To begin a meeting with a check-in question is a great and easy way to build a human connection. A lot of teams do emotional check-ins to understand how everyone is doing at the moment. A check-in question always has the potential to make us feel more energized, connected, have fun and be more inspired.
If you do a check-in already but use the same question over and over again, it can feel repetitive and boring, and you probably feel annoyed and bored.
To save your check-in question, we put together a list of 52 questions you can use at the beginning of a meeting. 52 because, well, the year has 52 weeks:)
We use a lot of those questions ourselves in team sessions and vouch for all of them. Some of these questions might sound strange and crazy to you. We do encourage you, though, to ask the ones you are most hesitant and curious to ask. In our experience, they are often the ones that bring everyone closer together in an instant.
A. creative questions
1. What was a moment last week when you felt inspired?
2. Which color do you represent right now and why?
3. What has been your favorite color as a kid vs. today?
4. What is your favorite song at the moment?
5. If you could be a building, which one would you be and why?
6. What’s your favorite Bill Murray movie and why?
7. If you could be a bird, where would you like to fly and look down?
8. If you had zero obligations & money was not an obstacle, what would you do today?
9. If you could be a melody/song, which one would you be and why?
10. What are your thoughts looking like when you are daydreaming?
11. If you could be another person, who would you like to be for 1 day & who for 1 year?
12. If you were an object, what would you be today?
13. Imagine you could be an animal today, what would you like to be?
14. What has been the best Christmas/Birthday gift you have ever gotten? Why?
15. When was the last time you were really creative? What could you do today to be that creative?
16. Imagine you have supernatural powers: What would you do with them right now?
17. When was the last time you left the house without your mobile phone, and what did you do that day?
B. a mix of questions
18. What is your favorite food and why?
19. What is your relationship to yogurt? :)
20. What did you have for breakfast/lunch?
21. How did you come here today? e.g. bike, foot, plane, out of bed:)
22. If you don’t have to be here, where would you rather be?
23. If you look at your team from a bird's view, what do you see?
24. What is a question you have on your mind these days?
25. What is your favorite feature of your product? Why?
26. What is your favorite part of your service? What do you like about your product?
27. What does success mean to you today? (success can be switched to other words)
28. What is one thing you are looking forward to on the weekend?
C. meeting-related questions
29. What needs to happen that you say at the end of the meeting, this meeting was successful?
30. What are three things that could make this meeting valuable/successful to you?
31. What are you willing to do to turn this meeting into a great meeting?
32. What would you need from others to make this meeting successful?
33. What is blocking you at the moment?
34. What do you bring to the table today?
D. questions related to emotions
35. What is your inner weather like?
36. How does your mind, body, heart feel at the moment?
37. What color do you feel like today?
38. Which shape describes your state of being at the moment?
39. What is alive in you at the moment?
40. Why did you get up this morning?
41. Why are you here?
42. Why do you do what you do?
43. What are you grateful for right at this moment?
44. What’s the nicest thing you could say to another person today?
45. When was the last time you said: “I love you”?
46. When was the last time you laughed so hard that you cried?
47. What’s one thing you would like to do in your lifetime, but are afraid to do?
48. What is your biggest challenge at the moment?
49. What are you proud of about yourself?
50. When was the last time you were positively surprised about something?
51. What fuels you at the moment?
52. Which emotion would you like to embrace more and why?
Life’s short. Now, go out, hug a tree and live life to the fullest. :)
or read up on our list of 50 questions to end your meeting with here.
If you have more questions about meetings, please reach out and let us help you. We believe our time is way too precious to spend it in bad and boring meetings.