5 Best Team Building Ice Breakers to Make Employee Lasting Connections

Who needs an unhinged or disconnected team? Obviously, no one wants to foster a work environment where everyone is disjointed and the productivity levels are low, resulting in slow or close to no growth.

That’s why smart managers or even CEOs take the initiative of reimagining their office work culture by introducing different team-building activities between a single team member and even different teams to improve the workflow.

Using team building ice breakers like making them guess about each other’s personality and asking for possible solutions to a problem makes them align with each other’s thought process resulting in a collaborative working approach.

We are going to put light on different ice breaking activities that we have personally tested at HitPaw and yielded impressive results from them for you to consider for your team.

Part 1: Why Team Building is Important?

Put yourself in the shoes of a manager who has to deal with the client and make the teams work accordingly to deliver the desired results within the client’s deadlines.

You may be thinking that it’s not a big deal, but I’ll assign the relevant tasks to each employee lead of each department and just keep tracking their progress to meet client expectations.

Here’s a twist for you: it’s not that simple and easy because you have to deal with an emotionally disconnected team who’s not on one page even to solve in-house minor issues. All you can do is first create cohesion between the members of a single team and then between teams using team ice breaker games, as mentioned below.

Part 2: Why Ice Breaking Activities are Essential for Team Building?

We have spoked with seasoned human resource professionals and team managers of different departments like sales, design, and social media marketing at HitPaw to know about the nitty-gritty of the matter.

We have asked them if we can still get better results without rolling team-building activities or from a team that’s at par with each other and doesn’t believe in collaborative working.

All of them straight away said no with a cold face because they wondered how you could get the car driven in one direction if all four tires were not aligned with each other.

This statement explains enough for any smart manager or team leader to anticipate the importance of team building ice breakers and their role in building a cohesive working environment.

Part 2.1: Enhances Communication

Suppose you have asked your team to play truth and false by saying each one has to state 2 facts: one is right, and one is wrong, and the others will guess which one falls in which category. This activity will surely bring them closer and give them a chance to open up and get closer to each other.

When they take a guess at each other's facts, the barriers to communication between them will be removed automatically, and after that specific action, they will have more things to speak of with each other. Do you know how it will benefit the working conditions?

Breaking the mold will make them converse and share their opinion on work activities, as well, which will result in increased productivity.

Part 2.2: Breaking Social Barriers

If your team consists of people belonging to different social and cultural classes, then it is evident that there will be some natural hesitations or differences between them, which will not let them open up with each other.

Now, if you want every team member to bring his/her opinion or perspective to the table, the outcome will be badass, good, and rocking.

Surely, you are not going to achieve this goal with broken chains of team members. You need to run team building ice breakers, like asking them how they would invest in an imaginary new business if your project is related to writing investment-related copy.

This opportunity will give them a chance to learn about each other's perspective, like an American who’s living in the South of the country and is black to mingle with whites of the North. By communicating with each other, they will get to know about how both types think or perceive businesses.

Part 2.3: Boosting Engagement

Employees tend to perform better and show more engagement when they know more about their team members and are free from stress, even from work or personal life. In case, if you want to grow your company at an exceptional rate and need to get maximum output from every team member.

All you need to do is make them engage in work icebreaker games like playing bingo, cards, etc with each other. This will make them release their stress and workload anxiety and communicate with their colleagues to discuss work and foster fun relationships.

For example, you can make them ask each other “Would you rather” questions like “to go on a blind date or on a date with your colleague.” This will promote a sense of fun at work and make them flow their creative juices with more freedom to get validation from other stakeholders as well.

Part 2.4: Fosters Creativity

Are you tired of conducting brainstorming sessions with your team but not getting the raw responses from them? No need to worry because the problem is not with your initiative, but the distance between employees is making them not open up too frankly due to a sense of otherness lying in their thoughts.

