10 Icebreakers for Your Next Meeting or Conference

While actual live debates could be fun, online debates are no less. Let us say, you are waiting for a few people to join your Zoom meeting. You can start by saying, “rock, paper, or scissors”. We have all played this game during our free lectures in school and nothing could be more entertaining than https://remotemode.net/ this one. This game helps in introducing yourself to the team and letting them know from which corner of the world you come. The team leader can then form smaller groups and ask the team to work together to improve their chances of survival by combining the various objects that they chose.

It makes your event more fun, successful and ensures that everyone — staff and members alike — leave knowing the people around them a bit more. Our goal in this blog is to prevent that from happening and give you a list of great icebreakers that will help you build team cohesion. Remember all the times you played this game as a little kid? You can play once or twice and make everyone feel less awkward and more comfortable in the meeting. For example, you can be the moderator and create a playlist of songs with diverse genres.

What is your favorite film, tv series, or book?

Finally, don’t forget to follow up with participants after the meeting. A quick thank-you note or follow-up email can help to show your appreciation for everyone’s participation. Add a fun GIF related to a joke or specific moment of the meeting. There are plenty of ways to make a virtual meeting fun and engaging. Team building questions are designed to incite exchange and interaction between team members.

  • If you really want to make it fun, ask people to share a show or movie they like but feel a little embarrassed about.
  • We love Pictionary as an icebreaker because it gets the creative juices flowing.
  • For extra difficulty, leave it open to and ask everyone to come up with the answers in a text box on the board.
  • Set a timer for 30 seconds and review everyone’s submissions by reading through the chat when the time runs out.
  • For brevity’s sake, it’s best to break it down into simple categories such as first name, last name, and one fact about each person.
  • It can be a really fun activity that can also teach the team about the importance of first impressions.
  • While we all know that it’s important to build a strong culture within a team, this can sometimes be more difficult in staff with remote employees.

And with time, it gets boring, and it’s harder for people to have fun because they already know how the meeting is going to work. So, a great way to energize meetings is by completely changing its structure. This is also a fun game for teams that have recently started working together online.

Escape the office. Have better meetings.

This is a chance for the group to learn something new about each other without getting too uncomfortably personal. It’s also a great warm-up as it doesn’t require too much thinking straight off the bat. Ask everyone in the group to write down their name, their first job, and what they learned from that job.

ice breakers for conference calls

Have people chat one-on-one for two or three minutes. Then when the time is up, have them move on to someone else. The benefit here is that they get to meet several people in a short period of time. If you want to make it more challenging, you could try limiting the answers to non-food items, or luxury items only. If you are in person and have a mid to larger sized group, you can have people stand up and move from one side of the room to the other depending on their preference.

Icebreaking polls

In this guide, you’ll find our 6 favorite icebreakers, together with instructions on how to implement them. Icebreakers are a great way to grab everyone’s attention, make sure everyone is focused and also kick it off with a little social break. Icebreakers are an activity, game or task that get people mingling and talking. They usually involve getting to know people around you more and sharing information about yourself. They help break the metaphorical ice wall that can be up that stop you from reaching out and talking to someone.

ice breakers for conference calls

To ensure it is fine-tuned to your attendees’ needs, kick off with an icebreaker poll to discover their expectations and learning objectives. When planning an icebreaker activity, there are three things that you’ll want to bear in mind. Icebreakers are the perfect way to make a good ice breakers for large virtual meetings first impression at the start of a presentation or conference. They aid with boosting audience engagement, help people to settle in, and set the tone of the session. You can conduct polls or take feedback from your team after these sessions to better understand what your team wants.