Team Ice breaker Questions
There are icebreaker questions, and there are ice breaker questions; the goal of the good ones is to actually promote a growing sense of team understanding and cohesion.
and, it's way easier than you thought it could be! Here are 4 quick and easy rules to make your icebreakers work for you (and your team):
- Self-expression: it might take awhile for your team to warm up, but once they do, allowing them to express themselves will go a very long way indeed.
- Go first: lead by example, and answer the question first (even if it's a tough one, or you're not leading the meeting!). Remember, this is the first step towards having a productive, trusting, and ultimately blameless retro!
- Keep it short and sweet: you don't want to spend hours on icebreakers, so keep them short and sweet and timely - you could always extend the icebreaker session to an after-work activity.
- Enjoy it: having fun together builds culture!
Self-expression
When it comes to self-expression, you need to make sure that the question doesn't set the bar too high or too low, and that there’s no wrong answer.,
Stick to open questions (as in, no direct yes or no answers), and avoid anything too factual (these can make people feel inadequate if they don't know the answer). Open questions will also help you learn more about your colleague’s lives and thought processes!
Remember though, that you need to make sure everyone feels included and if things get a little too personal, you run the risk of making people uncomfortable (or building a non-trusting, blame-heavy environment) – so always try to start with less personal questions.
Some good examples of these are -
- Tell us about an interesting hobby of yours.
- Do you have a secret skill no one knows about? What is it?
- Who’s your favorite singer/song?
Answer Icebreakers First
It's not just what you ask, but how you ask.
Answering first will help to make everyone feel a little more comfortable with one another, as well as avoid any awkwardness about breaking the silence (or ice).
It's a great way to make yourself vulnerable, as well as leading by example.
Keep Things Simple
Icebreakers can be pretty complicated.
You want to avoid forcing anyone to reveal too much information about themselves, or have to think too hard – this should be an easing of tensions, not a stress-inducer!
Your icebreaker session should last up to 10 minutes. If there’s a larger group in the session or some very talkative people you could still have open-ended icebreakers with one-word answers, such as "What's your spirit animal?" or "What did you eat for breakfast?"
We hope you have fun with these icebreaker questions!
Some of our favorites are in bold. Start with those if you don’t have time to comb through the whole list, or just go right to the next section and learn about our free icebreaker questions generator tool.
Fun Icebreaker Questions

Icebreakers are a magic tool to garner enthusiasm and passion for your meetings. Some of the most effective Icebreakers are ones that will make the team smile and enjoy themselves (perhaps out of stupidity or craziness). Fun Icebreaker questions are a great twist on traditional Icebreakers and will make your team think hard and smile about their answers.
Fun Icebreaker questions starting with "Would you rather"
- Would you rather lose all of your money or all of your pictures?
- Would you rather be an Olympic gold medalist or an astronaut?
- Would you rather have a pet sloth or a pet parrot?
- Would you rather give up your cellphone for a month or bathing for a month?
- Would you rather know everything about the ocean or space?
- Would you rather happy moments become happier or sad moments become less sad?
- Would you rather have no arms or no legs?
- Would you rather be funny or clever?
- Would you rather always be cold or always be hot?
- Would you rather lose your sight or hearing?
- Would you rather fart or burp glitter?
- Would you rather be able to run at 100 miles per hour or fly at 10 miles per hour
- Would you rather travel back in time to meet your ancestors or would you rather go to the future to meet your descendants?
- Would you rather kiss a jellyfish or step on a crab?
- Would you rather never hear music again or lose the ability to read?
- Would you rather always be slightly late or always be an hour early?
