Team Building Icebreakers

The effectiveness of most training sessions is only achieved after the application of Team Building Icebreakers that helps the training purpose, allowing team members to speak to each other's to find solutions.

Icebreakers are activities to heighten individual and team awareness of existing dynamics, facilitating the integration of new employees, and causing disinhibiting effect on people. Such activities consist of interactive games enabling people to have fun, making the transition a smooth process.

Collaborative work requires the proper level of awareness between team members, acknowledgement of their role, and significance of their achievements. Team Building Icebreakers help individuals to evaluate such factors from a group perspective, rather than individual achievements.

As an example, a team group may create a unified story, motivating communication between members, helping them to understand the importance of each member's role while doing their organizational tasks. Icebreaker games and activities are easy and fun, serving as fast introductions to other team building topics.

Team Building Icebreakers include games like sharing with others two truths and one lie about themselves. This game consists of writing down the facts and introducing them to the other members of the group to let them try to guess which of the facts is the lie.

A few minutes brainstorming together is enough to create the belonging sense that any team needs to achieve success in the short-term. Creation of effective teams is a task requiring a positive work environment with mutual respect, rewards and recognition pay out the achievements of each member.

Moreover, Team Building Icebreakers motivate employees' involvement and accelerate their commitment to build a team unit. Some popular icebreakers include the following activities:

Standard introductions

Consisting of giving a brief autobiography, including member's name, job title, hobbies and interests, exploring the values from each person's past experiences

Alphabetic Introductions

An activity requiring that team members choose a letter of the alphabet and then describe themselves using only words that begin with such letter.

Non-verbal Introductions

A funny icebreaker is done by dividing the team into pairs and communicating to their partner as much about themselves as they can, but without saying a word. They can use mimic or drawing but never words. At the end, people introduce themselves verbally.

Successful Team Building Icebreakers result from proper planning and interactive activities, setting a smooth transition between the beginning of a team building session and the further awareness, communication, creativity, problem solving and reinforcement, required when working together.