How Ice Breakers Can Make Your Meetings More Effective

If your boss is Jeremy Watkin, you can bet your meetings will start off with an off the wall, potentially awkward, ice breaker question.

Whether you’re the Tier 3 Support team doing a morning stand up or Customer Service Supervisors, there is an ice breaker question waiting for you.

But, where do ice breakers fit in at work?

An ice breaker is a fun and non threatening question to help your team get to loosen up and get to know one another better. The question can range from simple to completely outlandish.

Ice breaker questions also:

• Encourages collaboration of the team
• Encourages everyone to “warm up” to one another
• Encourages open communication and trust of the team
• Encourages your team to think outside the box as individuals
• Encourages your team to laugh together

During yesterday’s morning supervisor meeting, Jeremy asked:

“What’s one of the dumbest things you have ever done?”

For our small team, we laughed instantly when we heard this question and began digging into our minds to figure out how to answer when our turn approached.

Ice breakers are not just good for meetings. We are all put into situations where we meet new people and want to take the time to get to know them. Or perhaps, even with a customer, to build relationships, throw a question in to understand who you are really talking to.

Everyone is so “meeting-ed out” these days. If you’re finding that your meetings are not as effective as you’d like them to be, it might be time to shake it up and and kick it off with an ice breaker.

Questions can run from things like, what’s the weirdest vegetable you’ve ever eaten? to what’s your childhood nickname?

While it may seem unprofessional to toss out ice breaker questions at daily meetings, I encourage you to try it once and see how much more effective your meeting becomes.

You can create your own ice breaker questions, of course, but if you’re having trouble coming up with some, there are many resources online. Here’s a few I found with some fantastic, thought provoking and ridiculous questions:

CF “Ice Breaker” Questions

Collaboration Zone Ice Breaker Questions

15 Creative Ice Breaker Questions

31 Good Ice Breaker Questions For Work

The last thing folks on the East Coast want to hear about is ice right now, I’m sure.

But, have some fun and ask an ice breaker at your next meeting and see how it goes! I’d love to hear what you ask and the results.

[custom_author=jenny]