Warm up everyone’s active thinking muscles before your big meeting with a thought experiment icebreaker. Thought experiments prep people to challenge assumptions and status quos and to think outside the box. This icebreaker will be especially helpful before a brainstorming session.
And if you want better meetings, you MUST send this article to your meeting planner. I’m going to convince you to upgrade the age-old icebreaker. Family, friends, interests, passions, and one’s work history are safe small-talk subjects for any crowd.
Game closure activity-Three words
Encourage everyone to reach out to you via email or instant message with one word that describes an office hero they work with or have worked with. Your team members might attend trivia night in their hometowns or play it with their families. Get everyone to mention a topic they could excel at in a trivia contest. The team will instantly get to know each other, and you can collect topic ideas for a team trivia challenge later in the year. Prompt your coworkers to get to know each other better by describing their hometowns or nearest city.
Our personal favorite trivia variants test your knowledge of different pop culture eras, from the 60s through the 10s. Older guests might have tuned out after Kurt Cobain died, and never even heard of Drake. Your younger guests probably know which Paul brother is which—but they might not know why Fleetwood Mac imploded. If you already know the people you’re meeting with, and want conversation to flow, crack open an afternoon beer or a glass of wine. Encourage your guests who work from home to give a 15-second home office tour, and share what their workspaces look like, chaos and all. Invite them to share a quick fact about the city, state or country they live in, too.
FAQ: Virtual icebreakers
Encourage everyone to talk about a board game they loved playing as a kid. There are likely a few people who have forgotten about that will come back to mind as a pleasant surprise. Flip the typical conversation on its head by asking everyone https://remotemode.net/ to name a song they always skip if it comes on the radio. You’ll get to know everyone while people playfully defend their favorite artists. Most people love talking about when they interacted with or were close to a celebrity.
- The person answering most birthdays correctly wins the game.
- Create an abbreviation using your company’s mission statement or your team’s name before writing it on a whiteboard so everyone can take turns guessing.
- To play this game, each participant shares three sentences about themselves.
- Check out these examples for productivity boosting ice breakers.
Once participants have their prompts, give them a set amount of time to write. At the end of the time, go around and have each team member read their stories aloud. Scavenger hunts are fun icebreakers that promote quick thinking and build lasting memories. Zoo Line-up is one of the most creative icebreaker ideas for Zoom meetings.
Pick a Dream Airbnb
It involves dealing with various challenges, finding codes, and completing puzzles in order to “get out of the room”. Before your next all-hands or town hall meeting, set a theme and ask your colleagues to pick a virtual background image that, for them, represents it best. Get to know your colleagues a little better, and take a sneak-peek into their home work stations. We’ve all been there – the start of a virtual or hybrid meeting where there’s an awkward silence. But this can be a thing of the past when you introduce the humble icebreaker to get people talking and loosen them up.
- There are a total of 16 different Myers Briggs personality types, and sharing yours can be a fun way to find someone who has the same personality type as you.
- We’ve done the research for you by compiling the ultimate list of fun and thoughtful icebreaker questions to bring to your next virtual meeting.
- There are many free websites for workplace Family Feud competitions.
- Everyone can mention the top thing on their bucket list they haven’t done or have done to get to know each other.
- They are great for building relationships, warming up groups and establishing connections among remote teams.
- This is an easy way to get people talking, and again offers insight into people’s personal history, likes and dislikes, and even ways of working.
Virtual team ice breakers can also be effective ways to catch up and save time later in the meeting. A quick check-in round can help surface issues, wins and potential discussion points. They can also help set expectations and ensure alignment before the group moves forward. Using icebreaker questions at the beginning of virtual calls is one of the best ways to create a relaxed environment for your team. Each approach can be as elaborate or as simple as you like — if you’re short on time or have a large group, just having a question in mind can do the trick. If you have a larger team, activities or games are sometimes the best options since they will allow for natural opportunities to break out into smaller teams or subgroups.
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