Those prizes are fire! 

Can’t wait to see the submissions rolling in! 

• Danielle Maveal

• Consultant

• This icebreaker brings allows for unscripted conversations by asking attendees to grab something from their home related to a prompt. Here we go beyond the meeting screen, and allow attendees to share an item from their everyday lives. Often this allows people to share personal stories and let the group know them a little more. 

• Go into breakout rooms (if a large group). Follow the prompts on the sticky notes to grab an item from your home related to the prompt. Take screenshots of the items that spark the most conversations. When the icebreaker is done, bring everyone back together and have them share screenshots from the prompts or items that sparked the most interesting conversations.

Love this icebreaker @daniellexo!! What the funniest thing you have ever seen in the highlight pictures? 

• Paul Buntman

• Educational projects manager at Redmadrobot

• This activity helps you to engage your group in several ways simultaneously. At first, everyone sees the list of participants with their names. Then, people start interacting with the board, which is needed in many collaborative meetings. After that everyone sees each other’s choices, and that gives a reason for jokes and other friendly interactions within the group. Rewards received after the questions provide additional positive feedback.

• 1. Setup
     Set the icebreaker area for each member of your group. Add their photos if you like.
  2. Characters
     Choose some popular characters relevant to your group. Popular superheroes are an obvious choice. Isn't it awesome to have dinner with Superman?
  3. Questions

     Ask questions about some regular actions. You can also ask something related to the topic of your meeting, workshop or brainstorming session.

     To answer the question, the participants have to drag the pictures of a chosen character to the corresponding area. Then players explain their choices.

  4. Rewards

     Hide icons with some cool things under the chest pictures. Icon Finder can help you there. Delete the chest or drag it away to reveal the prize.

     Alternatively, hide some compliments or nice wishes under an icon of the fortune cookie

• I hope you enjoy using my icebreaker template and I’ll be happy to get feedback from you!

Love this icebreaker @Paul Buntman! Especially the reward feature. Thanks for submitting your icebreaker template. Make sure to share this with your network as you can win either People’s Choice or the infamous Judge’s Choice 

Great icebreaker, I am already thinking of how I can use it in my workshops. The reward chest is brilliant @Paul Buntman! You could also hide a link under the chest to a poem, or a funny gif or meme. Thanks for sharing this icebreaker!! 

Thank you, @Dorothy Mankey! I prefer to keep people inside Miro during the workshop, and use only the links that can be embedded in the board thus they do not require opening other websites, so I always keep that in mind when choosing the rewards content. 

hi, can we post more than 1 idea?

Hi @sailee,

Yes, sure   

• Marjorie Broudieu
• Service & UX Designer

I often use the energiser ‘2 truths 1 lie’ during workshops as it helps participants discover new pieces of information about each other. What I particularly like is that this energiser works well with people who don’t know each other at all and team who have been collaborating for a long time: participants can just share information they are comfortable with. It has also a fun competitive element where participants attempt to create mystery to make it more or less difficult to find out what is true and what is not true. This leads people to know others better - and have a good laugh.
 
How to use it 
01. The facilitator sets up the board with the number of name tags and post-its necessary.
02. Facilitator invites people to write down their names and 2 truths facts about themselves, 1 lie on the post-its. (Optional: set a timer for 3 min)
03. The facilitator name a participant to present his/her post-its, inviting others to ask questions to get clues about what might be true or false. Set timer on 1:30 min.
04. The facilitator sets a voting session with 1 vote per person for 30 min & shares the results. Presenter reveals the truth.
05. The presenter invites someone to take the stage. Repeat steps.
 

I use a small pussle before we start our pi planning 

chopping a picture up in 12x12,  placing it in a frame in the out side of our board

this bring people to the online meeting before time and making some fun and small talk for all before we start the event.

all can participate … setting the timer also bring some tension for completion 

• Sara Parra Aguirre
• Project Manager and Service Designer at Accenture
• This exercise is perfect to start a workshop where at least a few participants don't know each other. Sharing what everyone likes for breakfast is a simple way to add a fun personal element to the workshop and an opportunity introduce themselves in a more informal way.
• Instructions: 

1. Participants pick their breakfast from the counter by dragging or copy/pasting everything they like.
2. They choose a table, add their name below and place their breakfast on the plate.
3. Once everyone is ready, participants share with the group what they chose and why.

