50 virtual meeting icebreakers for your remote team
Try these 50 fun virtual meeting icebreakers at your next meeting to avoid awkward silences and foster team building.
The post 50 virtual meeting icebreakers for your remote team appeared first on Webex Events (formerly Socio).
Virtual meetings are at their best when attendees feel comfortable and prepared to engage in meaningful conservation. Of course, not everyone feels immediately at home by default. Even if they do, icebreakers encourage networking and offer an effective way to lighten the mood for other guests who need some time to settle in.
Gain inspiration from these 50 virtual meeting icebreakers that help set the tone and encourage participant engagement.
What is a virtual meeting icebreaker?
Breaking the ice at the top of a virtual meeting helps attendees get comfortable, and should be one of the first things on the agenda—especially if the virtual event calls for discussion. Virtual icebreakers and conversation starters help drive more fruitful discussions and lively participation among remote teams. Plus, they’re just plain fun.
Icebreakers exist in a variety of forms, ranging from simple thought-provoking or fun questions to interactive games that help attendees build camaraderie in the moment.
Do you have a virtual meeting icebreaker on the agenda, or need some help deciding which to use? Choose from these 25 engaging icebreaker questions or 25 fun icebreaker games.
Creative icebreaker questions and prompts for virtual meetings
No, these questions aren’t exclusive to virtual meetings. If you find yourself in the office and need some icebreaker questions, these will suit you just fine for that as well.
1. Where are you currently based, and how did you end up there?
Instead of simply asking where someone is joining the virtual meeting from—which is easily answered in one word—add a fun follow-up question to encourage attendees to dive deeper. Ask a follow-up question like: How long have you been there? Or, What’s your favorite thing about your city? This elicits a more in-depth response that can help bring guests out of their shells.
2. Who is your celebrity look-alike?
Asking guests to name a celebrity they think they look like – or someone whom they are often told they look like – invites some low-stakes fun at the top of a virtual team meeting. As a bonus, encourage other attendees to weigh in or even suggest a new look-alike for guests.
3. What’s your favorite food, and why?
Food brings people together—even just talking about it can stir up fond memories and establish connections. Asking people what their favorite thing to eat helps establish commonalities in people and lightens the mood.
4. Share a strange fact that you know.
Facts are fun, and strange facts are even more so. Ask guests to share a bizarre or little-known tidbit of information with the other attendees. Everyone will learn something new while simultaneously wondering why someone knows something so strange in the first place.
5. What do you like best about remote work?
What better virtual meeting icebreaker than one that’s specifically about remote work? There are a lot of benefits to working from home, but it can be interesting to hear what others appreciate about it.
6. What was your first job?
Everyone got their start somewhere—whether at a beloved fast food restaurant or with a paper route. Ask your virtual team to share how they first started earning money. Bonus points if they can connect it to what their role is now (no matter how much of a stretch).
7. What’s your dream travel destination, and why?
Anything travel-related is a reliable way to spark conversation and break the ice. Bonus points if attendees have achieved their dream and can share a fun travel story with the rest of the virtual team.
8. What’s your favorite decade, whether you lived through it or not—and why?
Asking attendees what their favorite decade is can reveal a lot—since each one has a distinguishable vibe. For millennial and Gen Z attendees especially, making it a point that their answer doesn’t necessarily have to be one they’ve lived through opens the door for some fun discussion about music, fashion, and culture from different periods in their country’s history.
9. If you had to write a novel, what would it be about?
This icebreaker question is a creative way to encourage attendees to share something they are passionate (or know a lot) about, without simply asking, “What’s something you’re passionate about?” Bonus points if they provide a synopsis of the story or chapter titles.
10. What’s your most used emoji?
Switch things up with an interactive question. For this virtual meeting icebreaker, ask your remote team to pull out their phones and share what their most used emoji is. Then, have them come up with an explanation or give context to that emoji.
11. What’s your fondest memory?
There’s nothing wrong with pulling some heartstrings. In fact, meaningful questions can help team members open up—which is great for team building. Ask attendees what their fondest memory is, and listen as they delve into their past experiences with admiration.
12. What was the last series you binge-watched?
Binge watchers can unite with this opportunity to share binge-worthy show recommendations with the rest of the team. And team members gain something to talk about if they watch the same shows.
13. What’s your favorite season, and why?
With only four seasons to choose from, this question offers a friendly and straightforward way to kick off a virtual meeting. But try not to let participants get away with that ever-alluring one-word answer. Encourage them to elaborate on their choice by asking if they have any seasonal hobbies, favorite foods, or holidays.
