Breaking the Ice

Your meeting is about to begin. Everyone has arrived but how do you get attendees to interact and work together if this is the first time they have met? Enter the Icebreakers. Icebreaker questions facilitate quick introductions and bring an element of fun and connection to the meeting. They also offer the meeting organiser the opportunity to see how the room will work and identify any potential red flags that could cause embarrassment or conflict during the meeting.

What are icebreakers?

An icebreaker is a prompting question that is included at the start of a meeting to help facilitate introductions. These questions can draw from any aspect of life – fun, silly, serious, work related or otherwise. Whatever their tone their aim is to reveal personal information about the participant and a way for others to get to know the person better.

What makes a good icebreaker?

A good icebreaker will elicit an answer that reveals a glimpse of the participant’s personality and will draw out an answer that is fun and memorable that can be bonded over later. To be memorable the icebreaker may need to be a little strange or humorous to reveal something unique and quirky about the individual.

How to approach using icebreakers?

A good starting point is to start with something simple and fun that the participant can give a quick answer to. Make it clear in which direction you will move around the participants, which will give time for the participants to prepare for their answer. As the participants become more at ease with each other and the process you can introduce more probing questions to make it more interesting and memorable.

Icebreakers are there to foster good relations in the room. Nobody likes to sit amongst strangers. If you are organising a team meeting then your approach could be for everyone in the meeting to hear the answer from each individual. If you are hosting a larger meeting then team up your delegates and ask them to pose the questions in their huddle and share with the larger meeting.

How long should you allocate to icebreakers at the start of your meeting?

Icebreakers are there to foster good relations in the room. Most icebreaker sessions last up to 10 minutes at the start of the meeting. How long they last really depends on your meeting agenda, the situation and how comfortable participants are interacting with each other.

10 good Icebreakers for getting your meeting off to a flying start

1. Look at your phone, what is your most used emoji?

2. What is your favourite kitchen gadget?

3. What did you want to be when you grew up?

4. What reality show would you like to be on?

5. What superpower would you like to have?

6. If you could teleport anywhere. Where would you like to go right now?

7. What was the worst job you ever had?

8. What is your worst interview experience?

9. What is your favourite city?

10. What was the last thing you ate?

Final thoughts

An Icebreaker session at the start of your meeting is a fun and easy way to increase participant engagement. Breaking the ice and making your participants more comfortable with each other is a sure way of increasing productivity and achieving your meeting outcomes.