Icebreakers can be used in a wide variety of circumstances; one being the workplace. Funny Icebreaker Questions for Work can be very beneficial within any work environment or sector. These Icebreakers are specialized to be utilized in the workplace. They relate to jobs, projects, skills, teamwork and general work-life topics. These Icebreakers can be especially effective because team members who work in the same place are likely to have similar experiences and memories relating to work, so their answers can be understood and appreciated even more so. Check out these funny icebreakers for work: Although virtual meetings offer immense advantages to the modern workplace, it’s not uncommon to find that starting virtual meetings is awkward, annoying and slow. This is why using Icebreakers in virtual meetings is so crucial to having a successful meeting. These Icebreakers will relate to remote work, virtual meetings and personal questions that can be appreciated by virtual or work-from-home teams. Check these out: Holiday times are always celebratory and special. However, running meetings during holidays can be a drag for the team. By starting your meeting with these topical Icebreakers you’ll find that the team will engage more in the meeting, producing better outcomes. Choosing these holiday Icebreaker questions for your meeting during the holiday period will mean everyone is on the same page of understanding, so no one is left in the dark from the questions. Check these out: The Christmas period is one of the most special times of the year. This time has a dramatic effect on the mood of most teams. Happiness and joy are somewhat abundant during this time and sentiment is usually high as people prepare for family time and time off work. What better subject to make people happy than to use one of the most happy times of the year. Using Christmas Icebreaker questions leverages the positive feelings people have for Christmas and can use them for your meeting’s advantage; everyone always gets in a good mood when talking about Christmas! Check these out: These Icebreakers are sure to excite your team with their crazy comparisons and made up situations. Spooky questions always get people excited - the extremity of these scenarios always make people interested and keen to answer. Better yet, starting your meeting with these Halloween Icebreaker Questions can still have a profound effect on your team whether it’s halloween or not, they can be asked year-round. Let your team’s imagination run wild with these Halloween inspired Icebreakers. Check these out: Almost every tradition and culture has a New Year's Eve celebration in some way. This means that a large proportion of every workplace asks themselves some variation of these New Years eve Icebreaker questions. The common knowledge of these questions makes them the perfect thing to kick-off your meeting with because it is very likely that everyone will have an answer to them. Check these out: The reason why Movie, TV and Book Icebreakers are so successful in meetings is because they are bedrocks of society’s culture. This means everyone is very familiar with the subjects that are being asked, and everyone will have their own opinion on the questions; which will make for great discussions and interesting answers from your team. This then directly correlates to more productive meetings and higher contribution from team members. Don’t hesitate and ask one of these Movie, TV and Book Icebreaker questions in your next meeting. Check these out: We just launched a random icebreaker generator tool to help you choose one for your team. Start your meetings and gatherings with over 3,000 icebreaker questions designed to build trust, connectedness, and psychological safety. Keeping your icebreakers fun, positive, and trust-building makes for better team communication. And that’s absolutely essential when you're running a sprint retrospective. You need a strong team to be able to easily open up and communicate with one another, for the good, and those less-than-good times. But, even during those ‘less than’ (disastrous sprint, anyone?) - there's an easy, painless and completely free way to keep everyone seamlessly engaged, happy and proactive. > Read our article about sprint names or check out our new tool for generating fun sprint names Engineering leader, passionate about coding products and value creation. Vast experience with managing R&D teams at various scales. Embracing innovation and transformation for constant improvement. Fun Icebreaker questions that are "If questions"
Other Fun Icebreaker Questions
Funny Icebreaker Questions for Work
Ice breaker Questions for virtual meetings
Holiday Icebreaker Questions
Christmas Icebreaker Questions
Halloween Icebreaker Questions
New year's Eve Icebreaker Questions
Movie, TV and Book Icebreaker Questions
Can't pick? Use our icebreaker questions generator tool
Have a Solid Icebreaker Session for an Awesome Retro Session
Let's GoRetro: completely Free sprint retrospective tool for unlimited team members and boards.For More Fun
> Choose the best / cool / most funny / whatever-you-can-think-of team name
> Create your next awesome agile meme
As much as time is money nowadays (and energy!) and you want to be spending every minute of your day and sprint retrospectives productively, it’s always a good idea to ease your team in. That’s because solid communication skills are a core part of a productive team...and that begins only when your team feels comfortable sharing with one another. Now, you don't have to be a modern-day Michael Scott to know that there are some things that will make your team uncomfortable at best, and dead inside at worst... Featured Posts
Subscribe
About the author
Join thousands of companies
Joining as an organisation? Contact sales