I have created a short video to illustrate my idea:

https://streamable.com/08ytkj

• Megan Carson

• Graphic Designer at 24G

• Since the transition to working from home, many of the routines in our daily lives have been thrown out of whack. This fun icebreaker helps you bond with your teammates over the last time you did certain actions like taking a shower or wearing real pants to a meeting!

• Instructions:
  1. Come up with 3-5 actions. Feel free to add emojis, images, or gifs to represent them.
  2. Cover all of the actions with large sticky notes.
  3. Uncover the first action and have everyone add a sticky note below it with their answer.
  4. Discuss/laugh about the responses and move on to the next action!

• Shreyas Gavit

• Technical Product Manager, FCA

• When was last time you had lunch with your team? if it feels like years and centuries ago this is the right board for you. It combines the unique tastes and personalities of the team members in the form of their food choices! This board also empowers the team to explore various cultures and helps diversity inclusion with one thing we all love - FOOD! Hope ya’ll have fun

• Instructions on how to use it:

1. Pick three cuisines.

2. Have your team members post an image or gif of what they would order for lunch.

3. Discuss the responses and continue with the remaining cuisines

Matthias Bastian

• Agile Coach, DTAG

• This game needs almost no preparation. Just come up with some new questions from time to time or create a collection of questions so that you can vary them. This ice breaker lets people get to know each other by seeing that the others might have the same interest, that the share the same hobbies or come to work just like themselves. It also inlcudes the calmer ones because they can just move their cursors in order to show some more of their personality.

• Make up some questions and answers and color code them (red, blue, green, yellow). After you have read out a question ask the participants to move their cursor into the color field that represents one of the answers. Give them some time to recognize who else has moved their cursor into that field. If you have an answer like “something else” or so you can give participants the time to tell the others some more about it.

Tatyana Voronkova

Teacher

Self-employed

This activity is a lot of fun. It requires that people make decisions and answer the questions very quickly.

The aim is for the mouse to reach the cheese at the end of the maze within a set time limit.  Participants don’t have access to the board, they only see a part of the maze. They choose which question to answer either moving in the right direction or reaching a dead end. 

How to make it: upload a maze. Add stickers with questions. Check how much time we need to go through it while answering questions. It’s ready.

MONSTER WORKSHOP by Nina Torr

• Illustration lecturer at The Open Window (South Africa).
• I use this icebreaker to get my illustration students to loosen up and interact with one another at the beginning of a lesson.
• Participants collage their own monster onto an empty page by copying, pasting, rotating and resizing ‘monster parts’ (fragments which I uploaded as PNGs).  
• The monster parts are duplicated in case a participant accidentally forgets to copy an element.
• Background elements are locked (only monster parts are movable). 
• Participants have the option of building a scene together below if they're feeling adventurous.

Video overview:

https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_kobK91Q=/

FABULOUS FIVE ICEBREAKERS

• Full Name: Tricia Conyers and John Norcross

• Role and Company: Learning and Development, Evolve Partners LLC

• A brief description of why this exercise helps you break the ice: 5 different icebreaker exercises that help you to get to know your team, get creative juices flowing and start thinking outside the box.  Any of these will help put your team in the right frame of mind for your meeting! Enjoy!

