Are you looking for some icebreakers for small groups?
Icebreakers help employees get to know each other better and connect with others on a more personal level. More importantly, icebreakers help employees see each other from a different perspective and as such, promote teamwork.
Remember, it’s not easy for your new recruits to get along with other employees. They need to build connections with others in the workplace and get familiar with your company culture.
In this article, let’s discuss 10 icebreakers for small groups.
10 Icebreakers for Small Groups
Before You Start
If you want to know how you can conduct team building activities, you can read this article for inspiration: How to Facilitate Team Building Activities in Your Workplace?
Alright, let’s go!
#1. Questions & Answers Session
The goal of this activity is to know more about the personality as well as views of a person. In this activity, a person is chosen as an “interviewee” and he should answer the questions of his team mates.
Instructions
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- Split the participants into small teams of 4-8 members each.
- In each team, nominate a person as an interviewee.
- Ask the interviewee to sit opposite to his team mates.
- Now, the remaining team members should ask different questions to the interviewee. The questions must be creative as well as objective. Avoid generic/repetitive questions.
Here are some of the questions you can try.
“When you get a vacation, where would you go and why?”
“If you win a $100,000 lottery or jackpot, how would you spend the money?”
“What is your primary consideration when choosing a friend?”
“Which age do you think is the best for marriage?”
- Then, the interviewee should answer each question.
- Once this is done, choose another person as an interviewee and repeat the activity.
#2. My Name is?
In this activity, the participants should tell their name along with a prefix that describes their main characteristic.
Instructions
- Divide the participants into small teams of 4-10 members each.
- Ask each person to state his name by adding a prefix that describes his main characteristic. For example: Intelligent Tom, Humble Jane etc.
- Now, each person should introduce himself by saying “My name is [Prefix] [Name].
#3. Your First Job
This icebreaker activity helps team members get to know each other better and is ideal before a team meeting.
Instructions
- Group the participants into small teams of 4-6 members each.
- Ask your team members to tell a brief story about their first job or even worst job.
- Now, each team member should tell a brief story about their first/worst job.
- To save time, you can also instruct your team members in one day advance to come up with their story.
#4. Goal Sharing
This icebreaker exercise helps employees understand and respect the goals of their colleagues. Therefore, employees can help one another to achieve each individual goal.
Instructions
- Split the participants into teams of 6-10 members each.
- Instruct each team member to write down a goal they need to achieve in a year and the reason behind it.
- Once this is done, ask each person to share his/her goal with the whole team members.
- Then, put all the goals in a bowl and ask each person to pick out one of his partners goal.
- The person who picks his partner’s goal is accountable for that goal and he needs to help his partner achieve it.
#5. Two Truths and a Lie
Two truths and a lie will help individuals to know more about the people around them through interaction. The goal of this activity is to identify the lie from three different statements.
Instructions
- Ask each participant to write two truths and a lie about himself/herself in a paper piece and advise them not to reveal the lie to anyone.
- Now, the rest of the participants should try to find out which one is the lie by asking different questions.
#6. Wear Your Attitude
This activity will help people to see others mood and the way they may react on that day.
Instructions
- Divide the participants into teams, preferably 4-6 members in each.
- Create a few badges with different attitudes such as negative attitudes, neutral attitudes and positive attitudes written on them.
- Instruct each member to pick a badge that best describes their feeling on that particular day.
- Then, each person should wear it.
- Team members can switch up their badge if their mood changes.
#7. Life Highlights
This icebreaker activity helps employees to know more about the lifestyles, passions, and personalities of their colleagues. Life highlights is ideal before a team meeting or presentation.
Instructions
- Ask the participants to close eyes for one minute and think about their best life moments like moments with family or friends, personal/professional achievements, etc.
- After reviewing their life highlights, each person should discuss which life moment they want to relive if there are only 30 seconds left in their life and the reason for that.
#8. What Makes You Tick?
This activity helps to find out each others personalities and understand what kind of personalities may clash so they can learn how to approach each other differently. The main goal of this exercise is to know what motivates and what demotivates the team mates.
Instructions
- Split the whole participants into small teams.
- Ask each team to take a personality test together. Pick a test that is less complicated.
- Once this is done, share the results with all of the team mates.
#9. Coin Logo
In this activity, the participants are required to create a logo using coins and explain it.
Instructions
- Ask the participants to empty their pockets or wallets and place their coins on the table in front of them (If you have a large number of participants, split them into smaller teams).
- Have some coins spare if someone doesn’t have enough coins.
- Now, allow some time for each person/team to create a personal/team logo using their coins.
- Then, ask each person/team to discuss about their logo such as what is its meaning, what made them create such a logo etc.
#10. React and Act
The goal of this game is to role-play a particular scenario through animated expressions and guess it correctly.
Instructions
- Divide the participants into teams of 6-10 members each.
- Request each participant to role-play a particular scenario. This can be anything like winning the lottery, winning an examination, proposing someone etc.
- The rest of the team mates should guess the scenario.