As a remote company, watercooler conversations and the resulting connection between teammates are difficult to come by. [Sue Odio](https://sueodio.com) introduced check-in questions as a standard part of our meetings to get some of that connection back for our team. For the first 10% of the meeting (e.g., 3 mins of a 30-min meeting), we go around the room and everybody answers a random icebreaker question. We made a Slack bot that we can trigger to get one, but there are many collections of them online that you can look up. Learnings: - Personal-yet-not-too-personal questions work best. - Work-related questions generally don't work well. - Instead of phrasing questions as extremes ("your favorite," "the worst," etc.), phrase them as "one of." Asking for a single response ("your favorite") makes the question more difficult to answer, and people tend to go "Phew my favorite hmm I have to think about that…" - For example, instead of asking "Who is your favorite sports player?" ask "Who is a sports player that you love?" Examples: - Great: "Which of your teachers left an impression on you?" - Too personal: "What's your biggest regret?" - Too work-oriented: "What do you think about working at this company?" *Related: [[Recurring meeting notes (Template)]]*