Ice Breakers for Team Meetings - Elite Training
Bring Life to your team meetings
Looking for ways to bring new life and energy to your team meetings? Turn "dull and dreaded" to "energising and effective" with our ice breaker games.
Ice breakers are particularly suited for starting a meeting. As the name implies, they “break the ice,” help participants relax, and generally set the tone for the meeting. They help to make participants comfortable with others, and some simple participation makes them more receptive to listening and contributing.
These are the common questions people ask us about ice breakers for team meetings
Why use ice breakers for team meetings?
Getting people comfortable in a group setting before a team meeting can be the best investment of time you can make. Our ice breaker games help participants feel comfortable talking and at ease with the others.
Icebreakers for meetings are also the easiest way to drop teammates into meeting-mode.
Successful icebreakers help participants creative juices flowing, increase the exchange of ideas, establish team identity and create a sense of community.
Ice breakers will enable participants to:
- quickly become familiar with one another, which will lead to a more productive meeting.
- relax and think more creatively
- help participants to interact on a different level then they do in the workplace
- open the lines of communications with relaxed manner
- resuscitate any failing energy and stimulate the creativity
- be energized, increasing enthusiasm and receptivity to messages conveyed during the meeting as a result of the ice breaker games for staff meetings
- communicate and reinforce some key issues around employee engagement, corporate social responsibility, workplace safety, customer service, vision, values and ethics plus many more issues.
What about Team members come from different cultural backgrounds?
An icebreaker is a great way to start, but carefully consider what you want to achieve form the ice breaker and the meeting.
It is essential everyone will feel comfortable and appreciate you are creating a safe environment for them to be open about their thoughts and feelings.
Never ask icebreaker questions that deal with nationality, religion, sex, invasions of privacy, or taboo subjects.
Consider their ability to speak a common language. Some of our ice breakers have no written instructions and can be used in any language.
What if our meeting is a workshop?
If you're expecting new people to work together for a period of time, some form of introduction is needed. You might as well make it fun with an ice breaker
What if our meeting is conference call between participants in different countries?
Because you do not have a physical way to get people moving around the same room, you have to adapt traditional icebreakers to work over distance.
What about when participants normally work in another town/country and only know others by telephone conversations or emails?
I would regard an icebreaker as essential. It will help establish the kinds of connections that would normally happen in a day-to-day office setting.
The facilitator can use icebreakers as a quick assessment of the group to gauge how much they know about the topic, how comfortable they are in groups, what is their background, expertise and so on.
The key to a successful icebreaker is to make sure it is focused on meeting your objectives and appropriate to the group of people involved.
Example Icebreaker Activities
There are many types of icebreakers and energisers for meetings or training, each suited to different objectives. Here are some that we recommend and the areas they cover.
| Activity Name | Areas Covered by the activity |
| Balancing Risk | Problem Solving, Teamwork, Time Management |
| Colourshapes |
Communication skills, Interpersonal Skills, Problem Solving, Teamwork |
| Continuous Improvement ** | Performance Management, Process Improvement, Leadership |
| Crime Squad ** | Communication, Ice Breaker, Planning, Teamwork |
| Electric Fence ** | Problem Solving, Planning, Safety Awareness, Teamwork |
| Helium Stick | Teamwork, Leadership, Communication, Focus on Goals |
| Minefield | Learning from Mistakes, Risk Taking, Team Support, Feedback |
| Pipeline ** | Icebreaker, Customer Service, Teamwork, Setting Targets |
| Roller Coaster Ball | Communication, Co-operation, Trust, Teamwork |
| Team Shapes ** | Communication, Problem Solving, Planning, Teamwork |
Expert advice to help you choose and use
With our business experience and expertise in training, we can help you choose the right icebreaker activity or business game. Advice is free and there is no obligation to buy.
To see the other companies that have bought business simulation games from us and their feedback on our services please visit our >> Customers and Feedback Page
Prefer us to run the game? No problem
Our facilitators will run a business game or icebreaker activity at your management conference, seminar or training course.
Just let us know what you want to achieve from running the game and relax in the knowledge that we will make the game interesting, enjoyable and beneficial.
"The general feedback on our conference was 'one of the best yet!' I think that using starting the day with the Crime Squad really helped relax people into the day and I think they all found the Hotel exercise both challenging and rewarding and having you run the afternoon enabled us to see how the delegates actually worked together. Thanks to you and your team for helping make our conference a success.
The challenge for us is now to come up with something different for next year so any suggestions would be appreciated."C. Garrett – Selwood
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