple collaborators and co-create effectively.

Start by writing down the topic or area for which you’ll be generating ideas. Have all team members silently write down an idea related to the topic on a card and then, pass that idea to the person to their right. The receiving player reads the card and then adds an idea inspired by the original OR enhances the original idea before passing the card along.

By asking participants to grow and improve on one another’s ideas, Brain writing helps a group ideate effectively and come up with better ideas. You can even bring this to an online brainstorming session by using an online whiteboard and have participants pass post-its to the working spaces of their partners.

Question storming

Sometimes, shifting perspective and starting from a different angle can generate the best ideas. Q-Storming, or question storming invites participants to brainstorm questions, rather than solutions.

After rounds of gathering qualifying data and assumptions, ask your group to think of all those questions that they still have which might help the team think the matter through. This approach can be really useful at finding ideas your team might not have considered and ensuring that what you come up with is truly going to solve the problem at hand.

Walking Brainstorm

Brainstorming methods come in many forms – you might have a quick-fire session that encourages excitement and verbal exchanges. Alternatively, you might find your group will create better ideas by working together in a more relaxed, introvert-friendly manner.

Walking Brainstorm is designed to help large groups work on idea generation dynamically but without creating scenarios where only the loudest participants are heard. 

Create a space where different topics or questions are spread on posters/post-its around a room or virtual space. Silently and individually, each participant is encouraged to walk around and visit each question/topic in turn and add ideas to each. By moving around and working individually, this method helps create a more reflective, dynamic ideation session and can also help ensure group-think doesn’t set in! 

Mind Map

For those who prefer a more organized approach to idea generation, mind mapping is a great activity for creating ideas quickly and effectively. 

Begin by writing the key topic in the center of a piece of paper or in an online whiteboard. Invite participants to brainstorm related topics and ideas by adding branches to the central idea and create new nodes or elements. As a facilitator, you’ll want to group ideas by color and also amend the thickness of the branches to show the strength of various ideas and concepts. 

When you’re done mind mapping, the result will be a diagram that visually represents your ideas and makes it clear how the various parts interrelate – a great resource for idea development or for future sessions!

Brain Netting

The concept of brain netting is to not only take your brainstorming online, but to use online tools and virtual spaces to make the session a truly engaging experience. 

The key is to use an online tool that the group is familiar with, can co-create in easily and which works both synchronously or asynchronously. Using an online whiteboard or shared document for brain netting means participants can contribute in both a live online workshop as well as in their own time. This is a unique benefit of online brainstorming, and it’s one we’d recommend taking advantage of with your team!

We’d especially recommend using an online tool that supports easy commenting, images, videos and links – encourage your group to use whatever assets best communicate their ideas!

Six Thinking Hats

Exploring a problem or idea from multiple perspectives is a great way to generate new ideas and inform your brainstorming process. In this brainstorming activity, start by explaining the six different hats and that at various points, each person will wear the different hats to explore your chosen topic. For example, the green hat is for creative thinking while the white hat is all about information and facts.

Invite the group to start with the blue hat, which is to control the process and then move between hats to explore, define, ideate, identify risk and gather information around a topic in a sequence. By asking the group to all wear the same hat at the same time, you can ensure your brainstorm moves forward while also ensure all perspectives are explored.

Rapid writing

Different teams and workshops need different approaches to generating fresh ideas. While a carefully structured approach can be effective, using quick-fire brainstorming techniques like Rapid Writing can help create a sense of energy, urgency, and get heaps of ideas out quickly.

For this method of brainstorming, start by setting a timer and encouraging your participants to get as many ideas out as possible within that time limit. Remember that at this stage in the idea generation process, there is no such thing as a bad idea and by quickly ideating without being critical, your group can be creative without prematurely shutting down possible ideas. Be sure to collect all the ideas and share them without judgment at the end, whether you’re brainstorming online or in person!

Lotus Blossom

Some of the most effective techniques are those that encourage free-thinking and rapid ideation while also having some rules that can keep things structured. Lotus Blossom combines these concepts while also creating a great visual representation of your brainstorming activity. 