Icebreaker 1: Team Superpower Collage

• Time: 20 mins

• Instructions:

  • Introduce icebreaker
  • Let each team member choose a box and add their name in the TEAM MEMBER box
  • Alternative: swap superpower for another topic that you would like to capture ideas
  • Alternative: you could let each person add their individual super power in their box and then collectively agree a team super power based on the individual contributions
  •  
  • Give everyone 3 mins to add a picture, icon or GIF showing your team superpower
  • Take a few mins to look through what everyone has added
  • Pull out any common themes and add your super power to the word bubbl e 

Icebreaker 2: GIF PARTY

• Time: 10 mins or less

• Instructions:

  • Introduce icebreaker
  • Choose a fun catch phrase (not associated with work)
  • Give everyone 3 mins to find a GIF of the phase, use https://giphy.com/
  • Use voting function to vote for your favorite GIF, tell people to vote on the grey squares
  • Alternative: make this relevant to your meeting by choosing a phrase that is relevant to the discussion e.g. "communication is key" or "there is no i in team" etc.

Icebreaker 3: What do we Value?

• Time: 15-20 mins
• Instructions:
  • Choose one of your company values
  • Enter the value into the middle of the work space
  • Allow everyone 3 mins to read any text or description of the value chosen
  • Give everyone 5 mins to draw a picture of the company value in one of the grey squares (can also put together icons if using the drawing option is difficult)
  • Use voting function to vote for your favorite drawing, vote on the grey square

Icebreaker 4: Guess Who (and/or random inspiration)

• Time: 10-15 mins
• Instructions:
  • Take a picture of something on your desk or near by (something that would not immediately be associate with you)
  • Add it to one of the blocks in the workspace
  • Give 3 mins for everyone add a post it note around each of the pictures guessing who from the team the picture belongs to
  • Do a quick round robin of each pic allowing team members to say why the associated that pic with the name they wrote down
  • Allow the owner of the picture to identify themselves
  • Option: you could give a category for the picture/object e.g something blue
  • Alternative: you could make this relevant to your meeting by allowing everyone to enter a random picture of an object and then letting the group go around and discuss how that object is relevant to topic being discussed. E.g. what does this object tell us about great communication or what does this object tell us about excellent team work etc.

Icebreaker: Let's play Pictionary

• Time: 15 mins
• Instructions:
  • Choose a few words
  • Send one in private chat to a team member
  • Set the timer for 2 mins
  • Person MUST draw in the box while other team members guess
  • The winner, is the next person to draw
  • If no winner, initial person draws again a new word
  • Alternative: you could make this relevant to your company by choosing words associated with the work you do

My favorite question here is ‘whats something you own that no one would have guessed?’ A lot of weird random items show up. Hardcore machinery, nerdy hobbies, etc :) 

we’ve added 5 more FABULOUS icebreakers to our board to make a board of

TERRIFIC TEN ICEBREAKERS!

https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_kobK91Q=/

here an overview of the five new additions, building on the post above…

 

Icebreaker 6: Bring Something to the Table

• Time: 10 mins

• Instructions:

  • Choose a seat
  • Add your pic or avatar (search in icon finder) to a seat around the table
  • Add your name
  • Use the icon finder to bring something to the table that you would like to share with the team

• Alternative:

  • Make this relevant to the work your team is doing by inviting them to bring something to the table that is useful for the team

• Option:

  • After everyone shares what they are bringing to the table you can clear the table and have everyone add a post it note to the table with their objective or goal for the meeting

Icebreaker 7: Mashup (inspired by IDEO)

• Time: 15 mins
• Instructions:
  • As a team choose 2 broad categories
  • Allow 2 mins for the team to brainstorm ideas in each of the categories, add the ideas either as pictures, icons or post it notes
  • Allow the team to randomly combine items from the two list and share what insights this inspires for them about the team, the product, the service, the meeting or the challenge at hand (pick one)

Icebreaker 8: Storytime

• Time: 10 mins
• Instructions:
  • Make sure there are at least 2 or 3 boxes for each person in the team
  • Allow each person to add two random icons into two random boxes, make sure all the boxes are full
  • Ask each person to add their name to a name tag
  • In order go through the name tags and tell the icon story
• Option:
  • Ask the team what does this story tell us about our team

