42 Team-Meeting Icebreakers

At the start of our Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning team meetings, we kick things off with a quick icebreaker. The person running the meeting is responsible for writing or finding the prompt.

Below are some of the icebreakers that have been effective for warming up our team meetings. Please feel free to use them as you see fit.

• Dream car for you when you were 16.
• What food would you eat every day if you had to for the next 30 days?
• Tell us about your favorite museum.
• What technology (or technological advance) did you think would exist by now but does not? Why do you want that technology, and how would you use it if it existed today?
• What is one thing you are grateful for in your work life this week?
• It’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day! Let’s take the No-Mouse Challenge to learn about web accessibility. Take two or three minutes to explore your university’s website without using your mouse (Tab/Shift-Tab are your friends).
• Would you identify yourself as an introvert, extrovert or an ambivert?
• Share something about your mom.
• Tell us one thing about your work or nonwork life that we might not otherwise find out.
• What’s the most significant change you notice at the beginning of a new term/semester?
• Share one thing that your family did when you were a child that you have either affirmed or rejected as an adult.
• What is your favorite mud season event, tradition or feature?
• Reflect on our constructive and destructive behaviors.
• Which management/leadership styles do you use? Which ones do you prefer? (Click here for the definition of each).
• Gratitude—please share something you are grateful for about yourself, your circle and (or) the world you live in.
• _________, I’ll never do that again.
• What is your favorite game?
• A memory of playing as a kid.
• “It could only happen here.”
• The biggest surprise of the term/semester?
• What is one new non-work-related thing you’d like to do or try in the fall?
• The trip you’ve been dreaming about …
• The big thing at work that you are hoping/trying to accomplish this week.
• What is the best thing that has happened to you in the last week?
• What is something you’ve learned online?
• What are you grateful for this week?
• Good words to live by (or a personal motto). We will do a lightning round of reading these to kick off our meeting.
• Show us a photo of a place in your house that you would feature in a Cribs walk-through.
• What is the best thing you or others in your house have cooked or baked this week?
• Show us an object of meaning from your home and tell us why you chose it (keep it brief-ish).
• What is the most memorable April Fool’s joke of your childhood?
• Strategies for dealing with campaign primary workers (for a friend).
• If you had one extra hour each day, what would you use it for?
• Favorite Super Bowl commercial?
• Favorite restaurant (or food?) anywhere in the world?
• Your best method for combating seasonal affective disorder?
• New Year’s resolutions, yea or nay?
• Do you think you have a pretty good work-life balance? Why or why not?
• Favorite holiday as a kid, and favorite holiday now.
• Favorite season, summer or winter?
• When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grow up?
• If you could download any skill, like Neo downloading kung fu in The Matrix, what would you download?

If you have icebreakers that have worked for your team, please share.