Lotus Blossom helps facilitate idea generation by working out from a central concept and adding eight additional themes or ideas inspired by the first on sticky notes. Once you have those eight ideas, you then invite participants to take each of those and add another eight and effectively blossom them around the original. By clustering ideas in this way, this ideation method also creates a visual resource you can come back to later and follow the brainstorming process from start to finish.

Starbursting

Complete freedom without an ideation framework isn’t always the best way to find and develop ideas. Structured techniques like Starbursting can help guide a team through more effective idea generation and ensure all key elements are considered at an early stage.

To begin, create a six-pointed star on a large piece of paper or online whiteboard. At the tip of each point of the star, write down the words Who, What, Why, Where, When and How. Invite the group to brainstorm ideas and questions related to each of these points in turn.

At this stage, the group only needs to brainstorm questions in each of these sections, leaving answers until later, though creating follow-up questions can also be helpful in effectively ideating on your central concept or problem.

The 5 Whys

When ideating on solutions to problems, it’s very easy to come to the table with underlying assumptions that can affect the course of the idea generation process. You can avoid this potential pitfall by using The 5 Whys to go further and deeper in a very simple, group-friendly manner.

Kick-off by working as a group to create a problem statement that you’ll work on solving. Once you have a concise statement, ask the group why you have this problem and discuss the answer. After working together to form a cohesive answer, ask the group why you have the problem again. By repeating the process, you and your team can dig deeper and find the root cause of the issue and move past the first, most obvious ideas.

Creative brainstorming techniques 

All brainstorming is creative. Generating ideas and finding solutions often asks groups and teams to find new ways of looking at things but in this next section, we’ll look at techniques that aim to approach the ideation process from a unique or especially creative starting point.

If you’re finding your typical exercises aren’t yielding results or want to try something new, creative games like those below can create space for innovation. Let’s dig in!

Imagie-ination

Words are often our primary tool when it comes to starting a brainstorm or kicking off an idea generation workshop. While these kinds of techniques are tried and tested, it can also be useful to try something different that can unlock your team’s creativity. 

With Imagie-ination, you’ll use images to help your group generate ideas that go beyond the norm. First, collect an assortment of images for your brainstorm and write down a simple description of the topic you want to generate new ideas around. Have each participant select an image and then come up with as many ideas as they can for how the image relates to the topic. 

After the first round, you’ll then cluster ideas together and find an image and title to best illustrate those clusters. This kind of clustering and titling can help refine the ideas your team has generated and move them towards action – a great outcome for any brainstorming session!

Bad idea brainstorming

Idea generation is at its best when groups are encouraged to add their ideas without being self critical or overthinking. Often, individuals involved in ideation can put pressure on themselves to offer only great ideas and so don’t contribute everything that comes to their minds.

Use this brainstorming technique to help free your group’s creativity and encourage them to come up with the absolute worst ideas they can in relation to a central topic or problem. Like reverse brainstorming, this brainstorming technique is a great way to find alternative routes to more creative ideas. Just be sure to use a swot analysis to figure out what should make it into reality!

Brainstorm questions instead of solutions

Our first instinct when it comes to problem-solving can often be to jump straight to giving answers and finding solutions. Though this can be effective, when it comes to generating creative ideas, a different tact can be more effective. 

With this reverse brainstorming game, challenge participants to offer questions instead of solutions so they can respond to a central concept creatively and from a new angle. If you’re finding your group can become blocked when generating ideas, it might be that your existing questions or frameworks aren’t sufficient. By taking a new ideation approach, you can unblock your team!

Stakeholder Round Robin Brainstorm

Bringing together groups of different stakeholders with their own areas of expertise is a great idea whether you’re brainstorming or finding solutions. That said, it’s worth noting that in these kinds of mixed groups, participants will be coming from different places and have different priorities and approaches to idea generation. 

Start by creating a flipchart or whiteboard space for each stakeholder’s perspective and writing this at the top. Give each stakeholder two minutes to brainstorm on the central idea from their perspective and add those to their flipchart before then inviting each participant to move to the next one and brainstorm from this different perspective. By using this round-robin brainstorming exercise, you can help the group understand the perspectives and insights each member brings to the table while also generating fresh ideas as a result!  

