Ice Breaker Questions at Meetings

Needice breakers for your meetings at work? These are sampleice breakersthat you can use to start out your meetings, retreats,team building sessions, or training classes. With the right ice breaker question, you can focus the group on the content of the meeting. Or, you can decide that you want the participant warm-up focused on laughter and fun. Ice breakers help yourmeeting participants get to know each other and they warm up the conversation between participants at the meeting.

Once you use ice breakers to break the ice, the participant discussionsflow comfortably. They are an excellent opportunity to encourage more questions, exchanges, and sharing of experiences among participants. They encourage conversation which is typically slow when a group gets together for the first time. People are a little bit uneasy. They don't want to draw negative attention to themselves. And, they really, really, really don't want to sound or look stupid or uninformed.

For your regular meetings, where participants know each other, ice breaker questions can still serve a purpose. You can use them to get the conversation started and, especially when they focus on the topic of the meeting, they are a good way tomove participants into the main meeting agenda. Here are guidelines abouthow to facilitate and use theseice breaker questionsfor meetings. Take a look at these guidelines before you use any of the following suggested questions to open your meeting or training class. You’ll find helpful tips that will make your facilitation and the meeting successful.

Note that some of these questions are more suitable for participants who don't work together and are meeting for the first time. Others are more suitable for people who work together regularly. Some of the questions will work in either situation. Note also, that the choice of an ice breaker question that you choose to use in your meeting is limited only by your imagination. These samples are offered to get you started.

Sample: Ice Breaker Questions:

 What do employees complain about in your organization?

 What are you most worried about at work this month?

 What characteristic do you value the most in your coworkers?

? What is the most important personal attribute that you bring to your job

What are you most excited about in relation to your job this year?

What's one work-related skill that you'd like to develop, especially if you could do it easily?