In any meeting, there are bound to be awkward moments. Icebreaker questions can help break the silence and get people talking in a fun and engaging way.
They are also a great way to add a little humor and lighten the mood in virtual meetings. Here are some good icebreaker questions to start your next team meeting off on the right foot.
- Get to Know You Questions
Icebreaker questions that allow for self-expression and have no right or wrong answers help teams feel safe sharing personal details about themselves. They also reveal team members’ interests and values. These kinds of questions are useful for establishing psychological safety in team meetings, especially when the group is meeting for the first time.
For example, the question “What is your favorite food?” allows teammates to express their love of cooking or their dislike of broccoli without feeling judgment. It can be a great way to start a conversation about healthy eating habits and how food is a source of joy in people’s lives.
These types of questions can also be used for fostering connection in virtual work meetings. Make sure the meeting schedule and room settings allow for enough time for everyone to participate in the question-and-answer process. For instance, a team might want to have the discussion in a conference call with a good internet connection and low background noise.
- Getting to Know Your Team
Icebreaker questions that get to know your team members help build empathy, trust, and connection. These kinds of questions often include personal details that make the discussion feel intimate and safe, such as the question: Where did you grow up?
These questions can also be fun and interactive. For example, participants can answer a question by writing their funniest or weirdest story on a piece of paper and then dropping it into a container. Then, someone from the group will read out all of the stories and the other members try to guess who wrote each one.
These icebreaker questions can be done either in small groups or as a whole group. They can even be adapted for virtual teams so that everyone can participate at the same time. The answers can be humorous or deep, and they are great for new teams that still need to build psychological safety and trust. These icebreaker questions are also good for established groups that want to get to know each other more deeply.
- Company-Themed Questions
Icebreaker questions can help people feel at ease in social situations, especially new ones. Whether they’re used to kick off a team meeting or help settle nerves at a networking event, these prompts encourage conversation and break down barriers of awkwardness. Just remember to be mindful of sensitive topics and read the room to know when your audience is ready to move on.
Try asking icebreaker questions about your company or industry to get your teams talking in the right mindset for business meetings, training sessions, or group activities. These questions can help to create a sense of team spirit by allowing employees to reveal their shared interests, which is a great way to improve teamwork and collaboration. For example, a fun company-themed icebreaker question like “If you could have dinner with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?” can spark interesting conversations about life goals and ambitions. You can also use questions like this to foster meaningful one-to-one discussions between managers and their direct reports.
- Rating Polls
Whether you’re trying to get your team talking at a corporate event, amp up a dull meeting or just break some barriers in your remote team’s psychological safety, good icebreaker questions can help. While some icebreaker questions can cause people to awkwardly die inside a bit – like asking for two truths and a lie or stating an interesting fact about yourself – others can be more fun or silly, which is great for starting conversations and building team bonding.
These icebreaker questions include funny, RANDOM, WOULD YOU RATHER and STRICTLY BUSINESS questions that give people the chance to express themselves in creative ways with open-ended answers or choose a quick answer (with hilarious results). Whether you’re onboarding new team members, holding an office happy hour, or simply need some lighthearted prompts for your Slack group banter, these fun icebreaker questions will keep the conversation flowing.good ice breaker questions