Backcasting

A simple change in perspective can have a massive impact on how your team approaches solving a problem. Backcasting is a simple but effective brainstorming exercise where a team is invited to work backwards from an ideal future state in order to come up with concrete actions they can take today.

Start by listing your long term goals in a time frame of 1-20 years. Then work backwards from that state to today, listing every action necessary to achieve that goal state. Collect insights on what difficulties might come up, what steps your team needs to take and what resources you might need in order to brainstorm effectively and find a new way to reach your team’s long term goals!

Walking Questions

A brainstorming technique with a What if learning style, Walking Questions is a great way of encouraging group members to share knowledge, ask questions to personal problems, and explore a topic dynamically. 

Best used at the end of a training session or workshop, each participant writes a question they have on the top of a sheet of paper then hands it to the person to their right. The person receiving the paper then writes any ideas or answers they have underneath and passes it to the next person.

By the end, the original piece of paper will be returned to the owner filled with ideas and answers from the entire group. It’s a great way of generating ideas from a group quickly and efficiently and of utilizing everyone’s expertise in a structured way. Give it a go! 

Guided Imagery

Coming up with new ideas doesn’t always have to be boisterous! You can also get the creative juices flowing in a relaxed way by tapping into mindfulness and imagination with this method.

Start by inviting participants to close their eyes and get comfortable. Next, progress through a guided meditation designed to inspire creativity. Afterward, ask your group to reflect on what came up for them in the meditation and use this as the basis for further brainstorming!

Headlines from the future

Starting from the desired outcome and working backward with a reverse brainstorming technique can be a great way to solve a problem. Thinking into the future can also be inspiring in a way that encourages free thinking and big ideas – a great result for any brainstorming workshop.

In this idea generation game, ask your group to imagine it’s twenty years in the future and that your project or organisation has been a huge success. Invite each participant to draft a headline and sketch an image for a New York Times feature of this reality. Encourage big, bold ideas and debrief by discussing any common themes or ideas before moving onto idea development as a team! 

Brainstorming techniques for problem solving and refining ideas

When you want to go beyond initial brainstorming and generate more refined ideas, the following complex idea generation techniques can effectively guide you through the process.

These activities combine brainstorming with idea evaluation, idea selection, and then going into concept development to help you come up with the best options. Let’s dig in! 

25/10 Crowd Sourcing

Group ideation can be tricky to manage, and not all techniques are up to the task of managing creative input from large groups effectively. 25/10 Crowd Sourcing is a fantastic exercise that not only invites big, bold ideas, but can ensure everyone takes part in generating ideas as a group.

After first inviting participants to write a big, bold idea on an index card, start a timer and invite the group to move around the space and exchange cards without reading. Stop the timer and ask each person to read the idea and give it a score from 1 to 5. Repeat five times so that each idea has a score out of twenty-five and then find and share the top ten ideas with the group.

Group brainstorming techniques with a mix of blind scoring and sharing can be especially useful in avoiding bias and encouraging bold ideas – especially useful when ideating in large groups!

3-12-3 Brainstorm

Brainstorming is often associated with fast ideation and energetic idea generation sessions. While many standard techniques can be slowed down and run in different ways, there can be obvious benefits to maintaining energy and proving the value of short working bursts to your ideation group. 

The 3-12-3 Brainstorm technique taps into the power of speed to generate great ideas and can help a team generate, develop, and present ideas in just less than twenty minutes. By combining speed and structure, this ideation method can help a group pressed for time use the session effectively, and we love how much ground can be covered by a group with this exercise!

Mash-Up Innovation

Some of the best ideas come from taking existing ideas and putting them together. Brainstorming that takes advantage of what your group already knows and loves can really supercharge the idea generation process and this creative exercise is a perfect example of that.

In Mash-Up innovation, first ask your group to brainstorm around three different topics or areas and add them to a shared space or whiteboard. Next, organize your participants into small groups who will spend the next twelve minutes combining and mashing up as many of the elements as possible to make even better ideas. After a short idea presentation, you can even take your group through an idea development stage to really make the most out of this activity. You’ll be surprised at what comes out!