14. If you had to live in another country for a year, where would it be, and why?
A slight variation on the dream travel destination question, this one brings about a whole new perspective on travel that gets people thinking (and discussing). Traveling somewhere for a vacation is nice, but if you had to hunker down for 365 days, where would it be, and why?
15. Describe your job like you’re explaining it to a grade-schooler.
Business professionals are likely all too familiar with selling themselves. But what if they had to describe what they do to a much younger person? This one is great for letting loose and starting the virtual meeting on a fun note.
16. If you could play a role in any movie, what would it be, and why?
We’ve all imagined ourselves as a character in our favorite movies. Learn who your employees want to be!
17. What’s your go-to karaoke song?
Someone’s go-to karaoke song says a lot about them. And it may be something completely outside of the genre of music they prefer, which is always surprising.
18. Are you a dog or cat person?
Almost everyone is one or the other—unless they’re more of a reptile person. Pets photobomb your meetings anyway, so give guests a chance to show them off on purpose.
19. What’s your morning routine?
Early morning meeting? Find out how soon attendees rolled out of bed before hopping on the call by asking for a detailed play-by-play of their morning routine.
20. What’s your favorite hobby or pastime?
Asking about people’s hobbies or pastimes can be a great way to learn more about their interests and spark interesting conversations. It allows attendees to share what they enjoy doing in their free time, whether it’s playing a musical instrument, painting, gardening, or any other activity they are passionate about. This question can help create connections and find common interests among team members.
21. What’s the worst gift you’ve ever received?
Even if you hate to admit it, many of us have received gifts that we were not so fond of but had to act grateful at the moment. Have attendees share those stories with the rest of the team.
22. What are you most proud of about yourself?
In the name of self-love and appreciation, ask attendees about something they’re most proud of. We all need a little pick-me-up sometimes, and talking about our proudest moments can help hoist us up and encourage us to be our best selves during the meeting.
23. What would your last meal consist of?
Someone’s favorite food isn’t necessarily what they’d eat for their last meal—and certainly not the only thing. Three, five, 10 courses; if your attendees had one more opportunity to eat some delicious foods, what would they be?
24. What’s the most used app on your phone?
Inquiring minds would like to know—what’s the most used app on each of your attendees’ phones? Have them answer in good faith and guess for themselves what their most used app is—and how much time they spend on it. Then, see how close everyone was by having them check their screen time stats in their device’s settings.
25. What’s your guilty pleasure?
We all have one, whether it’s binge-watching reality TV or ordering take-out more often than is reasonable. Spilling this tea levels the meeting playing field by sharing what we do when no one is watching.
Engaging icebreaker games for virtual team building
Make your virtual meeting icebreaker a little more interactive with one of these fun games.
27. Guess the song
Play the first few seconds of a song and have guests “buzz in” to guess the tune. The person with the most correct answers wins!
28. Trivia
Trivia is an icebreaker staple. Plus, it’s made even easier with live polling features via Slido for virtual meetings. Set up trivia questions via the poll and have attendees vote on their answers. The cool thing about this is you’ll be able to see the percentage of people who guessed right.
29. Name memory game
Try this game when you’re bringing together a group that hasn’t met before. Have everyone change their display names to something else, or leave them blank. Then, go around the virtual room once and have everyone state their name. After that, go back around and have guests recall each person’s name in order. The person who gets the most correct wins.
30. Two truths and a lie
Classics are classics for a reason. Two truths and a lie is a fun, engaging way to break the ice ahead of a meeting. Have everyone write down two things that are true about them and one that is a lie. One by one, everyone shares what they wrote down, and other team members try to deduce the fib.
31. Scavenger hunt
If you want to get team members up and moving from their desks, host an icebreaker scavenger hunt. Ahead of the meeting, curate a list of three to five household items and challenge guests to track them down in their homes. The first one to come back to their desk with all the items wins.
32. Virtual water cooler
Sometimes, the best way to break the ice is through leisure conversation at the team’s own pace. Host a virtual water cooler ahead of the meeting where guests can come and go as they please and engage in casual discussions with other team members.
33. Draw your mood
Artist or not, a doodle session is both therapeutic and entertaining. Have attendees draw their mood on a shared virtual whiteboard. By the end of the session, team members should have created a beautiful array of drawings that represent how they’re feeling.
34. One-word stories
This fun icebreaker game can get nonsensical quickly—but that’s what makes it fun. Have meeting guests create stories, with the catch that each person can only add one word at a time. Move around the room once or twice, or until the story comes to a natural conclusion.
