13 fun not awkward virtual icebreakers for your hybrid meetings

Seeing each other’s backgrounds will break the ice and give you something to talk about during the first minutes of the call. It’s much more fun and you’ll spark creativity among your colleagues. If you need a guaranteed conversation starter, try a question that brings back childhood or teenage years memories – they provide an inexhaustible source of amusement.

Each of them is personal, fun, and will help you warp your virtual meeting attendees up for conversation. As a manager or team leader, starting a virtual team meeting with an icebreaker question or game can create a relaxed and comfortable environment that encourages interaction. Anything that allows team members to share about themselves is beneficial. Try these icebreakers in your next virtual team meeting to help your team connect and engage.

Describe your favorite movie without naming it

Two or three individuals can also play against each other simultaneously. Or, take it up a notch and create small teams to battle against each other. They can chat on your team channel, then submit answers on the board. Keep a weekly tally and award prizes at the end of the month or year. The world became obsessed with Wordle and moved on after a few months of viral social media posts about the daily challenge. Bring it back by sharing the game on your screen and asking everyone to pitch a guess.

• Guess who works best for employees that have met have met at least once and in groups of 5-10 people.
• The person who gets the most employees to purchase their product wins.
• You could use anything from Justin Bieber to “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Just make sure it’s catchy then give your employees a collaborative document to add and revise lyrics.
• This activity could be done in small groups (using breakout rooms), or pick a few people to share at the start of each meeting.
• Virtual communication has advantages but presents unique challenges, like making it harder to build team bonds.
• This is especially important since only half of remote employees have strong relationships with their teams.

It’s an easy way to celebrate and get to know each other in a low-stakes game. Some internet searches will be faster than others, so create a long scavenger hunt list and set a quick timer to keep everyone on their toes. People can name their hometowns or mention how many times they moved during childhood to start an icebreaker that spans states and countries. There are many free websites for workplace Family Feud competitions. Consider how many people will be in your meeting to make teams on sites like Arkadium and The Washington Post.

icebreaker questions to get the conversation started

It also primes people to be empathetic as they hear others reply as human beings, not just as coworkers. A virtual team icebreaker or a fun activity will aws icebreaker help liven the meeting. An icebreaker at the beginning of a digital meeting freshens up the mood of the participants, thus, making them more active.

Most of these icebreaker questions are hybrids and will work for both in-person and remote teams, as well as for people who have or who haven’t met before. There’s just something about a mug that brings me a feeling of warmth besides the drink inside of it. Mugs have a delightful way to infuse a bit of personality and fun into the moment. So how about inviting your team to share their favorite coffee mug or tea cup (or tumbler,water bottle, etc) and tell the story behind it? It’s amazing how something as simple as a mug can hold so much meaning and create a sense of camaraderie among colleagues. We all know the kind of fun we had playing board games or classic games as a kid.

5 Trivia Game

Tell your colleagues to bring an object that has special meaning to them or that is tied to an exciting story. Give each group member 3-5 minutes to tell the rest of the group about it. Then, display people’s submissions on the screen and ask your colleagues to share what they put in and why. You may open your meeting with this question, either via word cloud or an open text poll, and wait for your team members’ submissions. Acknowledging people for the effort they’re putting in is a wonderful way to start a meeting.

To help guide conversations, you could also provide a short list of ice-breaker-like questions to ask each other — especially if your team doesn’t know each other very well yet. Virtual icebreakers are particularly useful for team meetings or training sessions where your participants don’t know each other well. Using icebreakers in these low-stress situations can help increase connections between members. Doing an icebreaker at the beginning of your virtual meeting not only helps your employees establish rapport, it can also increase interaction. When your employees take part in a virtual icebreaker, they will feel more comfortable and willing to speak up.

Virtual awards ceremony

Allow everyone five minutes to take a photo, send it through and upload it, and then another five minutes to share stories. Keep the momentum going by setting just one or two minutes per question. Using a personality quiz based on the five big characteristic traits will help everyone get to know each other. You can discuss their answers to find out who’s most similar and inspire new friendships based on the entertaining results. Remote rounds of Pictionary on sites like skribbl are extra challenging and hilarious. Free websites allow players to draw their pictures with their mouse pointers.