1-2-4-All

Large group brainstorming can be dynamic, exciting, and productive but without structure and strong facilitation, it can also become disorganized and frustrating. 1-2-4-All is a classic idea generation process that not only helps ideas find space to allow idea development but also ensures the entire group can contribute to the session. 

Start by inviting silent self-reflection on a shared challenge or question before then moving to pairs, foursomes, and then entire group ideation. One of the many benefits of this brainstorming technique is that everyone gets a chance to contribute freely and share their ideas in a structured way. In groups where conversation can become dominated by strong personalities or not everyone gets a chance to speak, this method is well worth employing. 

One will get you Ten

Ideas most often spring from other ideas, and the sharing and co-creation of ideas during a brainstorm or idea generation workshop is where the magic really happens. This technique uses the sharing of ideas between teams as a central concept and it’s a great way of having participants communicate and learn from one another’s ideas meaningfully. 

After first generating ideas solo and as a team, this ideation game asks team members to pair up with members of another team and share ideas. Each member then returns to their own team and presents two ideas – one of their own, and one from the other team – while the rest of the team guesses whose is whose. It’s interesting to see how participants package and present generated ideas and find ways to improve them organically as part of a rapid ideation.  

The Creativity Dice

When approaching the idea generation process it can be tempting for a team to go with what’s worked in the past and get locked into what appears to be working. Games that challenge the status quo and challenge teams in ways they don’t expect can be especially effective when generating ideas. 

The Creative Dice is a brainstorming technique that encourages participants to work in three minute bursts and work on either specification, investigation, ideation, incubation, Iteration or integration based on a roll of the dice. By moving between different modes, this method prevents premature closure of one line of ideation and keeps the session energized and engaging. What’s more, the non-linear thinking can help with idea development too!

Affinity Map

Using brainstorming techniques to get a large number of ideas together quickly and efficiently is a great first step to developing new solutions or solving problems. But what to do once you’ve generated lots of ideas and want to work on idea development? Affinity Map is a great method for organizing your group’s brainstormed ideas and for both seeing and challenging existing patterns.

Starting with a simple brainstorm, Affinity Map asks that the group collectively organizes the ideas into columns or groups based on relationships. By doing this idea clustering as a group, your team can take ownership of the idea generation process and discover patterns of thinking together! It’s a great way of identifying and improving a group’s natural inclinations while also creating meaningful ideas.

Fun brainstorming games

Brainstorming is often a fast-paced and engaging process that results in a group having fun. Creative brainstorming games that help participants have fun while generating ideas are also effective ways of loosening folks up and getting into new ways of thinking. If you’re finding your group stuck

In this section, we’ll look at brainstorming games that intentionally take a fun angle as a means to create better ideas.

MindSpin

Energy, fun, and creativity go hand-in-hand, and brainstorming techniques that encourage these items and generate ideas quickly and effectively – especially with large groups!

In MindSpin, teams of 3-5 participants are challenged to write as many ideas as they can in two five-minute rounds. Whenever a person writes an idea, they slam it down on the table. If they cannot think of one, they can take an idea from the person on their left and hopefully be inspired to write an additional card they also slam on the table. Remember that this brainstorming game is designed to be fast and loud while getting creative juices flowing. Encourage all participants to really slam their ideas down and keep things moving!

Figure storming

One potential difficulty when generating ideas is that not everyone feels comfortable sharing or holds back their ideas for fear of judgment. Creative brainstorming is all about removing restrictions or hesitation, and enabling your group to ideate freely – figure storming is a great method for achieving this!

Start by asking the group how a famous person, fictional character or well-known creative would approach the problem or topic at hand. You might ask how Albert Einstein, Elizabeth Bennett or Barack Obama might think about the ideas or concepts at hand. By inhabiting a different person’s perspective, not only can teams and individuals access new ideas, but they can also do so free of judgment. Also, it can be great fun to invite Atilla the Hun or Cleopatra to your creative exercises!

Flip and Rip

Images can often unlock our creativity but when using them to generate ideas, it can sometimes be difficult to know where to start. This visual brainstorming technique places some rules on how a group will both source and use images, and can encourage some really creative ideas!

