Fun Things To Do At Meetings – Icebreakers can help teams get to know each other, increase creativity and improve team cohesion. Use these icebreakers to enhance your next virtual meeting.
In many industries, working from home and an evolving environment of hybrid, distributed or remote teams has become the norm.
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These changes bring many benefits to individuals as they navigate life and work – people spend fewer hours commuting and can focus on being effective first and foremost, rather than just being physically present. As a result, individual productivity has increased, but this comes at a price: team productivity has fallen.
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The most important element for better teamwork, both in person and at a distance, is connection. The more your teammates, colleagues or employees feel connected, the more effective and productive the group becomes.
When collaboration is an afterthought rather than a priority, the result is disconnection. Focusing on individual goals and achievements, as we’ve seen, can increase productivity on an individual level, but as many people are already physically isolated from their teams, fostering a sense of community and belonging is more important than ever.
Simply having more meetings is not the solution (it may even make the problem worse). The key is to incorporate intentional and meaningful collaborative experiences into your work. These experiences can take many forms, but a common (and effective) approach is to use icebreakers to get a meeting started.
An icebreaker is a meeting activity designed to foster a sense of community and build a bond between colleagues, students, or group members.
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Each approach can be as elaborate or simple as you like. If you’re short on time or resources, having a question in mind may be enough. If you have a larger team, activities or games are sometimes the best options, as they provide natural opportunities to break up into smaller teams or sub-groups.
Below are 25 examples of icebreakers you can use to kickstart a (more impactful) virtual meeting:
These questions can help people open up, get to know each other, and spark further discussion (and even friendships) later on.
If you’re starting a virtual meeting with a new team, chances are you’re not all in the same city or region (or even country). Have participants describe the town or village where they live and name something they find iconic about that place.
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Have everyone introduce themselves and give a 30 second pitch for their favorite movie, show or book. Did you know that your new product manager loved Film Noir for the underlying structure that mysteries provide for both the story and the viewer? No? Well, now you do – and you’ve learned a bit about how she thinks, too.
For this exercise, have your team introduce themselves and then describe a dish they love and what it means to them. This is an easy way to get people talking, and it offers new insights into people’s personal histories, likes and dislikes, and even ways of working. Also, a shared digital space can make this even more appealing and even more educational (new recipes, anyone?).
Ask your team to choose one or more superpowers (usually one, to keep it short) that they wish they had to help them understand each other’s values and approaches to work. You could also link this to an existing superhero, or even a feature film (since most seem to be about superheroes these days).
Ask each of your team members to share what they did in their first job, and (of course) bonus points for any funny stories that come with it. (Did you know that the “E” in Chuck E. Cheese stands for “Entertainment?” You’re welcome.)
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When starting relationships, it can be good to learn familiar ways of referring to each other (while waiting for comfort zones, of course), and the backstory angle adds a twist that can be fun and unexpected. Let everyone introduce themselves, then share their nicknames and the backstories that go with them.
People sometimes have some pretty original ideas on how to do this! It’s also a light-hearted and unobtrusive way to kick things off with potentially funny results. Ask everyone to introduce themselves, then encourage them to share a unique method for escaping the hiccups – you never quite know who you’ll be helping along the way!
This gives teammates a way to share a personal (and probably funny) story without much risk, and gives everyone a chance to talk about not only themselves, but their friends as well. Have everyone introduce themselves, then tell a short (1-2 minute) origin story behind one of their friendships.
Pretty much everyone has played video games at some point in their life (guilty), so it’s a pretty safe bet. Bonus points if you’re familiar with the classics (and by that I mean NBA Jam and Crash Bandicoot, of course).
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Anyone remember parachute pants? The only risk with this one is that some people are more sensitive than others to revealing their (approximate) age, but beyond that the results are often hilarious. Use your discretion.
Again, there’s a slight risk of people being uncomfortable about their age here, but our experience is that many people love the ability to reminisce – a good follow-up question is what format. (Vinyl is back! But then my first album was on a cassette tape – not back yet…)
Ask your teammates to share the celebrity people say they’re most like, and include an image reference if possible. A visual platform also allows you to gamify the experience by allowing everyone to vote anonymously for the most compelling doppelgänger.
This can be a fun way to introduce favorite types of music, with potentially hilarious results. It has also been shown that singing provides rapid social bonding. Bonus points if people have good stories about why they chose their songs – or particularly memorable performances.
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It’s hard to predict, but this one could potentially get interesting, so our advice is to only use with established teams. Given that there are so many ways to interpret emojis (and, in fact, those interpretations often change by demographic), this exercise can also be useful for resolving potential miscommunication within your team on platforms such as Slack or other tools where emoji reactions have become ubiquitous.
One thing that can be a good icebreaker is developing strategies for working together in an open and informal way. Activities allow team members to collaborate in a form that is light-hearted yet impactful.
Short introductions are a good way to take the pressure off getting to know each other and setting expectations. For brevity’s sake, it’s best to break it down into simple categories like first name, last name, and one fact about each person.
Collaborating on a team charter is a great way to learn about teammates and establish ground rules of engagement. Define things like: What is the best way to get in touch? Do you prefer to work asynchronously or would you rather make an appointment? How are you used to working with teammates? How have you dealt with this in your past experiences?
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We recommend using a visual medium, such as the Hybrid Team Charter Template, to help teammates better understand their virtual and physical workspaces, as well as more information about time zones for synchronous and asynchronous communication.
This activity focuses on sharing the space around you. Have everyone introduce themselves, then choose an aspect of their workspace that is important to them.
Note: Using a visual platform that can display still images instead of live video can reduce potential discomfort during a team meeting. It can also educate colleagues about ways of collaborating and work styles that can build empathy and spark conversation.
It’s a thin line (so it’s best to have some guidelines up front, like “fit for the job” for stories), but when people share personal stories, it gives diverse groups an instant insight into their peers’ experiences and promotes empathy and understanding that has measurable, positive effects on team creativity. When people introduce themselves, ask them to choose a 1-2 minute anecdote that embarrassed them in the past and what they learned from the experience.
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This one is a throwback to elementary school – but it’s still fun! Have everyone choose an item to share with the group, and allocate 1-2 minutes per person to keep things moving. Questions and background stories encouraged!
Pro Tip: If you want to add more visual interest to this activity, you can use the (free) Show and Tell template and have all your meeting participants submit photos before the meeting starts.
Want to ask more to break the ice? Check out these 100 icebreaker questions to get the conversation started.Icebreaker games for virtual meetings
Sometimes a little (unserious) competition can be a great way to build camaraderie — here are a few of our favorite icebreakers
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