List Of Funny Icebreakers For Meetings

Here is a list of funny ice breakers for meetings. These exercises are sure to get people laughing and at ease.

Animal imitations: put the chairs in a circle; put the name of an animal on each chair; for a given amount of time (a minute, for example), have the staff members imitate those animals with gestures and sounds

Arm wrestling match: Split the group into two teams, one for men and one for women; have the staff members face off against each other; if you like, the winners in each group can then face off against each other

Asking questions: ask your staff members funny, open-ended questions that will make them think: “if you were a food, what kind of food would you be?”, “if you were tiny and stuck in a blender, how would you get out?”

Board game: put a half-finished puzzle or board game on the table (Scrabble, Jenga, etc.), and have the employees talk about it and work on it as they come in

Brainstorm: separate the group into two teams, and give each team a theme for a list (ex: “objects that are orange,” “things you would take on a backpacking trip”). Have the two teams compete against each other by seeing which team can get the most items on their list. The team that wins receives a small award, such as a mug or a candy bar.

Conversations: write down questions that require interviewing the other staff members to find the answer (ex: “what’s the strangest thing someone has eaten?”; “who has an uncommon hobby?”), and have them talk to each other to answer these questions. Related to human bingo (see below).

Find the employee: give each staff member a name tag with someone else’s name on it; tell them they have to find the person who the tag belongs to by interviewing the other members of the group

Funny poll: ask group members funny questions in a poll to see how they answer (ex: “have you ever rode a motorcycle?” “if you could choose a fictional character to be your imaginary friend for the rest of your life, who would you choose?”

Guess my old job: have the staff members write down unusual jobs they had on pieces of paper; have the group members draw the papers from a bowl and guess who had which job

Guess the celebrity: put the name of a celebrity on the back of each staff member, so that they don’t know whose name it is; put the staff members in pairs and have them figure out whose name they have by asking each other questions

Guess the fun fact: have the staff members write little-known funny facts about themselves (ex: “I once fell asleep in a meeting”), and have the group guess which fact belongs to who. Alternately: have the staff write these facts down on paper airplanes, and then the other staff members can grab one out of the air and guess accordingly

Hidden talents: Have each staff member discuss their talents with the group, and let them demonstrate for the group; examples include singing, juggling, drawing, or telling jokes

Human bingo: fill up cards with things that may apply to a large number of people (ex: “has met a celebrity”; “has worked at a fast-food restaurant”), and have the staff members talk to each other, trying to fill up their cards with the names of people who have done the events in question. The person who manages to get their card the most full is the winner, so you can give them a small prize like candy.

Line up: give each group member a card with a number on it. Have the group members organize themselves in numerical order without telling each other their number directly, or showing each other the card. They’ll have to describe the numbers with clues (ex: “21” — “how old you need to be to drink in the US”).

Marooned: ask each staff member that, if they were stranded on a desert island, which three famous people would they want with them

Mixer: have the staff members talk to each other and introduce themselves one-on-one for a short amount of time (three minutes, for example), then switch them up to talk to other group members. Keep switching it up until everyone has introduced themselves to everyone else.

Musical chairs: put chairs around the table, ensuring that there’s one fewer chair than there are staff members; put some music on and let the staff members walk around; turn off the music, leaving them to scramble for a chair, and eliminate the player who hasn’t managed to find one; keep removing a chair for each successive round

Office drama: split the participants into two groups; make a list of unlucky events that can happen in an office (ex: your computer crashes while you’re delivering a hundred-page report, an employee is rude to the receptionist and slams down the phone); have a member from each group each pick an entry from the list; they must act it out for their team members to guess, as in Charades

Paper tearing: give your employees a piece of paper each and have them close their eyes. Give them specific instructions for folding and tearing the paper in certain ways. Have them open their eyes and compare how well they followed the instructions.

Round robin: begin a sentence (“Yesterday, a dog walked into the supermarket and…”), and then have each group member add onto the story.

Question ball: write down fun ice breaker questions on a beach ball (ex: “what was your wackiest travel experience?” “who is the most famous person you have ever known”), and toss the ball around the room; when the staff members catch it, have them explain the answers to the question that their index finger landed on

Shoe game: have the staff members each take off a shoe; shuffle the shoes together and distribute them to random staff members; tell them to find the person who has their shoe and introduce themselves at the same time

Sweet meet and greet: fill a bucket with different candy bars, making sure that there’s an equal number of each brand; have staff members draw a candy bar and go sit with others who drew the same bar, letting them talk together; suggest conversation ideas for them if you like

Ten-dollar auction: Using a fake gavel, auction off a ten-dollar bill, starting at five dollars. Your employees will probably be willing to pay more than the ten dollars it’s worth.

The coin game: have the group members take coins at random from a pile on the table; they have to say what interesting things they were doing the year the coin was minted

The five favorites: have everyone list their five favorites in a given category (ex: “favorite movie,” “favorite musical,” “favorite workout song”) and see if it matches up with anyone else’s favorites

The interview: split the employees into pairs, and have them interview each other; at the end, each member has to say the three most interesting things they’ve learned about their partner

The M&M game: have everyone take a handful of M&M’s out of a bowl; attribute a theme to each candy (ex: red = “favorite superhero,” yellow = “favorite food”), and have the staff answer these prompts beside on the color of the candy they’ve chosen

The toaster game: put a toaster in the middle of the table and put some toast in it; get everyone to talk about themselves while the bread is cooking; the person who’s speaking when the bread comes out has to eat the toast with whatever toppings the group decides

Truth or lies: have every staff member say three statements to the rest of the group; two are true, and one is false. The others have to figure out which on is the lie.

Would you rather: give each staff member a WYR question. Examples: “if you were a superhero, would you have fast healing or super strength?”; “would you rather climb Mount Everest or trek through a desert?”

Word link: have someone say the first word that comes to mind (ex: “blue”); the next person in line says the first word, then adds onto it with the first word that comes to their mind (“blue ocean”); and so on (“blue ocean spray, gray birds”). So that the game doesn’t get out of hand, keep chains to five or six words.

World geography: have someone say the name of a country, and then the next person has to say a country that starts with the last letter of the first country, and so on and so forth (ex: “Italy” — “Yugoslavia” — “Andorra”)

Your worst job: have your employees talk about the worst job they’ve ever had. Have them tell a funny story about it.