Have You Tried These Five Great Meeting Ice-Breakers?

Icebreakers are without a doubt one of the best ways to kick off a meeting or conference. Not only do they help attendees get to know one another, they’re also fun and a good way to get people relaxed and ready for the important stuff.

Let’s have a look at five of the best icebreakers you can use to shake up your next meeting!

1. Two Truths and a Lie

This is a great one for getting to know one another and have a bit of fun. Depending on the size of your meeting, divide delegates into groups of around five to ten people, and—you guessed it—get them to write down two things about themselves that are true, along with one lie.

The group can then ask questions of one another to try to deduce which are the truths and which is the lie. At the end, everyone can vote for which they thought each statement was, and the delegate can then reveal the truths and lie.

2. Did You See It?

We think this one would work well in a team-meeting environment. Every day, employees will walk into their office and take in little or nothing of their immediate surroundings! They pass the same things every day, taking the same route to their desk which will more than likely look exactly the same.

To see how much attention your team pay to their surroundings, write up some questions such as “Who was working on reception today? What were they wearing?” Most people will find these sorts of questions surprisingly hard, and will no doubt lead to a lot of red-faces and giggles!

3. Your Worst Job

A terrible job; we’ve all had at least one at some point in our lives! Best for small to medium sized meetings, ask each attendee what their worst job was. As each person tells the tale of their woeful employment experiences, they can compete to see who really had it worst!

Not only will employees get to have a laugh at one another’s expense, they’ll (hopefully!) be reminded of how glad they are to be working in their current job.

4. Skittles

Not the game that might first have popped into your head, this version of skittles will take a little bit of preparation. This is a good way to encourage attendees to get to know one another, and it involves six questions and a bowl full of skittles!

Write down a question that correlates to the colour of each respective sweet, for example, orange could be your favourite book or movie, green could be your favourite work party and yellow could be your favourite thing to do during the workday to keep yourself motivated. Each attendee can choose a colour at random and then pass the bowl around until everyone has had a chance to answer a few questions; a sure-fire way to get the meeting started on a positive note whilst getting to know each other a little better.

5. Speed Dating

Perfect for large meetings or conferences, this is speed-dating without the… dating. We all know how speed-dating works; one group of people move around the room in a linear fashion whilst the other group remain seated where they are. One member from each group can spend a set amount of time (2-5 minutes) asking one another questions and just having a general chat where they get to know each other.

Use this icebreaker to get everyone comfortable with each other in a quick and efficient way that can also be very fun, with even the shyest of attendees being encouraged to have an informal chat with a new person for a short time.

Have you ever used any of these meeting icebreakers? Or have you any others that you’d like to share? Let us know what you like to do to start off your meetings and conferences on a positive note!