71 Great Check-In Questions For Engaging Meetings

We often hear about how meetings should be trimmed and cut to ensure they are productive and efficient. However, it’s important not to go overboard. Meetings are still human interactions and a great opportunity to better get to know the people we work with.

Check-in questions are great conversation icebreakers, but they can be much more. In this post, we will look at some of the best check-in questions that can help you start any meeting on the right foot.

What is a check-in question?

Meeting check-in questions are quick questions asked at the start of a meeting before diving into the agenda and topics of the day. Check-in questions help get the conversation started, get all participants on the right wavelength, and are essential to gauge attendees’ moods and expectations.

Different meetings and projects require different check-in questions. In some cases, you might be looking to get a feel for the mood of individual team members, while in others, you might be looking to validate whether action items have been completed or interact with the whole team. Whatever the type of meeting, check-in questions are always a good idea and a great starting point for any meeting agenda.

The best check-in questions by meeting type

Icebreaker questions for any meeting

Icebreaker questions are the most versatile check-in meeting questions. They can work for any meeting, from project management follow-ups and status update meetings that usually have very low employee engagement to creative brainstorming sessions and daily stand-up meetings.

While they are easy to come up with, we suggest you keep a list of your favorite ones or those you found most effective, as they can come in handy even when not planned.

Here are some of what we consider the best icebreaker questions you can ask in virtually any scenario:

• What superpower do you consider the most useful/useless?
• What’s the most binge-worthy tv show?
• What’s your favorite karaoke song?
• Can you share the best piece of advice you have ever received?
• What’s the last song you listened to, and where were you?
• What’s your favorite podcast, and why?
• You’ve been designated team chef for the day. What’s on the menu?
• What emoji best represents you right now?
• If you had to choose one food to eat for the rest of your life, what would it be?
• What would your first trip be if you had access to a time machine?
• What’s your favorite theme song?
• What’s your favorite way to spend time when on vacation?
• What’s a productivity tool you cannot live without?
• What’s the funniest memory from high school you can share?
• If you could pick a fictional character as a teammate, who would it be, and why?
• What’s a fashion trend you cannot stand/love?
• Would you rather... (this one is for you to complete)

One-on-one meeting questions

As we mentioned, the right questions can help build rapport and make people feel cared for. Still, they also bring work-related issues or work-life balance concerns to light. Knowing the right check-in questions to ask a direct report can be crucial to building a strong relationship that promotes both productivity and well-being.

Here are some of the best one-on-one questions you can ask:

• What’s something you’ve recently learned about yourself?
• What’s something you never got around to doing?
• What is something that makes you proud?
• What have been the most exciting aspects of work recently?
• What was the biggest lesson you learned since our last check-in?
• How are you working towards improving yourself?
• How would you like your role to develop in the short, medium and long term?
• How can we help you grow?
• What tools do you feel you are missing to tackle blockers in your day-to-day work?
• What quick wins would you go for if you were in charge of the team?
• How would you describe your current mindset?
• When do you feel the most/least productive?
• What are three things you feel very positive/negative about?
• How do you feel about the team?
• What do you think about our company culture and work environment?
• How would you improve our company culture?
• Do you feel you have the support you need?
• Are you happy in your current position?
• How do you feel about your current path, and what are your career goals?
• What could be improved about your role?

Team meeting questions

Team meetings are an excellent opportunity to build tighter bonds between people who often work together and boost team morale. Celebrating team wins and milestones are valuable tools to create deep connections that make teamwork efficient. Still, well-thought check-in questions can be an equally important asset.

Here are our favorite team-building questions:

• What’s the most significant issue affecting the team right now?
• Who is the teammate you would like to show appreciation for today?
• What do we do best?
• What don’t we do that well?
• What would you like to learn from another team member?
• Give one suggestion that will help improve our communication
• What’s one example of recent improvements that worked?
• What are the most significant bottlenecks in your work processes?
• What is your “work superpower“?
• What team-building activities would you like to do, and how can we improve team bonding?
• How can we be more ready for unexpected disruptions?
• How can we better show appreciation for each other?

Daily stand-up questions

Similar to team meetings in many ways, daily stand-ups are unique in their frequent recurrence, short duration, and focus on tasks and practicalities. Given their brief nature, the best team check-in questions for meetings like these relate to the project or tasks the team is working on. 

Here are our favorite daily stand-up questions

• How are you going to spend your lunch break today?
• What are you looking forward to at the end of the workday?
• How can the team help you today?
• What deliverables will you be focusing on today?
• What are you excited about today?
• What will help you focus today?
• How will you end the day better than you started it?
• What challenges will you face today?
• What is your current workload?
• What is your priority for today?
• What self-care actions will you take today?

Remote meeting questions

Remote teams often face different challenges than traditional ones, when it comes to building relationships and team bonding. While most questions can be used effectively for all meetings, some might work best for remote calls specifically.

Here’s a list of fun icebreaker questions to ensure your Zoom calls are covered:

• Tell us about what’s in the background of your video.
• What’s perfectly normal where you live but might be considered weird in other places?
• What’s the view from outside your window?
• What do you do to separate work from personal time?
• What’s the most significant benefit of WFH to you?
• What do you miss about the office?
• What’s your go-to WFH snack?
• What are you missing in your current work setup?
• Where are you right now?
• What is your home desk like?
• What’s a hobby you were able to pick up thanks to WFH?

Become an employee engagement wizard with Deel

Check-in questions for meetings are a small but fundamental tool to ensure you know your employees and teammates better. They can help build the best environment for people to thrive in, but they are just one tool out of many that team leaders and facilitators should use.

Deel offers a host of tools that can help you improve the work environment. With Connections, you can bring the positive effects of check-in questions outside of meetings with virtual water cooler topics, interest groups, and roulette-style meetups that will help people get to know each other better and engage more.

Book a demo today to discover the full range of Deel HR products.