Start by giving participants two magazines or image sets each. Then, invite each person to tear our whatever images stand out to them or grab their attention. Next, give them a problem statement and encourage them to find the connections between the problem and their chosen images. These unexpected connections between visuals can then be used as the foundation for further ideas! Plus, who doesn’t love the sound and feeling of tearing paper!

Forced Connections

An important part of the ideation process is giving your team permission to be silly and bring ideas to the table without fear of judgement or inhibitions. Empowering your team to be creative without limiting themselves can massively affect the effectiveness of your brainstorming and so it’s worth spending time to unblock your participants early.

Assemble a collection of random objects or images and invite participants to choose two or more items and brainstorm how they might be used together or connected in some way. Encourage out-of-the-box thinking and unusual ideas by bringing a collection of odd items to the table and you’ll be surprised at all the ideas your team can generate!

The Thing from the Future

Science fiction and speculative thinking about the future has long been a great source of ideas. In this brainstorming exercise, invite groups to co-design their ideal future by creating tangible objects with their imaginations.

Begin by sourcing a heap of prototyping materials and craft supplies. Invite participants to imagine an ideal future state and create an object that has time travelled back to the present. After spending some time creating strange and wonderful objects, participants then present them to the group and tell stories about the objects to inform future strategies and ideas.

If you’re looking for a fun, practical exercise to bring to your brainstorming session and encourage creative thinking, this activity is a great choice!

Making Lemonade

Sometimes, the best ideas come from moments of adversity or struggle. This brainstorming exercises leverages the power of positive thinking and attempting to make the best of a bad situation to generate creative ideas.

Start by sharing a couple of negative scenarios that might radically change something in the world. For example, everyone in the world has a cold, it rains constantly or we lost all our customers over night.

Next, ask your group to take something that appears negative and aim to reframe it to be as positive as possible while coming up with ideas of how that change might actually have a positive impact. Rain every day? That might be the end of drought and a boom to umbrella sales!

Visual brainstorming techniques

Visual brainstorming is a great way of helping your teams out of creative roadblocks and encouraging fresh ideas. When words fail, images can enliven, invigorate and inspire your process. In this section, we’ll look at some great brainstorming techniques that focus on drawing or creating visual responses when ideating. Let’s take a look! 

6-8-5

Brainstorming shouldn’t stop when you have your first good idea. Fast iteration and refinement can help your group discover better ideas and develop ideas in record time. With 6-8-5, you can encourage your team to move from brainstorming to idea development in just a few minutes, and by asking participants to draw, you can keep things flowing easily!

Start by inviting your group to sketch 6-8 ideas in response to a central question or topic in five minutes. Encourage your team to be rough and not to worry about finesse at this stage – remember that the first stage of brainstorming works best when it’s free and unrestricted!

After a quick round of presenting ideas, go through the sketching process again and encourage idea development or ideas that have come out of group sharing. The result will be a heap of ideas and sketches you can move forward with too! 

Four Step Sketch

Visual brainstorming techniques can be great right at the start of the process but they can be equally effective later on when it comes to idea development. In this exercise pulled from the design sprint playbook, take your group through a structured ideation process that encourages reflection, quick sketching and a completed idea too.

Begin by reviewing any existing materials or outputs from earlier exercises before then having your group do a round of Crazy 8’s, where they create eight sketched variations on their idea. At this stage, you then invite participants to finesse their idea and create a final polished sketch to share with the team. By mixing reflection, ideation and development, this brainstorming technique offers a structured path towards better ideas!

Drawing Together

Visual thinking is a powerful tool for any creative process or brainstorming workshop. This brainstorming game asks teams to tell stories about a personal or group challenge personal by expressing themselves with just five simple symbols drawn on paper. After a first draft, participants are then invited to refine their stories with colour, size and placement before the group interprets them.

By expressing themselves in a novel way, participants can exercise their creative muscles and consider new ways to express ideas nonverbally.

Brainstorming games for warming up

Generating ideas and thinking creatively isn’t always easy. Finding ways to energize and prepare your group for brainstorming with simple and fun warm-ups can help ensure the success of the workshop or session and introduce key idea generation concepts too.

While these creative games don’t necessarily create ideas in themselves, they are a great way to get teams ready for the next step. Let’s take a look!

