These 40 icebreaker questions for work are sorted by the meeting you are running: a weekly standup, a new person’s first day, a video call and a longer offsite. Each one can be answered with an opinion or a preference, so nobody has to talk about their family, their health or their weekend to take part.
That last point is the whole design. A work icebreaker is a brief exercise meant to help a group start working together, and the standard facilitation guidance, summarized on Wikipedia’s icebreaker page, is that they should not require people to reveal personal information and should not embarrass anyone. Most lists online ignore that and fill up with questions like “what is your biggest fear,” which is fine at a sleepover and strange in a budget meeting.
How many icebreaker questions do you need for a meeting?
Fewer than you think. The math is simple: allow about 30 seconds per person per question. Eight people answering one question takes four minutes. Eight people answering two takes eight, which is already too long for a one-hour meeting.
So for most meetings, one question, asked once around the room, is the right amount. Pick it before the meeting, not during, and put it in the invite if you want people to have an answer ready. For a group over twelve, split into pairs or threes, give them two minutes with the question, and ask two or three people to share the best answer they heard.
One more rule, and it matters more than the questions: anyone can say “pass” without explaining. You will almost never need it with the questions below, but knowing it is there is what lets a quiet person relax.
Icebreaker questions for a weekly standup
Standup icebreakers have to be fast. These are all one-word or one-sentence answers, and none of them need thought.
- Sum up your week so far in one word.
- What is your ideal lunch today?
- Which snack keeps you going on busy days?
- Is your to-do list sunny, cloudy or stormy?
- What is one thing you are looking forward to?
- Hot drink, cold drink or no drink?
- Best part of your commute, even if it is ten steps?
- Rate your inbox from calm to chaos.
- What weather matches this week’s energy?
- What small task have you been avoiding?
Rotate who picks the question each week. It takes the job off the manager and people pick better ones for each other.
Icebreaker questions for a new person’s first day
The goal here is to give the new person something to talk about that is not their resume, and to let the rest of the team answer too, so it is a conversation rather than an interview.
- What is one thing you wish you knew in week one?
- Which local lunch spot deserves a visit?
- What is your favorite way to learn something new?
- Early morning focus or late afternoon focus?
- What skill could you teach someone in ten minutes?
- What makes a meeting worth attending?
- Which tool here would you defend forever?
- What is the best advice you got at a job?
- How do you like to be asked for help?
- What always makes a workday feel shorter?
Have the team answer first and the new person last. By the time it reaches them, they have heard eight examples of what a normal answer sounds like here, which takes most of the pressure off.
Icebreaker questions for a video call
On a call, people talk over each other and pauses feel longer, so the best questions have a visual or a very short answer. Questions that ask people to show something are especially good, because they give the camera something to look at other than faces.
- Hold up the closest mug to your desk.
- What color is the wall behind you?
- Show one object from your desk and explain it.
- What is your go-to background noise for focus?
- Standing desk, sitting desk or sofa?
- What is the best thing within arm’s reach?
- Pick a time of day for all meetings.
- What would you rename this meeting?
- Camera on first thing or camera on later?
- Which sound in your house interrupts calls most?
Call on people by name in a fixed order. “Anyone want to go first?” on a video call produces ten seconds of silence and then two people talking at once.
Icebreaker questions for an offsite or workshop
At an offsite there is time for questions that take a little more thought, and a group that is away from its desks is usually willing to go further. These still ask for opinions, never for private details.
- What would your job look like in a movie?
- What is a work habit you picked up from someone here?
- Which project would you happily do again?
- What would you add to the office if money did not matter?
- What is a small rule that would make work better?
- Which team outside ours do you want to understand better?
- What did you believe about this job before you started?
- What is something you are better at than your title suggests?
- If our team were a kitchen appliance, which one?
- What is one thing that went better this year than expected?
What makes a work icebreaker go wrong?
Three things, and they are all avoidable.
The question asks for private information. Questions about family, relationships, where someone grew up, what they did on the weekend or what they believe put people in a position of either sharing more than they want or visibly declining. Stick to opinions about neutral things: food, tools, habits, work itself.
It runs too long. An icebreaker that eats a quarter of the meeting makes people dread the next one. Use the 30-second rule and stop at one question.
It is secretly a quiz. “What is our company’s founding year?” is not an icebreaker, it is a test, and the person who gets it wrong will remember it.
If the group is shy and the question still lands flat, switch to a two-option format. “Mornings or afternoons?” is easier to answer than an open question because there is no blank to fill, which is also why this or that works so well on a cold room. This or that questions has 48 pairs, many of which work at work unchanged, and the difference between the two-option and dilemma formats is laid out in this or that vs would you rather.
Should you film a work icebreaker?
Usually not, and that is fine. Most icebreakers at work are not recorded and should not be; people answer more freely when nothing is on the record.
The exception is a team that wants a short clip for a team channel, a welcome video for new starters, or an end-of-year montage, and where everyone has agreed to be in it. For that, Ranking Filter deals a prompt at random above each person’s head and records their answer with a 1 to 10 rating in one take, so the clip is done in the time the icebreaker takes and nobody has to hold a list. If one person is up for more, the hot seat game is the rapid-fire version, one volunteer and sixty seconds of quick questions.
For a bigger bank to pick from, icebreaker questions has 48 more, including sets for class and club as well as work.