How To Engage A Virtual Team | Panic Picture Activity

How to Engage a Virtual Team: Panic Picture Activity

Spark Your Team’s Memory and Increase Connection with this Rapid-Fire Exercise

In this chapter, I’m going to show you how to lead a really fun activity I adapted from an idea a client gave me. The exercise is called Panic Picture. It’s a great, fast-paced way to increase engagement, spark some laughter and create connection on your virtual team. 

You can take what you learn, adapt that and lead the activity yourself. Or you can jump ahead to the Getting Started section below, and read how I might facilitate this exercise for your group. (You could also read it over ahead of time, then adapt my framing and directions to suit your context.)

For this exercise, I use a deck of We! Engage Cards that we created, and you can do the same. The cards have images on one side and quotes on the other. It’s a super useful deck that supports tons of activities to engage your team in person and virtually. You can purchase the deck or access a free digital version at www.weand.me/free. You can also adapt the exercise to use objects and images around your home or office.

Now we’re ready. Below in italics is the actual phrasing I might use when speaking to a group to help frame and lead this exercise. In between, there are some facilitator notes that offer helpful variations or ideas as well. 

Getting Started

When playing Panic Picture, your only goal as a group is to score the maximum number of points. You can score up to 10. You score a point every time somebody unmutes within a five-second window to share a story sparked by the image shared.

Before we get into it, I’ll give you an example of how you can score a point. I might hold up an image from the We! Engage deck of one scuba diver assisting another. Somebody needs to unmute within five seconds—since we’re going to be switching images that frequently—to share a story or memory sparked by the image. I might tell you about the time I almost got my entire arm stuck under a rock reaching for a lobster while scuba diving in Massachusetts. 

If somebody unmutes within that five seconds and shares a story, your group gets a point. If, however, I flip to the next picture before anybody unmutes to share a story, you can’t get that point.

We’ll go through 10 images. (See the list below, and have your cards ready.) You can hold up the We! Engage Cards I describe—or others—as we go along. 

Note: To actually see the images listed below and watch a video of me leading this exercise virtually, go to www.weand.me/engage.

• 1: coffee. Did anyone unmute within five seconds to share a story inspired by this image? Pause only for shared memories. Then hold up each subsequent image in rapid succession—every five seconds—until you run through 10.
• 2: a hot air balloon
• 3: a sheet of music on a lectern in a concert hall
• 4: Earth as seen from the moon
• 5: a van on a dirt road, driving off into the sunset
• 6: a person dwarfed by a sequoia tree
• 7: a dog (a Weimaraner) 
• 8: a zebra
  
• 9: colored pencils
• 10: a couple holding hands

Alright, how many points did you get? If you got 10 points, lovely. If you want to go through this exercise again at any time, you can use 10 other images. 

There are 50 images in the We! Engage Cards—the free digital version and the actual physical deck. You can also do Panic Picture with objects.

Sparking Memories and Connection

The idea with Panic Picture is that visuals cue our memory. These images act like a key that opens a file cabinet of life experiences, stories and moments. You could just gather 10 objects from around your house, and hold them up to repeat this activity. 

If the group didn’t get 10 points this time, feel free to try the activity at another meeting to see if they can get the maximum score. If you want an added challenge, switch the pictures every two seconds, rather than every five. And if your goal is deeper connection rather than a simple, engaging energizer, you could invite people to share more in-depth stories as well. 

I hope Panic Picture gets your meeting off to a beautiful start. Maybe it will serve as an exciting interruption during your virtual conference. Or perhaps it’ll become a welcome way to mix up regular all-staff meetings. 

You can use activities like this one, which are geared toward engaging your virtual team, to decrease boredom and exhaustion. That’ll ensure you can end your virtual meetings feeling energized and not fried.