Draw Toast

When it comes to warming people up for an idea generation workshop, simple is best. With Draw Toast, you can introduce your group to visual thinking, working memory and systems thinking, all through the prism of a simple warm-up that works well online or offline!

For this creative exercise, invite your participants to illustrate how to make toast with a sketch or diagram without using any text. Afterward, share observations and insights as a group and outline the fact that there is no right or wrong diagram, and that differing and unique approaches to a problem or concept are all valid and useful. Not only is this a fun, fast brainstorming technique, but it prepares a group for the next stages of idea generation too!

The Paper Clip Method

Even established and successful groups have preconceptions about brainstorming or how to generate ideas. Warming up a team by introducing the power of brainstorming practically can prevent stumbling blocks later on and ensure everyone is on the same page when approaching the brainstorming process.

The Paper Clip Method is a creative exercise that challenges your group to brainstorm all possible uses for a paper clip. After some silent brainstorming, debrief by sharing what the group has come up with and highlight how the group has cumulatively come up with a greater quality and quantity of ideas than any single person could.

Apple-Drawing Ideation

Learning how to approach creative brainstorming as a group is a worthwhile way to kick-off your idea generation workshop. In this simple creative game, split your participants into groups and invite them to take it in turns to fill a grid with drawings of apples, with the challenge that no apple can be the same as another. 

When the time is done or the grid is full, debrief and highlight some of key concepts for effective brainstorming including the fact quantity is a precursor to quality and that we should try to build on the ideas of others. This brainstorming game is flexible by design  and you can use it with something other than apples for a more practical application: e.g., draw 30 logos, write 30 taglines, draw 30 new cars.

Activities to support a brainstorming workshop

We’ve covered everything from fast and fun creative games to in-depth brainstorming techniques, but what about if you’re looking for ways to improve or kick start your brainstorming process? Preparing for a brainstorming workshop with research on inspiration collection can really help your team make the most of the upcoming session.

In this section, we’ll look at some techniques and methods you can use to inform, enable and improve your group brainstorm and bring better quality ideas to the table! 

Rapid Research

Like all effective workshops, idea generation sessions generally want to limit the number of participants in the room to ensure productivity. That said, ideas and insight can come from anywhere in an organisation and this brainstorming technique can tap into the expertise of people outside of the room.

Start by asking participants to think of a colleague or peer outside the room and call them to get a perspective on the topic or question at hand. For remote teams, you can arrange quick calls or use Slack or other tools to get quick and useful feedback. After collecting input, bring the group back together to share and document insights. You’ll be surprised at how quickly and effectively you can get a wide variety of useful information!

Lightning Demos

No idea is wholly original. Brainstorming is all about taking existing ideas and learning from others while also bringing our own insights to the table.

With this activity, you and your group will look for inspiration from how other organizations, products or thought leaders have solved or approached the problem or topic at hand. Invite participants to spend a little time gathering 2-3 examples before then presenting ideas back to the group. By the end of the exercise, you’ll have a set of ideas you can use as the basis for further discussion or idea development.

If you’re working online, collect demos in an online whiteboard and even explore the possibility of gathering inspiration before the workshop if your team has a busy schedule.

The Medici Effect

Great ideas can often come from sources outside of your own industry or field. The Medici Effect is inspired by Frans Johansson’s book The Medici Effect, which explores how game-changing ideas and breakthroughs can occur when concepts and ideas from one area are applied to another and used as the basis for innovation.

In this exercise, invite participants to find examples of how individuals from other fields have achieved their goals and come up with great ideas. Think of successful scientists, creatives, business owners, musicians, entrepreneurs, educators etc. have found success and what inspiration you and your team might take from them. If working online, encourage participants to include images, links and quotes so you can create an inspiration wall for further exploration of the problem you are trying to solve!

Brainstorming session templates

Are you looking to run a workshop or meeting where you need a complete group process to come up with ideas and turn those into actions? 

Check out the brainstorming session templates below to see how to build upon an initial brainstorming session with appropriate idea selection and prioritization tools to arrive at sound group decisions.!

