12 Engaging Ice Breakers for Meetings

Without overdoing it, starting a meeting with an ice breaker can relax the mood and help people warm up to each other.

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Here’s a collection of 12 ice breakers for your next face to face or virtual meeting:‍

Short and quick ice breakers (2-3 minutes):
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1. What random topic you could talk about all day long?

2. What is next on your bucket list?

3. If you could be reborn as any person in the world who would it be?

4. What has been your favourite life experience?

5. What is the best thing that happened to you this year?

6. If you were to set a Guinness world record, what would it be?
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If you have a bit more time (5-10 minutes):
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7. Who is it?

• Get everyone to write a fun fact about them on a piece of paper.
• Collect the pieces of paper and mix them up.
• Pick up one piece of paper and read it to the group
• The meeting attendees must guess who the fact belongs to.

This is a great way to find out cool facts about your co-workers.

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8. Unique Pairs

This exercise is perfect for large meetings with 20+ people.

• Split everyone into pairs and have them find one thing that they have in common in just 2 minutes.
• Once the 2 minutes have passed, each pair shares it to the rest of the group. For each individual attendee that has done the unique activity, your pair gets a point.
• The winner of the game is the team that receives the least amount of points!

Introducing a bit of competition into the activity will make everyone reveal things about themselves they wouldn’t in a usual introduction.

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9. Two Truths, One Lie

This ice breaker is super fun because it involves assessing a person in the meeting just from your first impression of them.

• Ask everyone in the meeting to quickly come up with two facts and one (believable) lie about themselves.
• One at a time, each person shares their three statements and the group votes for which one they think is the lie. For example:
• I am a black belt in karate
• I can speak three languages
• I am ambidextrous

Note: Ask meeting attendees in advance to come up with these three statements, otherwise people might think for too long on it.

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10. Online Pictionary

Skribbl.io is a free multiplayer drawing and guessing game. If you are looking for a fun and engaging ice breaker, definitely give this one a shot! Here is how you play:

• Create a lobby with your meeting attendees and select how many rounds you want to play.
• One at a time, someone chooses a word and then draws it on the screen whilst everyone else tries to guess it in the chat window (spelling is important).
• Points are given based on the speed of your answer. The person that guesses first will get the highest amount of points and the slowest person will get the least. The drawer also gets points based on how guessable their drawing was.
• The answer is only revealed at the end of the time limit or if everyone has guessed the word.

11. Virtual House Tour

For remote meetings!

Take turns at showing your surroundings to the meeting! Give everyone about a minute to show the room you are in, what’s on your desk etc.

This ice breaker is a great way to learn the environment in which your colleagues work and feel more connected to them.

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12. Incredible Introductions

This quick ice breaker is great for meetings with new people.

• The host starts by introducing themselves by coming up with an adjective that describes themself followed by their name. The trick is that the adjective has to start with the same letter as their name. For example, **Jolly Jess or Lively Liam.
• After this, the host should follow that up by answering a question about themselves e.g. “What is your favourite place to eat lunch?”
• Each person that follows has to repeat the name and lunch place (or whatever the chosen question is) of all of the people that went before them. The last person has to remember all of the answers to the entire group!

For example:

Jess: My name is Jolly Jess and my favourite lunch place is Fishbowl.

Liam: Jolly Jess likes to eat a Fishbowl. My name is Lively Liam and I like getting lunch at Guzman Y Gomez.

And so on…

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