Icebreakers for Meetings

There are times when people, who have hardly met earlier, get together for a meeting. A person will express his views confidently, only when he feels comfortable with the people around. If you are the organizer, you may think of commencing the brainstorming at a meeting, as a difficult task. You struggle to find a way to ease the awkwardness among the people. Here icebreakers will come in handy for you. What are meeting icebreakers?

Icebreakers For Meetings

In order to boost the productivity of the team, it is necessary for them to be comfortable with each other. Icebreakers and energizers for meeting, help the team to overcome the initial hesitation and boost creativity of thoughts and action. Icebreaker activities or icebreaker questions are meant to ease the tension and discomfort among the team and initiate the process of brainstorming.

You may come across numerous icebreaker activities with different ideas. But it is not always possible to carry out these activities due to several reasons, like lack of space or low level of comfort among the team. If it is an informal meeting, you can definitely go for any of the icebreaker activities. But the icebreaker ideas and activities have to be chosen and planned carefully. Let us have a look at some icebreakers for meeting.

Icebreaker Activities

• There is a simple activity, if you wish to group people in a team of two or more. What you can do is, you can write numbers on a piece of paper (same number twice), and ask people to pick up one paper. Those who have picked up the same number should be seated together. You can make this a fun-filled activity by replacing a specific type of candy instead of numbers.
• Another activity to initiate the flow of ideas in a group is, to assign a simple topic and the groups have to mention the advantages or merits of the issue. You can start with a simple, non-work related topic and gradually turn to the work related ones. For eg, begin with cellphones and later you can turn to video conferencing or outsourcing, etc. or any other topic related to your work. This way you can break the ice and make people speak more confidently.
• If you have enough space for people to move around, you can undertake the following activity. Ask the people to move around and get introduced to as many people as possible. You should allot specific time, like 2 minutes. Each person should get introduced to maximum people and should also remember their names, home city, etc. When the time is up, ask each person to name the people he/she has come across. It will be fun to see how many people and information each one of them recalls!
• You can ask each person to introduce himself/herself along with an adjective that describes them accurately. They will also have to give a suitable reason or an experience to justify their answer. This is also one of the most popular icebreakers for meetings and can be used in a formal as well as informal meeting. See more icebreaker games for office staff meetings.

Icebreaker Questions

You can even write icebreaker questions on pieces of paper and shuffle them. Each person should pick up a piece of paper and answer the question in it. The following are a few icebreaker questions that will be helpful to you.

• Who is the famous person you would have loved to be born as?
• What is the best thing that has ever happened to you?
• If you ever meet God, what would you ask for?
• Describe yourself in two words.
• What do you do to have fun?

You can even try funny and crazy meeting icebreakers in the form of questions for an informal meeting or a party. See more on funny icebreaker questions.

Meeting icebreakers are very useful when the meeting is scheduled to go on, for more than one day. You can use these icebreakers for meetings to help your team relax and get started with the contribution of thoughts and ideas.