The win: A fast, funny icebreaker that brings out some friendly competition and gets your team laughing before you get down to business.
Virtual Scattergories
This one works just as well virtually as it does in person, and it never gets old.
If your team has 5 or fewer people, play individually. If you have 6 or more, put people into pairs or triads before you start. Breakout rooms work perfectly for this.
How it works:
Step 1: Pick a letter.
- The facilitator chooses any letter of the alphabet, or let the wheel decide for you, like this Random Letter Generator. Avoid X, Q, and Z unless your team loves a challenge.
Step 2: Explain the rules.
- Players have 3 minutes to come up with one answer per question. Every answer must start with the chosen letter. You only score a point if nobody else gives the same answer.
Bonus: if your answer is a proper noun with alliteration (like “Candy Cane” for the letter C), you score one point per alliterating word.
Step 3: Share the 12 questions.
Put these in the chat or share your screen:
- Item that is frozen
- Television show
- Vegetable
- Something that is purple
- Type of sport
- Flavour of ice cream
- Reason a child is grounded
- Animal in a zoo
- Country
- Something found in a forest
- Colour
- Celebrity
Step 4: Start the timer.
- Give everyone/each team exactly 3 minutes to write their answers privately. If in pairs/triads use breakout rooms. No sharing yet!
Step 5: Reveal the answers.
- Go through each question one at a time and have everyone share. Any answer that two or more people give gets crossed off. Unique answers score a point.
Step 6: Crown the winner.
- Tally up the scores and give the top scorer a well-deserved virtual standing ovation.
The win: A reframe that will change how you see each of your team members.
The Checkers vs. Chess Problem on Your Team
Most leaders don’t intentionally treat their team like checkers pieces. It just happens. You get busy, you default to what’s efficient, and before long everyone is getting the same playbook: same meeting style, same feedback approach, same expectations about how work gets done.
It feels fair. But it’s actually costing you.
What “chess” leadership actually looks like
Buckingham’s research showed that the most effective leaders were deliberately flexible in how they led each person. They knew their team members’ strengths, worked around their weaknesses, and adjusted how they communicated, delegated, and developed each individual.
That’s the chess move.
It doesn’t mean you have different rules or standards for different people (that creates a trust problem pretty quickly). It means recognizing that getting the best out of someone who thrives working independently looks completely different than getting the best out of someone who does their best work with regular check-ins and collaboration.
The one conversation most leaders skip
Go back to the person you thought of while reading this. Now ask them:
“When do you feel like you’re doing your best work?
When do you feel like you’re working against yourself?”
Most people have never been asked this by their manager. The answers will tell you more than a performance review ever could.
You don’t need to overhaul how you lead your whole team overnight. Start with one conversation. Then do it again with the next person. That’s how checkers becomes chess.
Want to build a whole team of chess players?
This is one of the ideas we dig into in our Next-Level Teamwork workshop. It’s a practical, hands-on session that gives your leaders a shared language and real tools for unlocking what they’re capable of together.
With Leaders for Leaders, we learned strategies for better teamwork and developed concrete action steps to use back at work. I was blown away by what we achieved!
This was the missing piece we needed to take our company to the next level."
