Zoom Icebreakers For 2023: Who Said Zoom Meetings Only Have To Be Awkward Or Boring?
“Me: This show is so boring.
Boss: Again, this is a Zoom meeting.”
This coffee mug quote gets us cracking every time. There’s an entire Google search centered around ‘funny Zoom quotes’. And people are saying that about Zoom meetings.
This is funny if you take it lightly and a hindrance to employee satisfaction if you think realistically because the annual meeting minutes on Zoom are over 3.3 trillion with 300 million daily participants.
However, you don’t need a grand strategy to make people like such meetings. You just need icebreakers, Zoom icebreakers!
An Exhaustive List Of Questions, Activities, & Jokes To Use As Zoom Icebreakers
After knowing what Zoom icebreakers are and their need for your business, here are the questions, activities, and jokes to use for it. You’d love what we have in store here!
Zoom Icebreakers Questions
Time to let the cat out of the bag here;
#1 General Questions
Let’s start off with some general questions to directly use in a virtual meeting after sharing the “Hi/Hello” pleasantries”;
- What would be your favorite Zoom background?
- Is something interesting going on for you behind the screen?
- Show me/us something interesting that’s on your table.
- Do you like talking on Zoom with your video on?
- What do you prefer – Voice or video calls?
- What is the most unusual place you’ve had to attend/take a Zoom meeting from?
- How will you describe a Zoom call to a 5-year-old? Given they don’t already know about it!
- What was the last movie you watched? Was it any good?
- Do you have a dream Zoom call location?
#2 Team Building Questions
These icebreaker questions, asked directly or in a quick survey, works stupendously well in influencing your team’s overall team bond and productivity.
- What’s your remote work productivity hack? We wanna know your secret sauce!
- Do you follow any interesting blogs that we should also?
- Do you have a stress-buster song we can play collectively and relax?
- What is a great example of “teamwork” from a movie?
- What’s one thing from the office meetings you want to replicate here?
- What do you think are the good and bad aspects of remote work?
- Is there a movie scene you wish to enact together with the team?
- Let’s sing a song together! What would be your pick?
- If we’re planning a team trek, where do you wanna take us?
- Where should we head for a team vacation after this project is over?
#3 Personal Questions
After asking some general and team-building questions, it’s time to ask some personal questions, as these get people to discuss things honestly and with more intent. Here are the questions to use;
- How do you juggle work and family while WFHing?
- Have you felt burnout at any time in the past month?
- Are you really able to get off work with WFH?
- On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your mental health right now?
- Is the family happy with your remote work schedule?
- How do you keep yourself fit while working remotely?
- Have you thought about taking an extended leave from work recently?
- On bad work days, how do you pick yourself up?
- Do you think WFH is the future of work?
#4 “Would You Rather” Questions
These icebreaker questions will help you understand the mindset and nature of each colleague or employee, along with their likes and dislikes. It’s one of the best question types to ease off that heavy and awkward virtual meeting atmosphere. So use them all.
- Would you rather – work four days a week or work continuously for two months to get a month’s break afterward?
- Would you rather – have a stacked snack cupboard or limitless coffee?
- Would you rather – take your child to work or pet?
- Would you rather – go out to socialize or stay at home to watch a series?
- Would you rather – go on a solo business trip or a far-away vacation with your team?
- Would you rather – have a zoom call only for fun or no meeting at all?
- Would you rather – attend virtual meetings in the morning to work afterward or vice-versa?
- Would you rather – do team building online or in person in a cafe?
- Would you rather – sing in front of your colleagues or dance?
- Would you rather – be a superhero who nobody knows or a villain that everyone fears?
- Would you rather – have a team lunch or dinner?
- Would you rather – support a new colleague always or let him/her learn from mistakes?
Zoom Icebreaker Activities
After you’ve asked questions that are fun zoom icebreakers, it’s time for some virtual activities and games that can get people comfortable. As a team leader, you can plan these activities to come in the middle of a long meeting or at last. In both cases, if implemented with enthusiasm, it’ll work great in letting employees ease up a little and actually enjoy the meeting.
Here are 4 of the best Zoom icebreaker activities;
#1 Fun Polls
At the start of a Zoom meeting, ask all attendees to fill out an anonymous poll sent to them. For all sorts of polling (including funny polls) and survey needs in a budget, SurveySparrow is the tool!
Try hyping up the poll for all the wrong reasons when in reality, it would be a fun poll with quirky, imaginative questions. The goal is to make everyone laugh as soon as they open, and continue laughing until the end of the poll.
Questions like, “What prank do you wanna play on [team lead’s name]?” is what you need here. Once people have answered your poll, they’ll be back in the meeting in a much lighter mood to commence proceedings. Then, at the end of the meeting, the anonymous answers would come out, ending the meeting with everyone having a quality time. How great an icebreaker activity is that!
#2 Never Have I Ever
In this fun party game turned virtual icebreaker, team members learn about each other based on past actions. To play this game, ready your list of statements. For example, “Never have I ever painted an entire house.” These statements can be as tame, rowdy, or dirty as you like. If a colleague has done the stated action, they virtually raise their hand. And you can ask this colleague to give the background story to make it more interesting.