Icebreaker 9: Team BINGO

• Time: 30-60 mins (whatever the duration of your meeting is)
• Instructions:
  • Capture 24 phrases you are likely to hear from your team (they can be cliches, common phrases, paradigms, etc.)
  • Capture them in the BINGO card
  • Identify how many cards you will need for your meeting and replicate the BINGO card for participants
  • Randomize the phrases on each card
  • Place a virtual "blotter" mark on the phrase when you hear it
  • The winner, is the first person to call "BINGO!"
  • If no winner, you wait until the next meeting to play again
• Reflection questions:
  • Why did we choose the phrases we did?
  • What do these phrases say about us?
  • Why do we say/use these phrases so much?
  • What does it say about our culture?
• Alternative:
  • Change the contents of the BINGO card to diversity categories
  • Give everyone a card and let them write in a name to the square of someone on the team that meets the category
  • Give 5 mins to do this and see who get's BINGO
  • If there is no winner, keep the cards open and play each time the team meets, this will encourage everyone to spend sometime finding out more about their team mates outside of the meeting

Icebreaker 10: Where’s my head at

• Instructions:

  • Understanding where people are at when they come into a meeting is a great opportunity to check in and to orient people to the right mindset for the meeting
  • Think about the mindsets that people normally show up to for this meeting and where you need them to be and adjust the categories/pictures as necessary
  • Ask everyone to think about how they are showing up today, walk through the four categories
  • Allow people to pick a name tag, enter their name and move their tag to the mindset they are at
  • Allow people to discuss why they put themself where they did

• Option:

  • If applicable. discuss the mindset needed for the meeting and what it will take to move people to that space

• Alternative:

  • Replace the images with the feelings wheel by AJANMUIJEN and allow people to place themselves where they are today

A brief description of why this exercise helps you break the ice: In Remote Workshops and Remote Work in general its hard to talk about feelings - but its critical for a good check-in and successful work together. The mood meter helps teams to talk about their individual feelings, check in as a person and be transparent about it. It also helps to compare different mood meter over time / days.

It is based on the research of the Yale Institute of Emotional Intelligence: https://www.ycei.org/ - It is mostly used for daily emotion diaries

Instructions on how to use it:

1. Choose the emotion word from the mood meter that describes your current feeling the best.
2. We take turns checking in - when it's your turn take your dot and mark the word your chose
3. Tell us a bit more why you have chosen this word to describe your feeling - what is going on?
4. If necessary current problems can be addressed.

Full Name: Kai Töpel

Role and Company: CEO Sprintbetter (www.sprintbetter.de)

https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_ko71W14=/  

Brandon Zhou 

Design Intern, Education Design Lab 

Description

This activity helps us break the ice during meetings and learn more about where everyone is from and our local cultures through food. This icebreaker is especially effective when working with teams and partners around the country. It’s always exciting to see a visual representation of everyone even if we may all be working remotely from home. Who knows? We might even be able to connect over some shared favorite foods! 

Instructions: 

1. Drag a dot onto the map to represent where you are from or currently located. 
2. Connect your dot to a sticky note. 
3. On the sticky note, tell us what regional dish/favorite you would bring to a picnic or barbecue. 

https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_koBlhZU=/

Brandon Zhou 

Design Intern, Education Design Lab 

Description 

Miss those water cooler discussions? The heated debates over who has the cutest pet or which TV show is the best? The Sliding Scale Semantics icebreaker is a great way to reignite those conversations and help your team get to know each other better. This activity is a great way to start off any meeting or brainstorm session. 

Instructions: 

1. Pick a color dot and place the dot on the scale to best represent your opinion. (Use the same color dot throughout the activity.) 
2. Feel free to add your initials to your dot as well. 
3. Step back! And see who agrees with you (or not)! 

• Andy van der Gugten

• Agile Facilitator and Coach at SoftEd

• This is my adaptation of the Market of Skills exercise from Lyssa Adkins Book - Coaching Agile Teams. You can use it to explore what everyone brings to either a new team or an existing team. Often times it reveals hidden talents, skills or hobbies of our colleagues we don’t know about and helps build team cohesiveness. Especially useful for distributed teams where we don’t actually see each other physically every day.

• Instructions on how to use it are included in the board - feel free to adapt them to your liking.