Facilitate Team Bonding With Fun Ice Breaker Questions

What Are Ice Breakers?

Sometimes it's difficult for teams to build a connection, and asking everyone how their day is going is not enough to encourage bonding. When new people join a company or a team, everyone needs to get to know each other. There are questions, activities, and events especially created to bring people together. These are usually known as “ice breakers”, and they can help you effectively warm up a conversation, and to get people engaged in topics and comfortable with each other. 

And although good ice breakers can power up brainstorming sessions, strengthen coworker bonds, and build rapport, the wrong ice breaker questions can quickly increase tension in a group or can even lead to an awkward atmosphere. 

When Should You Use an Ice Breaker?

Ice breakers are valuable and will be welcomed when team members are meeting for the first time when they are not located in the same office, when they’re all working remotely, or when they are tackling new projects together. Ice breakers can quickly help people relax and get to know each other in a more fun environment. 

But be aware that not every meeting needs an ice breaker or a team-building activity. There can be occasions when it’s best not to use them, for example, when team members already know each other or when they have been working together on different projects already. If your team or your project is facing an urgent situation, is also best to focus on the issue and schedule ice breakers at a different time.

What Are the Benefits of an Ice Breaker?

Organizations have been using ice breaker activities for a long time because these exercises can facilitate team bonding, which is crucial for effective cross-functional collaboration. They are fun, but they can also help teams work more closely and productively. Ice breakers will help your team:

• Get to know each other
• Break down the “work” barrier
• Interact with new people
• Bond as a team
• Encourage creative thinking and facilitate brainstorming

What Are the Best Ice Breaker Questions To Ask?

There are infinite possibilities for your ice breaker questions, which can be meant to be funny or meaningful. Surprisingly, your team’s answers can be indicators of values or key personality traits. They can help you figure out work styles and ideal colleagues. Here are some of the best ice breaker questions you can ask in groups:

• What was your favorite childhood movie?
• What is one item you couldn’t live without?
• If you were an animal, what kind would you be?
• What unusual or quirky things do you do regularly?
• What’s your favorite film?
• If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?
• If you were stranded on a desert island, what band or music would you want?
• If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?
• What’s your biggest guilty pleasure?
• What’s your unusual talent?
• What’s the greatest challenge you overcame?
• If you could describe yourself in just a single word, what would it be?
• Can you share a photo of yourself as a baby?
• If you could live anywhere, where would you live?
• What was your first job? Your worst job?
• If you could meet a historical figure, who would that be?
• What is your favorite time of the day? Why?
• Do you like to travel?
• What would be your superpowers of choice?
• What would be your last meal?
• What is your favorite season and why?
• Who is your favorite writer?
• What is the name of the last book you read?
• What would you consider to be the highlights of your life?
• What are you most proud of?

Create Your Own Ice Breakers

Ice breakers help teams bond and build rapport more quickly. Thanks to these personal interactions, people can build positive relationships. The best thing is that ice breakers can be used in any type of company or department, and they don’t need to be complicated at all. The only thing that you do need, is to make up your mind on the type of ice breaker you can use, and prepare in advance before the day of the meeting arrives. 

The good news is that you can plan, create and organize your ice breaker activities in one single place by using Instagantt. Instagantt is an online Gantt chart software for project management that helps teams all around the world plan, coordinate, schedule, and execute their projects, from beginning to end. Teams can rely on Instagantt to create professional-looking Gantt charts in a matter of minutes and to manage their work efficiently by being able to visualize relevant project-related information such as deadlines, resources, and budget, and to keep tasks, conversations, and documents in a single, centralized location. 

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Ice Breaker Template

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