#3 Two Truths, One Lie
Two Truths and One Lie is among the best icebreaker activities for Zoom. Here, each participant shares three sentences about themselves. However, one statement must be a lie. The person telling these three statements can either twist a truth into a lie or completely fabricate a fact. Everyone else has to guess which statement, out of the three, is a lie. The participant who identifies the untrue statement the quickest gets the next chance. And that’s how this absolute peach of an icebreaker game goes on.
However, new teams or members need to interact first to play this game. That’s the only catch here.
#4 “Me Too”
“Me Too” is another top virtual icebreaker activity remote teams use to make Zoom meetings interesting. We, at SurveySparrow, loved this activity, as it helped everyone know each other’s hobbies and experiences that shaped them. How?
Well, before the game starts, all participants display their ten fingers. The team lead chooses a player to kickstart the game. That player mentions one of his/her experiences. For example, going on a solo road trip. Next, every team member who has ever done the same thing or has gone through a similar experience will shout, “Me too!”, and bend one of their fingers. Then the next player shares an experience, and the same thing goes on until the team gets a winner who has bent all their fingers.
Through this game, the team identifies common hobbies and personality traits, further boosting the team’s bond and friendship.
Zoom Icebreaker Jokes
After icebreaker questions and activities, we come to Zoom icebreaker jokes, which are the perfect way to end virtual meetings, but you can use them anywhere during a Zoom call. Cool, right?
Here are some tried and tested ones;
- We both have something in common. You don’t know what I’m going to say, nor do I.
- A man tells his doctor, “Doc, help me. I’m addicted to Twitter!” The doctor replies, “Sorry, I don’t follow you …”
- I just wrote a book on reverse psychology. You should not read it.
- Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
- A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a workstation…
- A man enters a lawyer’s office and asks the lawyer: “Excuse me, how much do you charge?”
The lawyer responds: “I charge $1,000 to answer three questions.”
The man replies, “That’s a bit expensive, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” says the lawyer. “Now, what’s your third question?” - My teachers told me I’d never amount to much because I procrastinate. I told them, “Just wait!”
- I’ve only been fired from a job once. It was a calendar factory. All I did was take a day off.
- Do you know what can really ruin a Friday? Remembering it’s only Thursday.
What are Zoom Icebreakers, and Why do you Need Them?
Icebreakers, as the name suggests, are actions pursued by everyone in a group to let go of any awkwardness or hesitation. It’s a way of warming up conversations in meetings, events, or gatherings.
So, Zoom icebreakers are actions people take to warm up to each other in a virtual setting. All the buffering and audio inconsistencies make these icebreakers tougher to execute, but to improve, or at least maintain quality employee satisfaction, it’s a necessity.
Apart from employee satisfaction, some other reasons to use icebreaker activities for Zoom are;
Team Bonding 🫂
To achieve any goal involving people, you need a solid team bond. How is that developed? Through proper and constant communication, especially when the team is working remotely. Icebreaker activities, questions, and jokes are a perfect way to do that. For the team members, it’s not just a way to understand each other better and develop good team bonding, but also a breather from work. And who doesn’t like that?
Increased Empathy 🫶🏻
Empathy is essential to build a strong team at work, as it allows team members to step back, understand others’ points of view and the impact your decision will have on them, and then collaborate to take that decision.
When empathy is lacking, employees don’t care about their team members. As such, icebreaker activities and fun polls allow people to see co-workers through a different lens, allowing them to be more empathetic at work.
Growing Community 👥
We, humans, are social animals, and our community matters a lot to us. We want people who support and criticize us in the right amounts to fuel our growth, and finding like-minded individuals is always bliss! Our workplace is one of the best places to expand this community. Icebreakers are one solid way of kick-starting this process, especially if yours is remote work where meeting and conversing physically is not an option.
Boosted Productivity 👩💻
Whenever a new member joins your team, he/she needs time to form a strong bond with others. But there are instances when this much-needed time is just not there. As such, icebreakers get the ball rolling in no time, boosting the overall productivity of the new joiner and the team.
Successful Icebreakers. How To Do That?
Successful icebreakers, eh? Running a round of Zoom icebreakers is challenging because you have fewer virtual cues. When in person, you can form a circle and look at the body language to make changes. But on video, you may not even know what order others are in and how they see you on their screen. This makes virtual icebreakers a tough activity to find success at.
Tough is not impossible, though!
The best way to find success here is to start with it. Whatever icebreaker activity, game, or question you’re planning, go first. Start with the easy stuff that’s fun and not personal. And give everyone ample time, especially when there are over 15 people on the call. You might not get everything perfect the first time. So the most important step is to include icebreakers in every Zoom call.
That’s about it. That’s how you deliver successful icebreakers. We’re quite happy with what we delivered here. And we’ll be happier if you leave your thoughts on this with our team. You know, at SurveySparrow, our support team always uses icebreakers and jokes to get the conversation started. We’ve got a sweet one for you, too. Hit us up and let’s have a good chat.
