17 Virtual Icebreakers for Hybrid and Remote Meetings

You don’t need to be in the same room to enjoy these icebreakers. Use The Game Gal “This or That” to generate ideas for quick ice breakers for virtual meetings. Looking for a virtual meeting activity that is guaranteed to raise some smiles?

Team-building ice breakers promote collaboration, trust, and cohesion among team members, fostering a positive team culture. These activities encourage teamwork, problem-solving, and communication skills while strengthening relationships within the team. Ice breakers also create opportunities for quieter or more reserved team members to participate and contribute to the conversation. These casual interactions play a crucial role in fostering camaraderie and strengthening team bonds, which may be lacking in virtual settings. You can customize this game to suit the participants’ preferences and familiarity with different music genres.

Then think of an animal, object, or whatever comes into your mind that you think they can draw. Pose a hypothetical scenario where each participant is stranded on a deserted island and can only bring three items. This activity can lead to some interesting and humorous discussions. Delivering content that’s both informative and entertaining usually takes some experience (unless you’re a natural, of course). Go from idea to a fully launched virtual summit with our step-by-step course. For example, you might say, “I love to cook.” Another coworker might say, “I’m a terrible cook, but I love to eat.

Fun Virtual Icebreakers

You never know if someone is struggling with something or has something nice to share. Ask everyone in the meeting to describe their current feelings/situation with an emoji – or a string of emojis. But we might not know what others are dreaming of, or even if we have something in common with our colleagues. You just need to ask everyone on the call to grab a piece of paper and a black marker.

With Scavify, you can create customized challenges that require team members to find items within their home or workspace. This activity not only promotes interaction but also offers a glimpse into everyone’s personal space, fostering a sense of familiarity and bonding among team members. Each team member can take turns showing and discussing a personal item that holds significance for them.

Actually Not Awkward Virtual Ice Breakers for Remote Meetings

Participants submit short, interesting facts or stories about themselves in advance. During the session, the host reads each story aloud, and the team guesses whose story it is using polls, chat, or verbal guesses. In Who are You, break the ice in a virtual meeting by inviting participants to imagine themselves as members of a pirate crew! Start by sharing the image of the crew of a pirate ship and ask each person to choose who they most identify with. Then ask everyone to share, either in the chat, verbally on in breakout groups. In the Four Quadrants activity fun game, each team member is given space for drawing the answers to four questions you’ll ask.

Quick virtual icebreaker questions

They are great conversation starters – they help energize people, drive lively discussions, and encourage the participants to be more active throughout the meeting. Invite teammates to do something kind in their own community—help a neighbor, write a thank-you note, donate time or resources. Set up a shared board where people can (anonymously or not) share what they did.

• Get serious insight into everyone’s personality by asking “would you rather?
• I know many hate online ice breakers, especially when these activities are accompanied by background noise.
• Friends, soulmates, and enemies is basically the family version of kiss, marry, and kill.
• If you want to know more about your team’s performance and feelings in the past few days, an original way of doing it is through this question.

Let’s go over the best ice breakers for more engaging Zoom meetings. Let’s face it – virtual meetings can sometimes be monotonous. Ice breakers can inject a dose of fun and energy into these sessions, boosting morale and engagement. They serve as a mental warm-up, preparing participants to be more focused and receptive during the meeting. In a physical office setting, casual conversations by the water cooler or during lunch ice breakers for virtual meetings breaks naturally foster relationships.

Virtual Meeting Ice Breaker Ideas and Activities

• If you have time, you can also challenge the group to guess what this drawing was about with sticky notes.
• The others will signal whether they share that characteristic by turning their cameras on or off to agree or disagree.
• Now that you’re relying more on virtual meetings you need to make sure that they don’t go a little stale especially if you’re having a daily check in with your team.

This activity not only adds a dash of excitement but also offers a glimpse into each other’s lives outside of work. This is a game where members have to write about their dream destinations, the reasons why they chose that destination, and how they want to travel there. We played the game last week on a Friday catch-up and found it fun. The meeting organizer shared with the team some travel books and holiday brochures. This icebreaker activity lets you find out that keen-eyed individual in your team. After that, everyone will get thirty seconds to take in each other’s room or workstation visually.

Their description of why they chose the one they shared tells participants even more. In fact, this crisis is making employers rethink the amount of time that employees spend in the office. So, moving forward, it’s likely that these virtual icebreakers will serve you well over time. You create a “bucket list” by writing down all of the things you want to see or do before you pass away.

What should you do after asking an icebreaker question?

You and your coworkers can bond in new ways and develop deeper relationships even if everyone works remotely. AI meeting assistant Krisp can help you filter out noises, take notes, transcribe and record your virtual ice breakers, and localize speakers’ accents for enterprises and call centers. As a result, you can enjoy effective and productive meetings online. Such virtual ice breakers involve sharing vulnerable moments, too.

She created a slideshow of random travel pictures, started a story, and then called on one of our teammates to follow up on what she had said, based on what picture was currently up. In one of the meetings, he asked everyone to anonymously submit into Slido three brands they know they ‘love a bit more than is logical’. Tell your colleagues to bring an object that has special meaning to them or that is tied to an exciting story. Give each group member 3-5 minutes to tell the rest of the group about it. Sharing is caring – and that should apply to both the good and the bad. Similar to sharing highlights (see point #10), it’s important to also give our attention to things that didn’t go so well; things that we can learn from, and move forward together.

The “OneThing That Made Me Smile” sounds simple, but it’s an effective way to kick off your team meetings with positive vibes. The tool will deliver a set of personalized questions to spark your team’s enjoyable conversations. Enhancing your remote team’s engagement by setting up a tailored virtual workspace is a must.

Use AI-Powered Tools for More Creative Icebreaker Sessions

Scavify is the innovativeteam building companythat combines mobile technology with experiential learning to create unforgettable team building events. Our state-of-the-art mobile app is designed to facilitate engaging team building activities, from scavenger hunts to problem-solving challenges. Our expert facilitators will help you to design a customized event that meets the unique needs of your team and helps you achieve your goals. A virtual version of this beloved game can be easily set up using a shared whiteboard feature. Not only does this activity inject a dose of fun into the meeting, but it also requires team members to communicate effectively and work together to guess the drawing.

Office Trivia Challenge brings the fun of a quiz show into your virtual meetings. The host prepares a series of trivia questions related to office culture, company facts, or random fun topics. Participants compete individually or in breakout room teams, answering questions via chat, poll features, or live responses. The last person to bring back an object gets to select the next one. A list of virtual icebreakers wouldn’t be complete without a group photo! This one’s as much fun through a video chat as much as it is in real life.

You’ll also notice that team members are more likely to work out problems together instead of shouldering burdens alone or expecting someone else to do it. Offer team members lunch, and they can sit in on a useful, relevant presentation or discussion. Toward the end, everyone can catch up, share thoughts or concerns, and ask questions.

Effective team-building creates a working environment where people trust one another and have faith in their abilities. This format is an improvement over other question-and-answer exercises because the team member chooses which questions to answer. Ask the chosen coworker anything you want to know about their job or professional goals in a team chat and see what crops up. Casually playing games together is a good way to pivot when you’ve hit a wall on a task or project. Everyone can briefly decompress without straying too far from one another.