Icebreakers seem to have lots of people squirming in their seats, me included. There are a lot of benefits to running them well and downsides when they are not. This post covers why I do them and shares some that have gone well for me in the past.
Skip the explanation; take me to the formats.
I have been running an online lean coffee-style meet-up, Agile in the Ether, for a few years. Each meet-up starts with a short icebreaker or check-in. I intended to set the mood and get people’s focus away from emails, some of which I facilitate myself, and others are facilitated by a guest. This month James Cattell offered to help, which led to this tweet of him asking for suggestions. What was apparent in the replies is that many people hate icebreakers.
I don’t think the problem is the concept; the problem is in the execution.
The icebreaker that we settled on this month built on a response to the tweet and was an anti-problem style question,
“What is the worst icebreaker you’ve ever experienced?”.
Answers included:
- What’s your biggest sporting success (to a group of non-sporty people)
- What’s your most proud achievement
- Map out your life over a timeline with happy and sad points
- (online) what are you wearing on your bottom half
- What’s one interesting fact about you?
- Two truths and a lie
All these formats are intended for people to get to know each other better.
These might be ok if you are on a team who are comfortable with each other, but they make many people cringe, feel inadequate, panic, get distracted or spend the rest of the day thinking about what they could have said that was cooler instead.
For me, I find any “best ever” or “favourite” type exercises awful.
Not ideal.
The reasons I run icebreakers at my meet-up are:
- to give everyone the chance to speak, making it easier for them to talk again (I do find that this can make a real difference)
- to level the playing field and put everyone on an even footing
- to get everyone to mentally check into the meet-up and get off of emails
- To teach everyone how to use the hand-up feature, which they will need later
Bonus points if it relates to the meet-up topic in some way and if it makes people smile or laugh. I steer away from anything too personal to keep things relaxed.
At Agile in the Ether, I timebox the icebreakers to 8mins, including the explanation, so the examples below play into that.
Icebreakers to try
Here are some examples of quick icebreakers that I like to use. (updated Oct 2024)
- What made you smile this week
- A celebration of the mundane and everyday
- Quick treasure hunt
- What does this acronym mean?
- Think Links* business game
- What would you call it?
- Agile Pictionary
1. What made you smile this week
Ask people to share something that made them smile this week. When they have something, I ask them to put their digital hand up.
Then, they each take it in turn to quickly share; when they are done, they pick the next person and put their digital hand down.
This one generally puts everyone in a good mood and ready to start.
2. A celebration of the mundane and everyday
In a similar vein. I recently enjoyed some downtime from some hectic life stuff, and I wanted to celebrate the everyday.
The question was, “In celebration of the mundane, boring and everyday, what do you enjoy that falls into this category?”
It can be helpful to give your own example here to show what kind of thing you mean. Some examples I have heard are watching the sea, making tea or folding clothes.
This is also a great one for getting people in a good mood and letting go of stresses.
3. Quick treasure hunt
Set a challenge like “Get a fridge magnet” or “Find something yellow.”
Bring it back and share it. It doesn’t have to be your favourite, just the first thing you find.
This gets people up out of their chairs and moving around. And can be as impersonal as they’d like. When I ran “find something yellow”, more than one person shared their lunch (see image at the top of this post).
4. What does this acronym mean?
Each person takes turns to share an acronym or initialisation used in their workplace, and others have to guess what it means.
For example PMT, I’ll just leave that there for you to guess.
There is an element of camaraderie in shared acronym pain. This format was from Faye Benfield
5. Think Links* business game
This is good to do in small groups. The group is given three random cards from a Think Links pack and some time to discuss what business or service they would create using the images on the cards they have been given. They then share with the group.
For example:
- a hand that you attach to the front of a train that runs near the sea to keep stray beach balls off the tracks
- a luxury service that brings calming beverages and soft rabbits to your car, when you’re stuck in a traffic jam
I either do this as shoutout the answer or in smaller breakout groups with a chance to share back.
This gets people thinking creatively and tends to get folk laughing.
6. What would you call it?
This is a fast-paced game; a card is picked randomly, and the player has to say what it would be called if it didn’t already have a name. They then choose the next person, and it repeats until everyone has had a turn.
For example:
- Better vision makers
- Magic life window
Like the last one, this gets people thinking creatively and tends to get folk laughing
7. Agile Pictionary
We played this over a longer session. Each player is given a word to draw, and their team or the whole group has to try to guess what word is within a time limit.
I’ll leave you to guess the words.
This was a lot of fun and left us with some great illustrations.
*Think Links is a box set by Edward de Bono. Some wonderful image cards, word cards and 50 games to use to develop thinking skills
Think Links is out of print, but here is a handy set of online cards I made that you can use for online meetings or a Miro board to play the two games listed here.
5 August 2020 at 8:13 pm
I was inspired by your post to create a simple online version of the Think Links game.
https://www.thinklinks.cards/
Hopefully, it will help those who are still running sessions remotely and therefore don’t have the benefit of using physical material.
1 February 2021 at 11:35 am
This is great. Thank you.
18 January 2022 at 6:56 pm
This is so useful! Thanks for sharing.