Merely hiring experienced or skilled employees isn’t enough to ensure success for your company. You need to make your skilled/experienced employees collaborate on their strengths and work together as a team towards a single goal while embracing each other’s weaknesses and strengths.
But how can you do that? If you have this question on your mind, you’ve come to the right place. This blog talks about eight practical icebreaker activities for team building. You can use these activities to improve interaction among employees and foster the feeling of oneness.
What Is an Ice Breaker Activity, and Why Should You Use One?
Have you ever hosted a meeting, a team-building session, or a presentation? If you have, you must’ve also noticed that weird silence and discomfort that creeps in, making every attendee awkward.
Well, icebreaker activities are the solution to that weird silence and discomfort. Icebreaker activities are fun activities or games that help “break the ice” at events. Such activities help the attendees or teammates learn more about each other, start a conversation and lighten the mood.
When it comes to team building, there are special icebreakers that require the teammates to work in unison in a playful manner. This helps them learn how to work as a team towards a single goal and thus benefit your company as a whole.
Let’s now talk about eight practical icebreaker activities for team building.
8 Practical (and Effective) Icebreaker Activities for Team Building at Office
Two Truths and One Lie
True or False or Two Truths and One Lie is a fun icebreaker for team building. Here’s how you can play it:
- Gather your team in a common area.
- Ask one person to come forward and make 3 statements about them, out of which 2 will be true and 1 false.
- After the person has made the statements, ask the rest of the group to guess which one’s right and which one’s false.
- Repeat this with other participants.
How Does it Help?
This ice breaker requires the participants to work as a team to guess which statement is false. And that’s the purpose, right? Also, your employees get to know each other, which is essential for teamwork.
One-Word Icebreaker
Here’s how you can play a one-word icebreaker:
- Divide your employees into small teams.
- Ask each team to come up with one word to describe the current project they’re working on or the company culture.
- Allow them some time to choose the apt word and the reason behind choosing it.
- After that, ask each team one by one to reveal the word along with the reason.
How Does it Help?
It’s highly likely that the same teams working on the same project come up with different words. This can spark healthy conversations, which can lighten the mood of the room. Also, dividing employees into small teams and choosing a word mutually will help them understand each other.
Whodunit
Yet another great team builder ice breaker is Whodunit. Here’s how you can play it:
- Divide your employees into small groups or pairs in case of a small company.
- Ask every individual to write something unique they’ve done in their lives on a chit, such as: jumping from a cliff, staying in a different country, etc.
- Drop all the chits in a hat or maybe a bowl and mix them up.
- Ask each participant to pick a chit one by one and let them guess “whodunit.”
- They can take the help of their teammates, but they need to give a reason behind their guesses.
How Does it Help?
Whodunit helps individuals interact with each other in a fun manner. Also, your employees will be able to learn more about the teammates they’re going to or already working with.
Charades
One can never go wrong with charades. This game fits everywhere, from the first day at school events and birthday parties to corporate team-building sessions. Here’s how you can play it at your company:
- Divide your employees into small groups.
- Randomly choose an individual and whisper a word in their ear.
- Ask the person you chose to act with and let all the teams guess what he’s trying to say.
- Don’t allow the team from which you chose the person to act to guess.
- The team that makes the right guess gets one point. If no one is able to guess, the actor’s team gets the point.
How Does it Help?
Charades is a really fun activity that includes a friendly competition. It also helps with teamwork as employees have to work as a team to guess the right word.
Find 5 Things in Common
This ice breaker is perfect for large groups and even entire offices. Here’s how you can play and find ten things in common:
- Gather employees in an open space and divide them into groups of 4-5.
- Ask them to find 5 things in common among them.
- Make sure to avoid things that are too common, i.e., “I am a human.”
How Does it Help?
Finding 5 things in common is an amazing way to improve employee communication. Also, humans tend to bond better with individuals they have something in common with. So, with this activity, you can help your employees know each other and deepen their bonding.
The Hot Seat
Another one on our list of icebreakers for team building is the hot seat. Here’s how you can play it:
- Gather your team or employees in an open space.
- Choose a random employee and sit him/her on a chair (the hot chair).
- Let other employees ask the employee questions ranging from their eating preferences to projects they’re working on.
- Once five questions have been asked, ask someone else to sit on the hot chair.
How Does it Help?
The hot seat not only helps lighten the mood of the entire room; it also is a great way to learn about each other. Provided your employees ask the right questions.
A Quiz on a Topic of Common Interest
Although underrated, a quiz is one of the best icebreaker activities for team building. You just need to play it in the right manner. Here’s how:
- Bring all your employees to a common area and divide them into equal teams.
- Choose a topic of common interest. For instance, if your team works on mobile development, the latest mobile trends would do.
- Prepare 15-20 multiple choice questions around this topic using PrepAI. It’s a well-known tool for AI-powered question generation using which you can create hundreds of intuitive MCQs on any topic within minutes. Enter the info, choose the source, and generate the questions.
- Once you have the quiz, print it on a sheet of paper.
- Read each question aloud one by one.
- Ask all the teams to raise their hand if they know the right answer.
- The team that gives the most number of right answers wins.
How Does it Help?
Based on what it is, a quiz can really help you a lot. For instance, if it includes questions on a particular skill, you can determine the most proficient employees and club them together as and when required. Also, it helps with teamwork as your employees have to work together to find the right answer.
Things To Avoid While Playing Icebreaker Activities for Team Building
You would never want icebreaker activities to spark fights or conflicts or to hurt someone, right? Here are some things you must avoid to be sure of that:
1. Don’t Make Anyone Share Their Personal Information
While it’s important to ask questions to know each other, there should be some limits. No one should be allowed to ask for personal information such as relationship status. Otherwise, it would defy the entire purpose of icebreakers making everyone awkward.
2. Don’t Make Anyone Get Physical
If you have some icebreaker activities for team building that require getting physical, don’t use them. It’s because getting physical, like touching someone, could lead to an argument and is also unhygienic. And this is the last thing you would want to happen.
3. Don’t Unnecessarily Extend an Activity
One important aspect of icebreaker activities for team building is that they should be short and crisp. So, always keep them brief. For instance, in the hot seat activity, limit the number of questions per person to 3-4, and for 5 things in common, don’t ask your employees to find 10 or 20 things. This might end up being boring and ultimately useless.
4. Don’t Repeat an Activity Multiple Times in a Row
If you run out of icebreaker activities for team building, it’s better to put in some more research and find new activities (or modify existing ones to be more engaging) instead of repeating them. It’s because repeating activities over and over again will make your employees lose interest, defying the whole purpose of icebreakers.
Wrapping Up
If you are a corporate trainer, team lead, or HR and want your employees to work as a team, improve the work culture and deliver better, icebreakers are debatable your best companion. They’re easy, fun, and, most importantly, serve the purpose.
However, always keep in mind the aforementioned don’ts while hosting icebreakers for team building. Otherwise, you might end up defying the purpose of icebreakers.
