Quick questions to answer:
- What is your favorite ice cream flavor?
- What was the best or worst vacation you ever took, where and why
- In one word, describe high school
- What is your least favorite food?
- What is your favorite candy to receive trick-or-treating?
- What is your favorite Thanksgiving food?
- What New Year's resolution have you stuck to?
- If you could live in any period in history what would it be?
- Share your funniest holiday story or holiday mishap
- If money and time were no object, where would you travel, with whom, and why?
- What has been your favorite moment in the current month?
- What's your favorite meal (or a meal you enjoyed recently)? (feel free to swap recipes afterward)
- What's your favorite year and why?
- What talent do you have that you wish you could use at work?
- What is your favorite vacation location?
- What I did on my summer vacation
- What is a common thing that you have never done? (Fly, change a tire, etc.)
- What is the scariest thing you have done for fun?
- What topic do you know a lot of random trivia about?
- If you were sponsored by a brand, what would you want it to be?
- If you could attend any concert with any performer, living or dead, what would it be?
- Roses & Thorns: list one accomplishment from the past week (personal or work-related), and one thing that didn't go well or area where you need help
- Skill Set: everyone shares one skill or talent they would like to develop - can be work-related or personal
- 18 & Under: everyone share one accomplishment you had before you turned 18
- One Word And I'm In: start meeting by having everyone pick one word to fill in the sentence “I’m __ and I’m in," e.g.: “I’m caffeinated and I’m In,” “I’m fired-up and I’m In, “I’m a-little-bit-tired-but-ready and I’m In.”
More involved verbal icebreakers:
- Intro 140: introduce yourself in 140 characters or less (this was previously the Twitter character limit)*
- Tell a story about your name (first or last; origin, meaning, namesakes, funny mix-ups, pronunciation, etc.)
- Three Books: (could also be movies, series on Netflix, etc.)
- list your favorite book/book you recommend to others
- last book you read
- next book you plan to read
- Background Story*
- Each member submits a personal story in advance
- Facilitator removes identifying information and shares stories prior to meeting
- Team tries to guess who each story belongs to
- Word Cinquains (about your job, something about yourself, or any other prompt) *
- Put together a trivia game about the current month, an upcoming holiday, a country or state, etc.
- Find 10 Things In Common: find 10 things everyone in the group has in common (simple things like body parts or clothing don't count)
- Snapshot*
- Prior to the meeting, everyone shares a photo of something within view of their workspace (something on your desk, the view out a window, a pet, a piece of furniture, etc.), e.g. in a Teams thread
- Discuss the photos during the meeting
- Pancakes vs. Waffles: make decisions collectively as a team; the name is indicative of the “either or” choice you are making
- team has to decide on whether the world is going to keep pancakes or waffles, and the other is to be obliterated from existence; anyone can advocate for a favorite , ultimately you must have a vote of majority
- after one option is eliminated, you add a new competitor, e.g. game may become Waffles vs Pumpkins, and then Waffles vs Puppies, and then Puppies vs Kittens, and then Kittens vs Romantic Relationships, etc.
- the longer you play, the more intense the conversation gets and the more team members will share their values; game mechanics are helpful for virtual team building because the initial conversation of Pancakes vs Waffles is low stakes, and it gradually becomes more personal as you get to later stages
- GIF War
- In Teams channel, a post is started with a certain topic
- Everyone replies with a GIF
- Like your favorite(s), the favorite response wins
If you have access to web meeting tools for sharing:
- Create and share "fun fact" infographics about yourselves*
- Create and share trading cards*
If you have access to web meeting tools for interactivity:
- Virtual version of the "Switch Sides If" game using annotation tools in your meeting software
- Share a grid of numbers, participants select a number using annotation tool, answer corresponding question
- Nobody is like me…
- One after the other, everybody has to finish the sentence “Nobody is like me…”. For example: “Nobody is like me, a sports enthusiast and goes to the gym at least 5 times a week.” Or: “Nobody is like me, already been to South Africa on a safari.” The teammates give a hand sign to express their consent (thumb up) or negation (thumb down).
- Display a slide with thumbs up/thumbs down symbols and use annotation tool to mark agreement/disagreement
- Who's Done That? Display a page of things that people may have done, participants use annotation tools to add their names to the ones applicable to them, then can discuss
- One Word Description:
- Facilitator says a phrase like "Team Culture;" participants use meeting annotation tools to type one word that describes the term for them
- Other topic suggestions: working from home, getting things done, your current living situation, pets, springtime, cooking at home
If attendees can appear on camera during the meeting:
- Thought Breakers - select prompts from the "action oriented" category with cameras on
- Find a rainbow: from your surroundings, find something in every color of the rainbow and share on camera (or for larger groups, assign people a specific color and then share them in rainbow order)
- Can You Hear Me Now
- Speaker uses random image generator to select an image
- Speaker describes it to attendees so they can draw it successfully, using only geometric shapes (e.g. can say "draw a large circle and three equidistant triangles," but not "write the letter E")
- Attendees share their drawings on camera and see how they compare to the original
- Leader has an object, says and acts out what they're going to do with the object, then "passes" it to someone else, who says and acts out what they're doing with the object, etc.
- Sell It
- At the start of your meeting, ask each attendee to grab any item on their desk, but don’t explain why. If they ask, let them know they will find out soon.
- Once each attendee has an item in their hand, explain that they are now going to try to sell it to the other members. They can set the price and have one minute to deliver a sales pitch and one minute to answer questions.
- After all pitches are made, attendees vote (either by hand or with a polling tool) to select one item they would “buy.”
- The person who gets the most votes to purchase their product wins.
- Virtual Background Fun
- Instead of just sharing a picture, use the camera's virtual background to place yourself somewhere interesting (a favorite vacation spot, scene from a favorite TV show or movie, someplace you'd like to visit in the future, etc.)
- 10 Second Objects
- Choose a theme (e.g. the fair, modes of transportation, items starting with a certain letter, characters from a certain story, object in the room you are in, etc.)
- Count down 10 seconds, then everyone on camera forms their body into the shape of an object associated with that theme
- Attendees try to guess what each person is - bonus if it's something nobody else had thought of
* Requires pre-work for participants
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