What are your favorite icebreakers?

[Trish Sammer]

Hi all! I'm Trish Sammer, the managing editor of Work Life. We're currently working on a post about icebreakers and why they're important. 

We'd love to hear from the Atlassian Community! What are your favorite icebreakers? Have icebreakers helped your team build connections with each other? Do you have any stories you'd like to share related to this topic? If so, we'd love hear your thoughts. 

[Teodora V _Warsaw Dynamics_]

I will never start a meeting straight to the work topic - it's my first rule in the meeting world. I want people to feel they are talking and collaborating with other people, not chatbots or working machines.

I still haven't mastered my 'icebreakers,' but I'm always first asking how the person feels, do they have a nice morning/day time, and how their mood/hair/dog/coffee is. And I'm always truly interested to hear about that. Sometimes we share a quick workout routine, a 5-min recipe, and then jump to the work topics with elevated mood.

Hope my team feels good about that too!