The awkward silence after the meeting

We’d just wrapped up the quarterly review, and the projector was off. The usual small talk had fizzled out, leaving a dozen of us hovering near the empty coffee station. It was that specific kind of quiet where you can hear the hum of the fridge.

When the conversation just stops

Someone was checking their phone. Another person was intently studying the fire escape map on the wall. I’d been in that exact spot before, feeling the weight of the silence settle over the room. It wasn’t uncomfortable, exactly, but it was static.I remembered a list I’d jotted down once, just silly little prompts. Nothing with complicated rules or setup. The goal wasn’t to be the funniest or most creative person, but just to give the group a nudge in a different direction.

A shared glance and a shrug

I pulled out my phone and opened the wheel app, tapping in a few of those old ideas. Maria from marketing caught my eye and gave a curious half-smile. I just held it up with a shrug that said, ‘Worth a shot?’We spun it. The pointer landed on something simple. The first person to speak just went with it, and the response wasn’t laughter so much as a collective, relieved exhale. The dynamic in the room shifted from ‘what now?’ to ‘oh, this.’

The moment it clicked

It wasn’t about the game itself. It was about the permission it gave everyone to stop being ‘colleagues in a post-meeting lull’ and just be people sharing a weird, spontaneous moment.

Leaving the quiet behind

We only did a couple of spins before people naturally broke off into smaller conversations, or headed back to their desks. The silence was gone, replaced by the low murmur of actual talk. The wheel had done its job—it was just a bridge.Later, Sarah from accounting mentioned she’d actually learned something new about the guy from IT. It was a tiny connection, the kind that makes the next awkward silence a little less likely, or at least a little less heavy.