Ice Breaker Questions for Virtual Meetings & Team Building

This post includes the best ice breaker questions for virtual meetings.

Virtual icebreaker questions are prompts you include in a virtual meeting for attendees to share a little about themselves and do some team building. For example, you might prompt with “your name, your role, and where you consider home.” The goal of these virtual icebreakers is to help build trust, camaraderie and confidence in speaking and sharing.

These questions are a subset of icebreaker questions, team building questions, virtual team building activities and virtual meeting ideas. The prompts are similar to icebreakers for virtual meetings and Zoom icebreakers.

Specifically, we’ve included:

• Zoom icebreaker questions
• virtual team building questions
• fun virtual icebreaker questions
• good check in questions for virtual meetings
• unique icebreaker questions for virtual work meetings
• virtual happy hour icebreaker questions
• virtual team icebreaker questions
• work from home icebreaker questions

Here it is!

Random virtual icebreaker generator

Use this tool to generate a random icebreaker question for your meeting.

List of virtual icebreaker questions

Here is a list of short virtual ice breaker questions you can use as bonding activities in virtual meetings or conference calls. The list is organized into easy, medium and hard icebreakers and you should assign them to your team based on how well connected you already are.

Update: Download a PDF of these questions.

Zoom icebreaker questions

1. What is your favorite Zoom background?
2. What is going on in your space that we can’t see on the screen?
3. What is something interesting within arms reach of you?
4. What was your first online experience?
5. Would you rather talk on Zoom or the phone?
6. What is the most unusual place you have taken a Zoom meeting from?
7. How would you describe a Zoom call to your childhood self?
8. If you were stuck on a desert island, would you rather have one friend or a video game console?
9. What is something you are excited about?
10. What is the last movie you watched?
11. What would be your dream Zoom call location?

Here is a full list of Zoom icebreaker questions to ask.

Virtual team building questions

12. What was your first online screen name?
13. Do you follow any interesting blogs?
14. What is the last YouTube video you watched?
15. Which song could you listen to over and over again?
16. When was the last time you used a paper dictionary?
17. What is a great example of “teamwork” in a movie?
18. Would you rather work from the desert or with dessert?
19. What was your favorite piece of clothing as a child?
20. What is your go-to work drink?
21. What was your dream job growing up?
22. Would you rather have a flexible location or schedule?
23. What is something you made from scratch?
24. Do you have any productivity hacks?
25. What is something that surprised you about remote work?
26. What is a jingle you remember from your childhood?
27. If you could choose another first name, what would it be?

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Fun icebreaker questions for virtual meetings

28. What did you eat for breakfast?
29. Are you a morning person or a night owl?
30. Bacon or avocado?
31. Tea or coffee?
32. Dogs or cats?
33. On a scale of 1 – 10, how experienced are you with remote work?
34. How long have you worked from home?
35. Where did you grow up?
36. Where do you consider “home”?
37. Which web browser do you use most?

Good check in questions for virtual meetings

38. What is your favorite “work from home” exercise?
39. Would you rather work from the beach or a mountain cabin?
40. Where is your dream location to work from?
41. Do you have a pet?
42. What do you like most about remote work?
43. Would you rather start early or work late?
44. What is the most unique thing you have within reach of your desk?
45. What is the last book your read?
46. What is your typing speed?
47. Are you wearing socks?
48. Do you remember your ICQ number?
49. Where would you choose to haunt for all of eternity?
50. What is the best thing about the internet?
51. Did you brush your teeth today?
52. What is your favorite website?
53. What was your first online search?
54. What is the story behind the background on your phone?
55. Have you ever left a 1 star review online?

Unique icebreaker questions for virtual meetings

56. Do you have any remote work productivity hacks?
57. What is a best practice when working from home?
58. Which blog written by a single author is your favorite?
59. What is your WiFi name?
60. What is the last website you visited?
61. Do you have a favorite news site?
62. What is the most challenging part of working from home?
63. Who is the last person you talked to in IRL?
64. What was your first online username?
65. What work from home habit is most successful for you?
66. What is your go-to excuse for being late to virtual meetings?
67. What is the most interesting online article you’ve read lately?
68. What is your most popular tweet?
69. What is your most popular social media post?
70. Have you ever gone viral online?
71. When was the last time you showered?
72. Which website do you spend the most time on?
73. What is the last YouTube video you watched?
74. What was your most recent Google search?
75. Would you vote online?
76. What is the first website you remember visiting?
77. What is your earliest memory of the internet?
78. Which app do you use most frequently?

How to run effective virtual ice breaker questions

Running a round of remote icebreaker questions on virtual meeting platforms is challenging because you have fewer virtual cues. In person, you can form a circle, while on video you may not even know what order your people are in.

The solution is for the host or facilitator to start by saying they will go first, followed by the next two people on deck. Once you get to the third person, name the next two people on deck and so on. This system gives each participant clarity on who is going next and when it is their turn.

Best practices:

1. Volunteer to go first
2. Name the next person up and two people on deck
3. Start with easy questions to help folks get comfortable
4. Split groups of 15+ into smaller groups
5. Include icebreakers in every virtual meeting

If you follow these tips, then you can do really successful team building with your virtual team.

Conclusion

Icebreaker questions are an easy way to increase virtual team engagement. You can use any of the questions on this list, create your own, or try our random question generator. You will be happy you included a few icebreakers in your Zoom call.

By the way, other ways to break the ice include telling icebreaker jokes and playing free online group games. You can also use fun check-in questions and virtual energizers.

We also have a list of holiday icebreaker questions for work, list of large group virtual icebreakers, and quick team building activities for conference calls.