30 Icebreaker Questions for Work Meetings

💡 Tip
Don’t forget to give people enough time to think about their story and prepare for the short presentation. Tell your colleagues to bring an object aws icebreaker that has special meaning to them or that is tied to an exciting story. Give each group member 3-5 minutes to tell the rest of the group about it.

  • Ask everyone to take a photo of the view from their closest window.
  • They require minimal prep and can work for groups small and large.
  • So below, let’s look at 12 virtual icebreakers your team won’t hate.
  • This one is a great team-building activity that works great for small teams.
  • First, the organizer has to divide the members into two teams.
  • Three people must draw the head, torso and legs, respectively, without seeing what the person before them drew.

Based on that, you can pose questions about their favorite bands, their creative talent, and so on. This game is a great warm-up exercise before any meeting and makes a welcome addition to team icebreakers for virtual meetings. Additionally, it is one of the best ways for colleagues to interact casually by asking fun, personal questions.

Connect

You might find weird commonalities among the group, which is fun, but the real objective is to bring people together. This icebreaker quickly melts the hard exterior of unfamiliarity and builds partnership. Video conferencing apps allow you to pick creative backgrounds for your chats, and you can use them as a game. Ask your employees to pick their favorite movie, vacation place, animal, etc, as their background and see how the conversation flows. This is one of the most fun icebreakers for hybrid meetings.

  • If you try to force closeness with personal questions posed to meeting attendees who have never even met, it can create awkwardness and embarrassment instead.
  • Try to keep a good balance and use a variety of questions.
  • This icebreaker is a great way to get to know one another while having fun with the other team members.
  • Plus, in order for a meeting to be productive, there has to be an open and clear line of communication between participants.
  • If it’s the first meeting of the day, guests will still be shaking the sleep from their eyes, frantically slamming coffee, and trying to get their bearings.

Over Zoom, ask your large team members to put acronyms into a chat channel or say them over video chat. If you want to make this icebreaker more competitive, you can play it so that team members must race to say the acronym correctly first. The person who gets the most right first is then crowned the winner. If you’ve ever been to a child’s birthday party or been present at a school break time, you are likely to have played a thrilling game of Simon Says. As an adult, this game is just as simple as the ones 5-year-olds play (and it’s just as fun!).

Tips for running virtual icebreakers

Someone might show their dog’s favorite bandana because they’d never vacation without their pup. Another team member might reveal a bag of MnMs since they eat chocolate every day. Personalities, hobbies, and more will come to light and forge new friendships.

Thanks to this virtual icebreaker, you can see what other people have been up to and have experienced, and you can celebrate some of your top moments. There are many platforms and tools that make it easy to bring your team together. But the important thing is to do what makes your team feel excited and engaged. Poll your team about what sorts of activities they’d like to do or what they want others to know about them. The only rule is to have fun, stay engaged, and help others do the same. We’ve even divided these ice breakers into categories, so you can more easily choose what suits your team’s sensibility.

#5. In one word, how would you describe…?

With groups where trust is high, ask each team member to share one of the most recent photographs on their phone and tell a story about it. Get to know the other members of your team and share something interesting about yourself in this quick energiser activity. This one really only works if you’re using a web conferencing tool that allows you to upload images for backgrounds, such as Zoom or Google Meet.

Explore fun activities and tips for fostering team spirit. Discover the best practices and tips for building successful virtual teams. Enhance collaboration, communication & productivity in your remote workforce. Rhythm Systems has conducted hundreds of virtual strategic planning sessions, weekly meetings, annual planning, and quarterly planning sessions via Zoom calls. A virtual team icebreaker or a fun activity will help liven the meeting.

If everyone attending your event is from the same company, you can make the headline about the company—sorta a future vision statement. We played this one during our Swoogo offsite a couple years back, but you can turn it virtual pretty easily. Give shoutouts to some of your favorites to keep it interactive. Employees who feel they are listened to and recognized feel more valued — then become motivated to be more productive. If you don’t use Slack, Quizbreaker is a good alternative to the Icebreakers app.