5 Fun Team Building Icebreakers

When you bring a group of people together to work you might find that the range of personalities can take time to meld together. You can speed up the process by putting in place a number of team building exercises. The thought of icebreakers may make some people roll their eyes and sigh, but the truth is that they are an effective tool in making people feel at ease with each other. Getting to know a little about the people you are in a group with, even just their names, will make the rest of your group activities so much more fun and exciting.

With this in mind we have put together 5 of the best icebreakers for team building; giving you some great ideas to create a cohesive and effective team.

Dancing Names

Not only is the “Tell me about yourself” part of any team-building event more than just a little bit tedious, many people will struggle to remember all of the names that they hear. The Dancing Names ice-breaker is not only a fun way to get everyone warmed up, but also provides a visual reminder of all of the names. Everyone stands in a circle looking inwards at each other. Each person in the circle will say their name and follow it with a dance move. The rest of the group will then imitate this dance move and repeat the name 3 times. There are some groups that may be a little shy to start with, but once they get in the swing of things you will have people bringing out the worm and the running man, to name but a few dance moves.

Once everyone has gone around the circle and introduced themselves, turn on a song and have someone start the game. The one who starts will do their own dance move first, then do the dance move of another in the circle. Whoever’s dance move was performed, then does their own dance move and another person in the circle’s dance move. Then the dances go around and around until the song is over. Memorizing the dance move is a great way to memorize the names of those who performed.

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Back to Back Drawing

If you have a team that perhaps already know each other but need to work on their communication, then this icebreaker is a great idea. The group will need to split off into pairs, with each pair sitting or standing back to back. One of the pair will have a clipboard, piece of paper and a pencil, whilst the other will have a template of a shape. The objective is this: the person with the template has to get their partner to draw an exact supplicate of the shape, using only verbal pointers. It may seem easy but this can be a tricky one to get right.

This is a fantastic icebreaker which  encourages communication and interdependence. Use this at your next team building event and it is sure to be a hit!

The Big Calm Down

Towards the end of the session you might want to calm the group down and create a relaxed environment. A great way to do this is with an icebreaker that asks the group to focus on calming thoughts. Have them get comfortable and close their eyes. Tell them to take 5 minutes to reflect on the words that they hear. These words are of course up to you and can be tailored towards your business; however, some great ideas include “beach”, “sail away” or perhaps “green meadows”.

After the five minutes is up, gather the group in a circle and ask them to talk about what images came to their minds.

Baby Photos Icebreaker

Are you bringing together a new team for the first team in the workplace? If you are, then any baby photo based icebreakers are a great way to bring them together. Ask every member of the team (yourself included) to bring in a baby photo of themselves. These are all then pinned to a noticeboard and everyone is asked to guess who each baby is. You can do this as a week long game or perhaps split people into teams and give them half an hour to work out the answers; it is entirely up to you.

This icebreaker is a lot of fun for a few reasons. Everyone loves babies! Who doesn’t want to see a bunch of adorable baby pictures? This is a great way to get your team laughing and smiling without fear of being self conscious.