3 Free Icebreaker Activities for Meetings (Trainer-Led, Ready to Use)

Icebreaker activities for meetings are short, trainer-led exercises designed to engage participants, encourage interaction, and create energy before formal discussion begins.

Below are three free icebreaker activities for meetings that trainers, HR teams, and facilitators can run instantly, with little or no preparation.

Why Use Icebreaker Activities in Meetings?

These free icebreaker activities are a small sample of the structured, trainer-led exercises included in our editable corporate training materials, designed for facilitators running in-house workshops and longer training programs.

Icebreakers also help participants to get to know each other a little better, and this makes them more comfortable and more likely to be more relaxed and open to learning.

Icebreaker activities also play an important role in facilitated learning by helping participants feel comfortable contributing, interacting, and engaging with others early in the session.

Below are three icebreaker activities for meetings that are easy to organize and require little or no preparation.

What Is the “What Animal Are You?” Icebreaker?

The “What Animal Are You?” icebreaker is a non-verbal group activity where participants choose an animal and collaborate to organize themselves without speaking, encouraging engagement, teamwork, and awareness of group dynamics.

What You Need

You don’t need any materials or accessories for this activity.

Time Needed for the Activity

Allow 10–20 minutes for this activity, adapting the timing as needed.

• Allow 1 to 3 minutes to explain the activity and for everyone to get into groups.
• Then give the participants either 5 or 10 minutes for the activity itself.
• At the end of the activity, it can be worth spending 5 minutes with an open-class discussion about what was hard, fun, and so on.

Group Size

For most classroom and workshop games and activities, as a trainer, small groups of 4 – 5 people are good. For this activity, though, larger groups tend to work particularly well.

A group of 10–20 participants works particularly well, although the activity can also work with 30 or 40 people. If classroom space is limited, you can break them down into groups of 20 maximum. So with 40 people have two groups of 20.

How Does This Icebreaker Work in a Meeting?

Participants silently select an animal and work together using gestures and sounds to arrange themselves by size, encouraging collaboration and problem-solving.

1. Inform the participants that without telling anyone else of their choice, they choose one animal. It might be their favorite animal or just an animal they wish to choose for any reason.

2. Next, without anyone being allowed to speak at all, participants must organize themselves in a row from left to right, with the smallest animal on the left and then in order by size, leading to the largest being on the right.

3. Participants are allowed to make animal noises and make physical gestures, but they are not allowed to speak at all.

4. At the end of the timeframe (5 or 10 minutes), ask each person to say aloud what animal they were so that everyone can see how accurately or not they completed the task.

When Should Trainers Use This Icebreaker?

This icebreaker works best at the start of meetings or workshops where trainers want to energize participants, encourage interaction, and observe group dynamics.

• Icebreakers
• Team building activities for training sessions
• Management training (an extremely good activity to also use for training where you are looking to identify natural leaders and to see who takes charge)

Trainer Tip:
This activity works especially well at the start of leadership, communication, or team development workshops where participation levels are uncertain.

It quickly reveals group dynamics and helps trainers observe who takes initiative in a low-pressure way, supporting learning engagement early in the session.

Other Considerations

What if two people choose to be the same animal, i.e., there are two elephants in the same group?

The exact order participants end up in isn’t important. The aim is to encourage interaction, laughter, and engagement. As long as this activity acts as a good icebreaker and gets everyone laughing and having fun, then this activity has done its job.

What Is the “I Would Prefer” Icebreaker?

The “I Would Prefer” icebreaker is a discussion-based activity where small groups debate hypothetical dilemmas and agree on a shared choice, encouraging communication and collaborative decision-making.

What You Need

You will NOT need any props or anything at all for this activity except for 10 to 20 pre-prepared questions that will be used.

Time Needed for the Activity

It depends on the size of the teams and the number of participants and whether or not you are running a short course for 1 or 2 hours or a half- or full-day training day.

An ideal timeframe, though, for this activity is 15 minutes. You can easily adapt this, though, to be a 10-minute activity or a 20-minute activity as needed.

Group Size

Ideally, split participants into groups of 3 – 5 people so that they can easily have a chance to discuss the questions and all have plenty of time to give input.

How Does This Icebreaker Work in a Meeting?

