Top 9 icebreaker games for various events

Work meetings, virtual meetings, classes, business seminars and team building sessions are all events that, on paper, can help boost cooperation and share group knowledge. However, shyness, embarrassment, or simply a lack of dynamism at the start of the meeting or event can jeopardize the activity, the flow of ideas, and the quality of exchanges.

Fortunately, solutions exist! Starting a team meeting, group work session or class with an icebreaker game is a great way to break down psychological barriers, and create an atmosphere conducive to team building and healthy exchange. Because we are all big kids at heart, Wooclap will share with you here a list of the 9 best games to break the ice at your events, meetings, student seminars, classes, and work sessions!

Icebreaker games for work meetings and for students

A game at the start of a meeting, event or class, or at beginning of a school or university year will help ensure the necessary dynamism for effective collaboration, team work and student exchange. Depending on your specific goals, here we list some of our favorite icebreaker games for adults that your groups of participants, students, and teams will love.

Icebreakers to get to know each other

Participants will feel more comfortable discussing things once they have all gotten to know each other better. A great way to do this is with an icebreaker game!

1. Whose story is this? (in-person or virtual)

Ask each person to write a real story, whether a funny, embarrassing or unusual story, on a piece of paper, or via an interactive tool such as Wooclap. Then collect all the paper or virtual responses, and, with all the participants in a circle, read each story aloud. The circle must then guess which one of the participants or players experienced each story!

Discover Wooclap’s templates

1. Speed Meeting (will work best in-person)

Split the group of meeting participants or students into teams of 2 people, spread around the meeting space. Then give everybody around two minutes to exchange as much information as they can with their partner, whether professional, personal or academic information. After which, get all the participants, team members, students or players to switch pairs!

This activity is great if your meeting involves people from different teams, as it allows you to mix groups of work colleagues.

1. Two truths and a lie (in-person or virtual)

This is a classic fun game to play to break the ice. Players share with the group of colleagues or students three facts about their lives, two of which must be true, and one of which must be a lie. The other people in the group then have to guess which is the lie. Guess after guess, if the players don’t get it right, the player in question will then have to reveal the lie. And if one of the players gets it right immediately, they get to go next.

This is one of those icebreakers you can play year in year out with different students, teams, participants, and students, and it will always be a favorite!

Icebreakers to get people talking

1. Game of Quotes (in-person or virtual)

Before the meeting, work session or class, write some inspiring quotes on pieces of papers, up on a board, or on the virtual meeting screen. Each of the participants then chooses a quote and a person with whom to discuss it, until pairs are formed for all of the participants. Once a certain time has expired (say 2-3 minutes), people will have to draw another quote and choose another partner from the other participants.

Tip: Choose quotes related to your company culture or the specific topic of the meeting!

Discover more questions and icebreaker activities specifically for business meetings.

Icebreaker games for remote meetings

During a virtual meeting or video-conference, it is even more difficult to create connections with participants and team members. The meeting must therefore be made more dynamic and agile, so that participants feel involved from the very start of the meeting, and comfortable enough to speak and share their ideas.

A fun and original icebreaker is therefore a key step to create dynamism in your meeting, even remotely!

1. Game of Keys

Each of the participants must take their own set of keys, and present each of them at a time, for example, which is for the house, bicycle, car, a locker, or a friend or relative’s house, and why, and then share an anecdote in relation to one or more of the keys. The diversity of the keys allows the participants to learn about each other in perhaps fun and expected ways.

Start by presenting your own key-chain to inspire your team.

Discover other icebreaker activities for your remote meetings.

Icebreaker games for team building

In a team building session, the participants may already know each other to a certain extent. The team building must therefore be focused on learning new things about your work colleagues, or on creating new synergies through dynamic, fun ice-breaker games.

1. Find Your Word Pair Partner (in-person)

Prepare word pairs (e.g. salt and pepper, butter and jam, north and south, the mountains and the sea, yin and yang, heads and tails, love and hate, question and answer, circle and square), and write each word on a different piece paper or post-it. Attach one piece of paper to the backs of all the participants, without them seeing it.

The goal of this word game is to find out what word is written on your own back by asking closed questions to the other participants, that is, questions with yes or no answers only. Once the word has been guessed, you must then find your partner with the partner word using the same question technique! The first word pair to come together wins the game.

1. Treasure Hunt (in-person)

Prepare objects for participants to find in the room, and let them go hunting! You can ask them to bring back a cup of a certain color, a ballpoint pen, an unusual object for an office, or the book that no one would want to read, if you have a library. The first to bring back the object scores a point.

You can also spice up the activity by introducing a few more challenges, such as taking a photo with a passerby in the street, or a colleague from another team, or even bringing back something to eat!

Discover other icebreaker games for your team building activity!

10-minute max. icebreaker games

1. Name Game (5 mins, in-person or virtual)

Practical for introducing yourself to all the other participants of the meeting, this game is very quick and fun! Each of the participants has to introduce themselves in one sentence, giving their first name and a characteristic that rhymes with it, for example “My name is Chris, a fitness fanatic, I’m always on the move, and quite athletic”. Make sure you leave 2 minutes of reflection time for participants to come up with interesting ideas about their personalities!

1. This or that? (10 min, in-person)

This game invites participants to move around and create dynamism, while revealing differences of opinion in the group or team.

The idea is to draw an imaginary line across the room, and invite participants to place themselves to the right or left of this line depending on their preferences when presented with a choice of two ideas. These can start out with being extremely simple and innocent (e.g. Dog or cat? Tea or coffee? Town or countryside? Favorite time of year, winter or summer? Share a lottery win with people in my family, or keep it all for myself), then get more fun, deeper, or more meaningful (e.g. Night out with friends, or night-in on the sofa with the family? Shopping list, or find as you go? Love other people first, or love yourself first?).

Participants can then be asked to support or qualify their answers depending on their position in relation to the line! Finally, give the floor to participants to explain some of their choices, depending on the allotted time.

Check out our icebreaker templates

Icebreaker: best practices

The goal of an icebreaker activity for adults is to launch a meeting or group work session and make it more effective by creating a relaxed atmosphere for all the participants. To achieve this, it is best to pay attention to the following points:

• Choose a fun and original icebreaker: there are many, but take some time to select the one that will please your team the most, in order to create the best possible enthusiastic and positive work atmosphere.
• Adapt the icebreaker activity to the specific objectives of your meeting: should the goal be to encourage creativity and new ideas, or to help participants get to know each other better? Your choice of icebreaker will then follow from this.

Monitor the time and think about all the materials you will need: prepare everything you will need in advance, and set a schedule for the different parts of the activity and the rest of the meeting or event. Use one or more alarms, or countdowns to get the time just right!