45 of the best ice breakers for work meetings
06.12.2024 • 4 minutes
How do you start a meeting with the teams, colleagues, clients or groups of customers? Getting stuck straight into the heart of the matter, when everyone doesn’t know each other yet, isn’t always the best idea. This is precisely why icebreakers exist! To help people learn about each other, start building a rapport, and help grease the wheels of the meeting, whether it is in person or virtual.
Here is our selection of some of the best icebreakers for team meetings that will break the ice and help you start building rapport and fruitful exchange.
45 of the best ice breakers for work meetings
Why use ice breakers at work for a meeting?
Plan your ice breaker activities
Icebreaker activities with clients and customers
Why use ice breakers for meetings?
Not everyone has the ability to feel comfortable from the start of a team meeting, work meeting or workshop. Whether it’s a lack of familiarity, personal differences, shyness or even boredom, speaking up at a meeting doesn’t come to everyone naturally, so it’s a great idea to get the ball rolling with a less serious topic! This is where meeting icebreakers come into play.
Plan your ice breaker activities
The most important thing for an ice breaker for team meetings is not so much its subject as its organization! Whether using an interactive, online tool such as Wooclap, or physical materials, such as a board and some paper, you will need to make sure of the following:
- Explain the principle of the team ice breaker
- Set a response time adapted to your chosen ice breaker
- Show each response, so that everyone has an overall idea of how it’s going
- Encourage your group of participants to feel free to share and express themselves fully.
Ice breakers for meetings
Sample icebreaker questions
- What is legal but you think shouldn’t be?
- What details always bother you in a movie?
- What is a favorite book or article that you have read and want to share with the room?
- What is your favorite item of traditional clothing? Would you come to the office wearing it?
- When you prepare a presentation, are you the type of person to put lots of colors into it?
- Do you know your multiplication tables perfectly?
- What is your favorite thing to do while riding on public transportation?
- What is the one thing one should avoid doing at your parents’ house?
- What is the latest idea you had that someone completely lampooned?
- Where do you dream of retiring to?
- What ringtone or music do you set for your morning alarm?
- What one thing would you banish for eternity to Room 101?
Need to lead a team building activity? Check out our team building ice breakers!
Icebreaker games for meeting
Games are a great way to break the ice by getting people to have fun and share things about themselves. And they needn’t take up too much time, something like just a few minutes.
Fun fact questions
Our interests and our ability to remember surprising things can serve as a great way to break the ice at the start of a meeting, whether in person or virtually. One fun ice breaker to play is when the people in a team meeting have to choose or find one or more fun facts to tell the others, whether in the form of a question, a list of questions, or simply information to share. History, science, geopolitics: anything can work!
Quick-fire questions
Before the event, create a short list of simple, fun questions for people to answer as quickly as possible. The interviewer has to deliver the questions quickly, and continue just as soon as an answer has been given. You can also time each interview, to determine which was the fastest. At the end, you can discuss the answers given, if you still remember any of them!
Discover more ice breaker games for meetings!
Icebreaker activities with clients and customers
Sample icebreaker questions
- Do you have a personalized mug for the office or home? If so, what’s written or depicted on it?
- Which animal species seems the strangest to you? Why?
- What musical instrument do you hate? Why?
- Do you have a remedy or trick that your grandmother or a parent taught you and works every time?
- What is your favorite historical or cultural anecdote? Why?
- What’s your best tip for keeping focused at work?
- What’s the craziest gadget you own?
- Who is the teacher who had the most impact on you and made you learn the most? Why?
- What kind of video or movie always makes you smile?
- Do you sort your photos into folders on your cell phone? Into how many folders or sub-folders?
- What’s your favorite word and why?
- What’s one thing you think others would never ever guess about you or your life?
Icebreaker games
GIF game
Decide on an icebreaker topic and then ask people to find the best GIF to describe it, whether it’s the most appropriate, or the funniest. After a few minutes of looking for the right one, everyone should have found a GIF to share with the rest of the group or team! This also works great in virtual remote meetings. To choose the subject of your icebreaker GIF competition, you might think of a joint work or team project, a significant aspect of the company, a current event at the time, or so on. This is also a great way to kick off a team building exercise or workshop on a specific work topic.
Create your own logo game
This ice breaker game is simple to play, but will require a fair bit of imagination, and some basic drawing skills from your meeting participants, group or team. Everyone has to draw the logo that best represents them, as if they were a brand or a company. After a few minutes of reflection and drawing, everyone should show their work and explain or question the choices behind it.
Word association game
Get one of the meeting participants to start with a word, and every next person will take turns to say the first thing that comes to mind. Then, see where it all takes you!
Two truths and a lie game
This is a simple game that is a lot of fun. Share three statements about yourself or your life: two true and one false. Then the rest of the group will have to guess which one is the lie. People are always surprised what others are willing believe!
Scavenger hunt
This is a great game that gets people to be physically active while they learn more about each other, and can also be used in a virtual remote meeting. Split your participants or group into smaller teams and give each team a list of items to find around their homes or offices. The first team to complete the list wins the game!
Find more ice breakers for students!
Ice breakers to start a workshop
Sample icebreaker questions
- What is the one thing that makes you angry the quickest?
- When you’re going down the street, what’s the one thing you always stop for, other than a red light?
- If you could sing in the voice of any famous singer, who would it be?
- How well do you know the town where you were born, or do you need Google Maps to find your way around?
- Are you more of a sandy beach, pebble beach, or rocky beach person? Why?
- What dish do you cook best?
- Do you like taking care of other people’s children?
- If you could create your dream job, what would the job description be?
- In your opinion, what rule or law should be introduced to make society better?
- Do you normally take off your shoes when you enter someone’s house?
Other icebreakers for meetings
Rorschach-style ice breaker
Put up some images from the famous Rorschach test and ask your meeting participants to say what they make of them. You could choose to replace the images with some artwork or groups of photos that are cryptic enough to elicit different responses.
Anonymous anecdotes
Using the “Once, I…” model, invite each person to write down on a piece of paper an amazing activity they have done or thing they have experienced. Shuffle the pieces of paper, draw the first one out at random, and read it out to the group of participants. Then the game is to find the person the activity or experience corresponds to, and so on with the other pieces. It’s a great way to find things in common!
Life lessons
This team building icebreaker activity is a great way to start building trust and respect between team members and meeting participants, and to really get them to listen and learn about each other. Ask your team or meeting participants to share the best piece of advice they’ve ever received in their career or life. Hearing about the inspirations of other people, not only allows your meeting to participants learn about each other, but can also help them learn about themselves, and find new inspirations for work and life.
Time travel
Ask your meeting participants to share where and when they would travel to, if they could travel anywhere in time or space, and whether they would try to change anything, and why. Maybe they will have a whole list of things they would change about their own life, or about other things to help make the world a better place for all people.
Find ice breaker ideas for your virtual meetings
Final tips for mastering the art of work ice breakers
Icebreaker activities help create a meeting climate favorable to free professional exchanges and boost collaboration, but they must be set up in the right manner to reap all their benefits. For your team ice breaker, you will therefore need to be careful to:
- Choose an ice breaker suited to the situation and your specific audience
- Choose the best time limit for the chosen ice breaker activity
- Not ask questions or suggest activities that might make certain people uncomfortable
- Use the media and materials best adapted to your icebreaker activity, so as to keep you participants engaged and stimulated!
- Remember that the best icebreakers are those that truly break the ice to help people relax, have fun, and get to know each other better.
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The Wooclap team
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