Participants discuss a series of “I would prefer” dilemmas in small groups and work together to reach a final group decision.

1. First, split people into their groups. I always suggest verbally giving everyone a number to split up friends in the class to mix things up more.

The easy way to mix people up is to divide the number of participants by how many people you want in each group. So, if you have 20 participants and want 4 people in each group, then you will need 5 numbers.

So verbally allocate each person a number, i.e., 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Then ask all the number 1s to join together in a group. Then all the number 2s into another group, and so on.

2. Now, ask them to pick 3 pieces of paper from a batch of questions you have. (Beforehand, you will have written 20 questions on individual pieces of paper, and all of these questions will be “I would prefer” questions).

3. Each group must pick 2 or 3 questions that they will discuss and come up with one final choice as a group.

4. At the end of the 10-minute discussion, ask one person from each team to choose one dilemma and explain the group’s main considerations and final choice.

Trainer Tip:
This icebreaker is particularly effective in facilitated learning sessions where discussion, decision-making, or ethical reasoning are core objectives. Trainers often use it to warm up groups before problem-solving or strategy-focused activities.

It is particularly effective for boosting learning engagement in longer sessions where energy levels may start to drop.

Example “I Would Prefer” Questions

Some example questions you could include:

• Would you rather have to spend one week in Hawaii or 2 weeks in Greece?
• Would you rather be 5 minutes late or 20 minutes early?
• Would you rather go back to being 7 years old again or 17 years old again?
• Would you rather go on a safari holiday or on a beach holiday?
• Would you rather be given a new Porsche or a free holiday in Australia?
• Would you rather have to go without the Internet for one month, or one month without your cellphone?
• Would you rather be able to talk to animals or be able to speak 20 languages?

Want More Activities? – Get our Free eBook Download with 25 more activities in it!

What Is the “Unexpected Fact” Icebreaker?

The “Unexpected Fact” icebreaker is a guessing game where participants share an unusual fact about themselves and the group works together to identify who it belongs to, helping people learn more about each other.

This is a simple game, fun and interesting; hence, it makes for a great icebreaker for meetings, workshops, conferences, and team-building events.

What You Need

• Small pieces of paper (enough for one piece per participant)
• A hat or small bag to put the pieces of paper in

Time Needed for the Activity

It really depends on the size of the class, but in general, I would allow 15 minutes for this activity.

This would be broken down into 5 minutes for them to think of an idea and to write it down, and for you to collect the pieces of paper. And then 10 minutes for the activity itself.

Group Size

There is no limit to the number of participants, but you will need at least 5 people and ideally no more than 20.

But if you have more participants, this activity can still work by dividing the participants into small groups of, say, 10 people in each group.

Trainer Tip:
This activity works best once participants feel relatively comfortable speaking. Trainers often use it to increase learning engagement after a break or midway through longer workshops to re-energize the group.

How Does This Icebreaker Work in a Meeting?

Participants write down an unexpected fact, which is read aloud and discussed as the group guesses who the fact belongs to.

1. Hand each person a small piece of paper.

2. Ask them to write down something unique, interesting, or an interesting fact about themselves on the piece of paper.

3. Then collect all the pieces of paper in a bag or hat.

4. Next, mix up the pieces of paper and then pull one piece out and read it to the group.

5. The group must now work out or guess who in the group they think wrote that fact.

6. After they have worked out whose fact it was (or after a minute or two if they can’t work it out), ask the writer to identify themself and ask them to say just a very brief insight and context regarding their fact.

A similar activity can also be run using general knowledge or world facts instead of personal examples.

These activities align with adult learning principles by encouraging participation, autonomy, and peer interaction rather than passive listening.

Further Resources: Icebreakers and Meetings

I hope you found the icebreaker games for meetings above useful. The good news is that there are more resources that I think you might find useful as a manager running a meeting:

Icebreakers:

• Team-building accountability activities for developing team unity.
• 21 fun strategic thinking activities for trainers and teachers.
• 10 Best Mentoring training activities to use in workshops for training employees
• More free icebreaker activities and energizers for training workshops

Meetings:

• How to lead virtual team meetings, in case you are a manager leading hybrid teams
• 9 Energizer games for meetings to get the employees engaged

You can also view all of the customizable training materials below: