Walking into a meeting when you’ve not met attendees can be daunting. You may be in a situation where you’re required to facilitate a meeting between strangers and are looking for some suggestions on how to break the ice. Ice breaking ideas can be seen as “feeling awkward in the workplace”, but there are actually some very fun and interesting activities you can set-up that will benefit everyone.
These ice breakers don’t require extensive time, costs or effort, and will help people get to know each other.
One-Word Feeling
This breaker asks people to choose one word to describe how they feel. If you want, you can ask people to explain their choice of word. Ask everyone to state “I feel (word)”. Some may be quite cryptic, some will be creative and some will simply be a reflection on how the person is feeling. This can be used at the start of other activities or at the start of the meeting to see how everyone is feeling.
Two Truths, One Lie
This game offers some creativity and helps your team get to know each other a little better. Each person needs to think of two facts about themselves and one lie. Each person then tells the group their “facts” and the rest of the attendees need to discuss and work out which are the true statements and which is the lie.
If you want to help the introverts (or anyone, really), you can let them know ahead of time of the activity so they have some more time to think of their two truths and one lie for the meeting.
Year Of The Coin
If you have a lot of coins at home, this is a great game to get to know your team. Have everyone in the team pick a coin randomly and then tell the group what they were doing during the year that the coin was minted. This will help test their memories!
Finding Common Ground
Finding commonalities with work colleagues can be tough throughout any normal workday, however, this activity helps things along. Give each person a list of names of everyone in attendance and then go to each person on the list to work out what they have in common with each other. It could be anything from eye colour or favourite band, right through to the city they were born in or the car they drive. If everyone involved works at the same company or department, this cannot be included as a commonality.
Instagrammers Unite
Do you have a business that is social-focused? Know that your team are all on Instagram? This is a great one for you. Have everyone choose a photo from their Instagram account that they’d like to share with the team. They can talk about the photo, what it means to them and why they picked it. This will give you an insight into what people like to do outside of work.
No matter what kind of meeting you have planned, you can make things fun and enjoyable. Ice breakers are a great opportunity for everyone to get to know fellow meeting attendees or to help them build some connections where they may be lacking. Give people a new perspective with a fun and interesting ice breaker at your next meeting!
