5 icebreaker themes for high-performance teams

To get the best out of a meeting, you need to get everyone engaged and thinking creatively. A good icebreaker sparks interest, inclusion and creative responses.

Whether you’re looking for a 5-minute icebreaker to get “creative juices flowing” — or if you’re looking to foster team cohesion in the long run — the Apolitical community has you covered.

Here are suggestions from our community of public servants of engaging ways to start a productive meeting.

If you’ve come across an activity that has worked well for your team, let us know!

Get creative

Pictionary — needs no introduction. Digital whiteboards like Figma, Miro, Mural or Google Jamboard are all you need if you’re working remotely. Or you could just hold paper up to a screen. Here’s a refresher on the rules.

Unfinished artwork — draw a small image, then let the rest of the team individually decide how to complete the picture. Here’s an example:

Broken telephone (but with drawings) — the first person writes a phrase, the second draws it and, based on the drawing, the third person writes what they think the drawing means. The next person draws the new phrase and so on.

Storytelling — one person starts with an opening line, and then each person adds a sentence or two to build a story. Make sure to write it down!

Worst pun contest — a quick way to either find a new way of looking at something, make light of a big challenge... or just lose face in front of your colleagues.

Here’s one for you: why do you never see owls being amorous in the rain? It's too wet to woo 🦉

Brainteasers

Paper clips — 60 seconds to name as many uses of a paperclip as you can. Kudos to the most creative response.

Anagrams or ‘backronyms’ — start with a random collection of letters, and either see what words people can turn them into, or see what creative acronyms people can make out of them. For example N.F.T.D. could be Normal for Thursday drinks or Newts find toads disgusting.

Questions that spark conversations

Guess the song — crack open the nostalgia box and share in your team’s (sometimes questionable) taste.

What’s your favourite... — a great way to find shared interests with your team, and also a helpful source of inspiration for after you’ve completed Netflix.

Jokes — One contributor mentioned that they’d created “joke Thursday”, as a quick and silly way to brighten the start of big meetings.

Challenges

Scavenger hunt — It works especially well virtually: send people off to find a list of objects. They could even be based around a theme, e.g. four objects beginning with the letter C.

Share your space/grab and show — a great way to learn a bit more about your colleagues; this exercise asks people to either show a bit more of their home working space or select one item in their reach and say a few things about it.

Lightning research — one public servant once opened a “how to do research” workshop by assigning everyone a country and asking them to research and report the considerations they’d take in deciding whether to travel there. A bit more high effort, but a good way to set a team in a particular mindset.

Tech-enabled icebreakers

Apps — multiplayer apps are a great way for remote and semi-remote teams to stay “socially active and have a positive mindset while working”

Spin the wheel — picking whose turn it is to speak/chair/contribute is made infinitely more exciting by the wheel of names.

Thanks to:

Participants on the Apolitical leading teams effectively in government course for sharing the creative ways they inject life into their team meetings.

(Picture Credit: Unsplash)