Typically, new members of your team may feel awkward in the first meeting or team building workshop they attend. So how do you make them feel more relaxed and more into the meeting vibe? Icebreakers for team building are the answer.
There are many games or activities you can use to break the ice prior to your meeting. As long as they can get people to interact with each other, put a big smile on their face and make them laugh either through a virtual conference call or in person, they are effective.
In this article, we provide you with several icebreakers for team building that your team can implement.
Table of contents
1. Baby Photos
First of all, ask each team member if they can bring a physical baby photo of themselves or email in a digital one. Let them make a choice. As soon as you have collected all of the photos, put them all on a board. Then number each of them.
The game is simple. Let your team members take a guess of which photo belongs to which team member by writing a name by the matching number. Whoever gets the highest number of correct answers gets the grand reward.
2. The Trading Card Icebreaker
According to Gamestorming, a great icebreaker that puts team building workshops to a good start is the trading card icebreaker. So how does it work?
Firstly, ask every team member to make trading cards to portray their personalities. Secondly, distribute them index cards and markers. Thirdly, request every person to draw a photo of themselves and write their names, their nicknames as well as a fun fact.
Next, let everybody exchange cards. They can exchange as many times as they want. However, they need to read each card they receive prior to trading.
Let them do the trading activity for a few minutes. Then tell everyone to say the name on the card they just lately received. They can feel free to ask questions about the owner of the card if they would like to. Let the game continue with conversations!
3. The Office-Themed Charades
Begin your team building workshop by letting every team member play a couple of rounds of charades. The rule is to select only office-related stuff.
Choose a presenter to kick things off. Tell the presenter to come up with an office-related thing or activity. They are allowed to shout out the category. However, that is the last time they can speak.
Next ask the presenter to describe the item using only gestures. If they speak, they are disqualified at once.
Like all charades, this office charade is going to be filled with much laughter and shouting.
4. The No Smiling Game
With reference to Govloop, one of the icebreakers that can lead to plenty of laughter is the no smiling icebreaker. Ask every team member that they cannot smile within the first five minutes of the team building workshop.
You and your team will have a great surprise at how amused some staff members get when they are asked not to smile. Make sure you have the camera ready to capture some humorous moments.
5. The Mindfulness
In some cases, team building sessions are not successful as attendees stress out. As a team building leader, you can minimize the stress by introducing an icebreaker of mindfulness. Firstly, let your team members contemplate quietly for three minutes. Secondly, tell everybody to make a note of what is making them stressful. Once everybody are done with their notes, have them tear their stress into pieces. Then put all the pieces in a container.
6. The One Word
In accordance with Assembly (a company that sells employee recognition software), a simple yet effective icebreaker that your team can play with is the one word icebreaker. Here is how it works.
Firstly, tell everybody to talk about their present emotion in a single word. Alternatively, if you would like to make this icebreaker a little deeper, do ask your team members to give further explanations of their single-word emotion descriptor.
Let the activity flow and enjoy how mysterious some of the descriptions can become. For example, “I feel cat”.
7. The Peek Into Each Other’s Home Office
With regards to Time Doctor, another exciting icebreaker you can carry out is one that urges your team members to show their home offices to each other digitally.
Ask every attendee to create a short video which portrays their home office. The objective of this icebreaker is to make your team members get to know each other more deeply and personally. Then it can result in feelings of friendship and welcomeness.
This icebreaker is perhaps better for small teams. It is undeniably an excellent approach to create a personal atmosphere.
Alternatively, what you can do is to let a team member demonstrate their home office at the start of work meetings, on the birthday of a team member or on a special festive occasion.
8. The Things in Common
FairyGodBoss recommends an icebreaker that lets your team members find out what they have in common. Begin this icebreaker by splitting your teammates into groups and ask them to discover how many things they have in common.
Whichever group finds out the most things in common gets the prize. Note that this icebreaker does not consider physical characteristics and colors of outfit as things in common.
Takeaway
Bridging the relationship of people and accelerating the process of socialization are the key objectives of great icebreakers for team building. The key to effective icebreakers is to make them fun and simple.
The best icebreakers only need a few materials and are really simple. Implementing these icebreakers for team building mentioned in this article will ensure that you will have a great time in your next team building workshop.