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Icebreakers for work live in a strange space. They’re dreaded and loved.
My team and I have worked hard to develop an icebreaker for work that doesn’t leave teams rolling their eyes.
I’ll tell you more about Water Cooler Trivia shortly, but first, I have a little story.
A project manager told me recently that she had spent three weeks hunting for a good team icebreaker.
Her team had gone remote, and morale was starting to fray.
She wanted icebreakers that felt modern, not recycled from a classroom handout.
I asked her what she had already tried. She admitted to running the old “fun fact” circle.
I tried not to roll my eyes! Predictably, the same three people dominated while the rest leaned on mute.
She had also attempted a quick-fire “would you rather” round that spiraled into a debate about whether cereal counts as soup.
In case you’re wondering, I’m told they eventually agreed cereal isn’t soup.
That call ran over by twenty minutes. Nobody was particularly impressed!
Icebreakers for work can either lift a team or drive them further apart.
Some formats punish introverts, while others waste time and fizzle into silence.
Pick the wrong one, and it teaches people to dread the opening 10 minutes of any meeting.
Pick the right one and suddenly people lean in, cameras switch on, and the energy rises.
Every fad spawns poor imitations. I’ve seen teams fall into these traps again and again:
None of these build connection, and that’s a problem.
What they will do is trigger discomfort, hesitation, frustration, or a mix of all three.
Icebreakers for work should never put people on the spot in ways that cause anxiety.
I think that completely defeats the purpose of what we’re trying to achieve with these activities.
Trivia stands out. The format scales from five people to five hundred.
Okay, maybe a five-hundred-person trivia quiz isn’t the brightest idea, but you get the point.
A single clever question can spark discussion long after the meeting ends.
We’ve built Water Cooler Trivia to capture that exact spark. You get:
Together, those elements keep it light and engaging.
A team leader told me her engineers bonded over a question about the origins of the sandwich.
They argued passionately over condiments for 10 minutes.
That argument became a running gag and ended up on a custom Slack emoji. Crazy.
This is how connection grows. It’s organic and unexpected. You can’t manufacture this stuff, and we don’t try to.
Trivia requires no deep introspection or personal revelation.
It really just comes down to curiosity, and in all honesty, that’s what I like about it.
With Water Cooler Trivia, team members get questions in Slack or email.
Wrong answers are just as funny as right ones, so everyone contributes.
It’s the low-pressure onramp into team conversation.
You get a new quiz each week, hand-written by my trivia nerds.
We let you pick from a ton of categories to keep things spicy.
My team even throws in a few tiebreaker questions (because you know there’s going to be a tie!)
It’s not as “inspired” as a curated trivia quiz, but it’ll still do the trick.
Rather than asking “how’s your weekend?” throw a curveball.
Which extinct animal would you bring back? Which film deserves a sequel?
These polls move quickly, results surprise, and suddenly the chat fills with side comments.
This works well if your team is using Slack or another work management platform that allows you to share an interactive poll.
Don’t roll your eyes just yet! I saw that!
There’s a way to make this interesting.
Ask people to fetch an item from their desk or kitchen.
One person reveals a mug shaped like a shark.
Another shows an old concert ticket.
Stories inevitably follow.
Each object holds a memory, and teams glimpse each other’s lives without feeling like they’re oversharing.
I like this one because it invites team members to share more about their lives.
I know a few meme-obsessed teams who hold caption competitions.
It makes sense to lean into your team’s interests and styles of communication.
Drop a meme template in your team’s Slack channel. Go on, do it right now!
Everyone can add captions. No time limits or pressure.
The funniest one surfaces organically, and people will keep riffing on it later.
Humor spreads naturally.
It’s one of those icebreakers that you can let unfold over the course of a week or so.
If nobody’s biting, scrap it and go back to trivia!
I’ve found this works best when you give the team a silly, specific prompt instead of saying “let’s all doodle.”
I would open a shared whiteboard tool like Miro, MURAL, or even Figma Jam.
Then set a two-minute timer and ask everyone to collectively draw one thing together.
Here are a few examples (off the top of my head):
I love that nobody needs to be good at drawing.
In fact, the worse it looks, the funnier it is.
When a team member adds something like a giant beak, another person draws a bowtie, and suddenly the mascot has its own fleshed-out backstory.
Screenshots of these creations will keep resurfacing in Slack.
It’ll give the team an inside joke for a couple of weeks.
Many teams have told me they dreaded icebreakers until they started using trivia quizzes.
The surprise comes from realizing they don’t need to prepare.
They let our team at Water Cooler Trivia do the hard work.
The trivia lands especially well in hybrid or remote setups because it runs in the tools teams already use.
Icebreakers for work collapse under complexity.
If instructions take longer than the activity, you’ve lost. Game over!
The strongest formats explain themselves in a sentence, and that’s another reason trivia works.
I’ll explain. Icebreakers for work succeed when they produce artifacts like:
They leave an imprint on the culture. Trivia supplies those artifacts almost accidentally.
A single quiz question becomes a shorthand reference later. This is what we like about trivia.
I’m not interested in anything that’s going to embarrass or pressure team members.
I want a format that scales, invites collaboration, and sparks laugh-out-loud humor.
That’s what I’m getting with trivia quizzes.
Trivia leads the pack, but other formats can complement it.
My team and I at Water Cooler Trivia are working hard to deliver curated trivia quizzes to over 1,200 groups weekly.
I’ve just checked the stats for this week, and we’ve so far sent 25,187 quizzes.
So, if you want to try one quickly, I recommend taking advantage of Water Cooler Trivia’s four-week free trial.
