The quiet before the wheel spins

You know that moment right after the coffee break, when everyone’s back at their tables but the energy’s still a bit flat? The small talk has run its course, and you can feel the polite distance between departments. I had a wheel up on the screen, just a simple circle with silly prompts. No one was quite sure what to expect.

When the first name landed

I clicked spin, and it landed on ‘Share a weird talent’. The name it picked was Sarah from accounting. There was a beat of silence, and then she just stood up and did this perfect impression of a seagull. It was so unexpected and so spot-on.The whole room just dissolved. That tight, professional atmosphere cracked open in an instant. It wasn't about Sarah ‘winning’ a game; it was about us all seeing a completely new, hilarious side of someone we only ever emailed about spreadsheets.

The laughter that wasn't at anyone

What followed was a chain reaction of these little revelations. ‘Describe your first job in three words’ had our lead developer admitting to ‘professional sandwich artist’. The shared laughter after each spin felt different—it was with people, not at them.There was no scoring, no teams, no pressure to be clever. The wheel was just the excuse, the permission slip to be a bit silly together. It removed the burden of having to come up with something to say, and just gave us something to react to, together.I remember looking around halfway through and seeing groups of people who barely interacted before, now leaning in, waiting for the next spin. The dynamic in the room had physically changed. The hierarchy of the org chart just evaporated for twenty minutes.

What was on the wheel

It was just a list of simple, open-ended prompts. Nothing that required skill or deep thought.