The silence after asking for a volunteer

You know the moment. You’ve just explained the next task, and you ask who wants to kick things off. The silence stretches out, just long enough for the awkwardness to settle in. You can almost hear the collective thought: "Not me." It’s not that people are unwilling; it’s just that nobody wants to be the one to decide.

Finding a different starting point

I realized my job wasn't to assign the task, but to remove the friction of the choice itself. The pressure of volunteering, of putting your hand up first, can feel strangely high-stakes in a low-stakes moment. It creates a tiny barrier that has nothing to do with the work and everything to do with social dynamics.So, I stopped asking. Instead, I’d pull up a simple wheel spinner on my screen, filled with everyone’s name. I’d say something like, "Alright, let's see who gets the honor of starting us off." The shift was immediate. The tension dissolved into a bit of light anticipation.

When the wheel decides

There’s a shared relief when the selection is random. It feels fair, almost like a game of chance. The person it lands on isn't singled out by the manager or by their own boldness; they're just the one the wheel picked. It removes any implied judgment from the equation.It also has this funny way of building a tiny bit of camaraderie. You get a little cheer for the "winner," a shared laugh if it lands on the same person twice. It turns a procedural hurdle into a quick, neutral moment we all experience together. The work starts after that, but it starts on a different, more level footing.

A simple list of tasks

For those warm-up rounds, I’d use the wheel for more than just picking a person. I’d load it with simple, low-pressure prompts to get the conversation flowing. Things that felt more like a game than a report.