Ideation Workshop

In this one-day workshop template, follow an entire ideation process from start to finish, going from brainstorming and idea generation through to idea development and pitching. Tap into concepts such as disruptive cases, future tech & trends and opposite thinking to create innovative ideas and empower your team!

One Hour Brain Sprint

Have imited time for group brainstorming? Try the One Hour Brain Sprint to generate ideas quickly and effectively, all while avoiding unproductive discussions and the pitfalls of some brainstorming approaches.

Remote Problem Solving Workshop

Want to solve problems with your remote team? This virtual workshop template includes several stages of ideation and development and provides a great example of how you might utilize lightning demos and research as a basis for experimental ideas and solutions.

What are the benefits of group brainstorming?

While the primary measure of success for a brainstorming workshop will be the quantity and quality of ideas generated, the benefits of this kind of session can go much further.

Establishing an ideation mindset and encouraging creative thinking will benefit your organization in the long term, and finding new ways to push your team in the direction of generating effective ideas has positive effects for your whole organization. Let’s see some of the benefits that can come from bringing team members together for a brainstorming session.

Encourage creativity 

Creative games and exercises can yield instant results when it comes to creatively engaging a team and generating ideas but beyond that, regular brainstorming can help participants be more creative in their regular work and find methods of finding new ideas and solutions that work for them. Being creative is a wonderful way to engage a group and getting out of a regular workflow can be the key that unlocks innovation.

Inclusive, easy-to-understand activities

Brainstorming is a simple group activity that is easy to understand and contribute to. Whatever skill level or competency a person has, the first stage of the idea generation process is something that can be involved in with little overhead or difficulty. This can have massive value in helping a team come together toward a shared goal in an inclusive and simple way!

Diverse ideas

Relying on certain teams or individuals to generate ideas alone can lead to stagnation. By pooling together a diverse group of people to contribute to generating and developing ideas, brainstorming can be a great way to find innovative approaches and diverse ways of thinking. Every point of view you bring to the table is another way of approaching the issue and the results generated by diverse groups are often more robust and multi-facted than those made in a silo.

Quantity of ideas

When it comes to brainstorming techniques, quantity often comes before quality. In order to find great ideas, a group first needs to flush out as many ideas as possible and share before moving onto idea development. The best brainstorming exercises encourage the creation of large amounts of ideas in a short period of time, providing a great foundation for the next steps! 

Get past creative blocks

Problem solving or idea generation can go around in circles if a team isn’t given the freedom to think creatively and approach things from a new angle. Brainstorming methods like those featured here are great ways to unblock a team’s creative and find new ways to approach stalled conversations.

Improve team morale

Brainstorm sessions are often fun and energetic by their nature, and games and exercises that focus on idea generation allow for everyone to contribute and feel heard as part of their team. These kinds of idea generation activities can really help bring a team together and improve team morale too – everyone wants to take part in developing new ideas and being creative!

Get project buy-in

Involving participants across departments and specialties early in the process by inviting them to contribute to generating and developing ideas can not only lead to great ideas but also ensure that a project is followed through on. Get buy-in early by involving stakeholders in early brainstorming sessions and help that creative energy continue throughout your project!

Kickstart projects with energy

The opening stages of a project can determine the tone for the rest of it, and by kicking off your projects with a fun, energetic brainstorming workshop, you can ensure everyone is energised for the work ahead. Try creative games to help your team approach the project with a sense of creativity and experimentation and use brainstorming techniques that see proven results to help move a team forward effectively.

Brainstorming sessions made simple

An effective brainstorming session means creating a balanced agenda of activities and group discussions while keeping everyone engaged.

With SessionLab, you drag, drop and reorder blocks to build your step-by-step agenda.

Your session timing adjusts automatically as you make changes and when you’re done, you can share a beautiful printout with your colleagues and participants.

Explore how facilitators use SessionLab to design effective workshops that create results or watch this five minute video to see the planner in action!

Over to you

Brainstorming can be simple or complex, visual or virtual, but whatever method you choose to use, the results should be the same – great ideas. Finding new ways to facilitate innovation is something we’re passionate about here at SessionLab, and we hope you find the above brainstorming techniques useful! 

Did we miss anything? Are there any great brainstorming or idea generation methods you’d like to add? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.