To clear their thought process, you don’t need to spend lots of bucks because it can be done through interactive meeting icebreaker activities like “Guess who” when every one is bound to use their senses, and that’s how they will get a chance to put their creativity at work.

You can use several other games as well, like making them play “guess each other's favorite activities” so that they show interest and know each other, and while working, keep in consideration each other's traits to get the most out of each other on collaborative works.

Part 3: 05 Best Ice Breaker Games

We have shortlisted the 5 best team building ice breakers after consulting the seasoned team managers of HitPaw and other platforms to play with the psychology of employees and make them feel more comfortable while working so that they can deliver the best results.

There’s no need to use each activity; as mentioned, you can twist and tweak the scenarios and working conditions according to your conditions and enjoy building a cohesive team.

Part 3.1: Two Truths & One Lie

Don’t get startled by reading the title because we know high school students are more often seen to be playing this activity, not working professionals. You need to ask each team member to state two truths and one lie about themselves, and others have to guess which statement is false.

When everyone is engaged in this activity, they will get a chance to know more about each other and reduce the boundaries between them by making guesses at personalities. It will help you when you have to ask the team to highlight red flags from a project, and they will use the same energy and come to the same conclusion soon.

Part 3.2: Playing Jenga

You can invite all the employees or even members of one team to the conference room this time not for the meeting but to play Jenga. First of all, they will be surprised to see Jenga pieces placed in front of them instead of meeting points or anything work-related.

This is the chance for you to divide them into teams of 2 to compete with other teams, and the winning team will surely get a gift prize as well. This team-building activity will grow patience in them towards others' mistakes and make them express their thoughts more openly, resulting in open conversations.

This activity will prepare them to bear each other's mistakes while working on the same task and collaborate more actively due to a sense of connection established between them. You can leverage this connection and assign them different tasks on a team basis to get the most out of their energies and get better results due to streamlined collaboration.

Part 3.3: One-Word to Say It All

It can be the best ice-breaking activity to conduct in your office for fostering a collaborative environment. All you need to do is split the teams into small groups, like 2 or a maximum of 4 people so that everyone can get an equal chance to share their views.

Ask them to come up with one word describing the company, team, or project to know about the opinion of a large sum of people sharing the same space about the same thing. Bound them to first discuss in the group for 5-10 minutes, then just write whatever comes into their mind on a sticky note slip.

When they are discussing with each other, they are actually coming to each other's terms about one thing and reaching a point that is common or acceptable for everyone. That’s how you can get the best response from them while they are working on a client’s or in-house project.

Part 3.4: Find Your Pair

There’s no need to use only serious activities to build team cohesion. You can also use fun activities like asking the team members to “find your pair” so that they can get to know more things about each other while asking questions to match the pair.

You just need to write a pair of words like salt and pepper, milk and honey, etc, on chits and put each at the back of every team member.

The task for them is to find their pair. If someone has the chit “slim” on the back, they have to round the room and ask everyone questions that can lead to finding who’s got the “fit” on its back.

That’s how they will find the pair and also get to know each other because no one is allowed to reveal the chit directly.

Part 3.5: Making Group Reels

If you are trying to conduct team building ice breakers for a content creation team, then what’s better than dividing them into groups of 2-3 people each and taking them to make reels about the office culture reflecting one good and one bad thing in it?

When they get free from shooting content, they announce that whoever delivers the best-edited reel, that team will win gifts. They will immediately start looking for editing platforms and then help them out by sharing the HitPaw Video AI Tools with them.

So that they can use as many features as they want or do the best tweaks on their reels to win the prizes. You know, when they were deciding on the ideas to shoot the video at that time, they had a collaborative working strategy and got a chance to share their vision with each other which will be helpful for them while working for the company as well.

Part 4: Frequently Asked Questions

Part 5: Conclusion

Who doesn’t like to get immense responses from the team and better results in the form of increased productivity and collaboration between team members? Obviously, it is the dream of every manager, and so do team building ice breakers, enabling them to turn their imagination into reality by engaging the team members.