35. Commonality hunt
The more team members for this one, the more challenging it will be. The object is to find one thing in common among all meeting guests. The game is over when guests find that one thing!
36. Personality quiz
Whether you’re a believer in them or not, personality quizzes have some charm. For this icebreaker, have everyone take a free personality test, like the one offered by 16 Personalities. Once complete, it will provide a comprehensive breakdown of different aspects of your personality, which provides a great basis for further discussion and ice-breaking.
37. Riddle competition
Gather a basket full of challenging riddles and administer them one by one to the group. Only move onto the next after someone gives a correct answer. The team member with the most correct answers wins. For better team building, divide members up into teams to use their collective brain power to figure out the answers.
38. Play a virtual game
One of the awesome things about modern-day tech is the sheer amount of virtual games that are available. If you’re looking for an easy and fun virtual meeting icebreaker game, consider playing an online party game like Gartic Phone. The idea is simple: It’s a combination of broken telephone and Pictionary.
39. Finish the lyric
In this game, the host plays a popular song, stopping it randomly. Then, team members will take individual turns trying to finish the lyric. And yes, bonus points if they follow through with singing instead of speaking the words.
40. Memoir blitz
Few things are easier to talk about than yourself—but how about when you’re given a short time limit? Give team members no more than 30 seconds to write down a memoir for a memoir blitz. When the time is up, have everyone share what they wrote down.
41. Would you rather?
Simple and low-stakes, “Would you rather?” gets people talking about silly hypothetical scenarios. Use a live poll to see how the room is split in real-time.
42. Guess who
When preparing for the virtual meeting, ask team members to send you their baby photos. For the icebreaker portion of the meeting, display the images to the group and have them guess who is who.
43. Home office tour
It’s like MTV’s “Cribs.” Allow team members to give a tour of their home office. Afterward, set up a live poll to have everyone vote on which they liked best. The highest score wins!
44. Contexto
Like the famed word-based game Wordle, there’s more opportunity for team building with Contexto. The goal of this game is to guess the word of the day. You start by making a random guess, and after each guess the engine will tell you how close you are to the target word based on the context of the word you input. Separate into teams and the first group to guess the word wins.
45. Themed meeting
For internal virtual meetings, it can be fun to attach a theme to shake things up from the norm. Provide a meeting theme, such as underwater, royal ball, or sports, and have attendees join in donning themed gear, virtual backgrounds, and more.
46. Rock, paper, scissors tournament
Friendly, tournament-style competitions help bring team members out of their shells without the pressure of being put on the spot. Put virtual meeting guests head to head in a round-robin rock, paper, scissors tournament to see who emerges victorious. For easier gameplay, try using a website like RPS Game to easily organize things.
47. Ethical and moral dilemma game
In the same vein as Would You Rather, a moral dilemma game presents an arduous (and hypothetical) scenario, and players must choose how they would carry it out. Separate into teams to discover which is the most morally sound bunch. Here’s an example: If by pressing a button you could reverse climate change, however, it would cause the extinction of all companion animals, would you press it?
48. Charades
If you have a particularly charismatic crew, a game of charades is an excellent icebreaker—even virtually. Send everyone to a website like Get Charades Ideas to generate words to act out. Then, have the rest of the team guess. Make sure everyone has their camera on for this one.
49. Hangman
Hangman is a classic word game, but it can easily be made into an icebreaker activity. Split attendees into two groups and send them each into a separate breakout room with the same hangman. The first team to complete it and return to the main meeting room gets a point. Play as many rounds as you see fit.
50. Virtual Bingo
Turning Bingo into a fun virtual meeting icebreaker is pretty easy. Come up with a card that includes things like “owns a dog,” “has a dual (or more) monitor office setup,” “has gone surfing,” “had braces,” and other general things that may apply to any one team member. The first to get a Bingo and shout it out wins.
Virtual icebreakers made easy
Icebreakers provide a fun and engaging way to lighten the mood ahead of a virtual meeting. The right event management platform increases engagement, encourages participation, and maximizes the potential of virtual meetings.
Plus, with a Slido integration, collaboration is made even more interactive. Here’s a pro tip: Use Slido for any icebreaker on this list that involves short answers, polling, or even drawing. Other team members will be able to see actions in real-time, all in the same place—and contribute to the conversation on their own.
Start your free trial of Webex Events today to break the ice with us.
The post 50 virtual meeting icebreakers for your remote team appeared first on Webex Events (formerly Socio).
