Home » EXERCISES & ACTIVITIES » Icebreakers & Openers to start a soft-skills session

Icebreakers & Openers to start a soft-skills session

I realize that the phrase “soft-skills” is not a favorite term for many trainers who teach these “essential skills.” For now, however, rather than focusing on semantics, I want to pass along some icebreakers that folks in our community have shared with me. {Originally published in 2011; Last updated 10/26/2025}

1. One Good Empowering Question – not a frivolous waste of time and not too personal!
2. Sticky Note Aspirations
3. Getting to Know You Picture Book
4. Connections & Metaphors with Pictures or Quotes
5. Strengths Cards
6. Strengths Bingo
7. 7-Point Reflection & Share
8. Profile Gallery Walk
9. Imagining Success
10. Speed Intros
11. Where would you rather be?
12. Find your Match
13. Thiagi’s HELLO exercise
14. A Picture and a Few Words
15. Name Tents
16. Frosty Beginnings Pay Off
17. The 12-Month Project Interview
18. Origami Cup
19. Improv Games
20. Finding Common Ground: 10 Fingers
21. Personal Shield of Honor
22. Non-Verbal Line-Up
23. Discussing the Elephant in the Room
24. Ideal Life in 3 Acts
25. Personal Brand Tagline
26. Company Poem
27. Stand-up Sit-down
28. Dot-Vote for the Topics of Most Interest
29. On the Continuum
30. Draw a Duck

1. One Good Empowering Question

Put a good question on a slide ahead of time so people have time to consider it. Be sure it is neither a frivolous waste of time nor too personal! It could be session topical or, “This session will be worthwhile if…”

2. Sticky Note Aspirations

Your pre-work: identify four questions and write them on 8 easels, where 2 easels have the same question and are side by side (given the group size).

• 5 min: Have people write answers down on post its
• 5 min: break people into groups based on where they’ve sat or have them count if you want to shuffle (i.e. anyone that’s a “1” go to easel 1).
• 10 min: Have the people do a thematic analysis and identify top 5 trends on their board
• 25 min: Report out to broader group and discuss as valuable.
• 15 min: Have them go back to their tables, write down one or two practices they can use moving forward, and chat with a neighbor about it.

Given the change, your questions could be both aspirational and a place to share “fears” – for example, what are you most excited about for the upcoming year? What are you most concerned about, moving forward (that might be too raw, depending on the situation). Perhaps, What do you love most about being a part of team/ company? Or, What one thing are you hoping to learn today? etc.    ~ Julie Foster

3. Getting to Know You Picture Book

A few days before the training event, participants and presenters fill out a short, creative document with fun questions (think: “What was your dream job as a kid?” or “What’s your favorite concert you’ve attended?”). They also upload a picture that represents their answers and add comments if they’d like.

I turn these into a colorful booklet and hand it out on day one of the class. It sparks great conversations and helps people connect beyond just job titles. It’s also a great tool to refresh your memory about who people are when you meet or interact with them in the future.

You can download a free copy of the template on my website at www.doingthechores.com (under Study Guides and Templates). ~ David Elser

4. Connections & Metaphors with Pictures or Quotes

Climer Cards or other deck that participants can select as a reflection of… current challenge; how they’re thinking about the topic; personal strength; organization opportunity; etc. Alternatively, set a bunch of (topic-relevant — leadership, negotiation, teamwork, etc.) quotes around the room and have people identify one that resonates with them.

5. Strengths Cards

I really love using activities where people can show themselves at their best. Perhaps after a values exercise (or strengths finder – something that helps them reflect on their personal and professional values), I distribute decks of cards that contain many different images (or a group of 10 or so images for each small group; I like “At My Best” or “OuiSi” cards) and allow participants to browse the pile, looking for anything that sparks a recollection of themselves at their best.  The “At My Best” cards even have strengths or trait words on them that can be used if they are more language-oriented than image-inspired.

Have participants look through the images and select one that reminds them of a story that represents them demonstrating their value, strength, or trait. Without stating the trait, each person shares their story in the small group while others listen. The story doesn’t necessarily have to be work related. After each story, the listeners reflect back the story (what they heard, asking any clarifying questions), then share the strengths or values they heard in the teller’s story. It focuses on building positive connection and recognition.

Sometimes the strengths and values seen by others are not the ones we see in ourselves, which can expand our awareness.   ~ Robin Lilly

6. Strengths Bingo

Bingo cards are always fun (with or without Strengthsfinder), using work clues to get to know someone.  Who has been here 5 years or more?  Who knows the most about XX? ~ Judy Coates

7. 7-Point Reflection & Share

Since you’re bringing the group together with the intent of helping them overcome a change and work together, here’s the approach I’d use if I was in your shoes.

• Ask everyone to number a sheet of paper or 3×5 card 1-7
• One at a time, show 7 questions/sentence completions
  1. What’s your name/What do you want to be called?
  2. What do you do? Description, not the role
  3. If you could be anywhere, where would you be?
  4. What’s the last thing you did at work you are proud of?
  5. How would your best friend describe you?
  6. What’s challenging for you right now?
  7. If you could ask the group one question, what would it be?
• Ask them to complete each
• Form small groups (3-4 each)
• Ask groups to discuss their answers in conversation style, not just reading down their list
• Rotate groups (a few times if time allows)
• Bring group together and debrief
  • What did you notice as you shared your responses?
  • Where was easy about your discussions?
  • Where was difficult about your discussions?
  • What did you learn during your conversations?
  • What can you take away from your conversations?

Adjust the questions to make them work for your group and situation. I use this and variations of this in most of my work. People find the quiet time to respond helpful before they move into group discussion. I have a variation of it here with a link to more questions.  ~ Katrina Kennedy

8. Profile Gallery Walk

Either before the session or at the very start, each person would complete a simple profile, including things like:

• Name & Role
• What I Bring to the Team
• What Helps Me Do My Best Work
• How I Like to Collaborate/Communicate
• Something I am Looking Forward To (or am Curious About) in this New Team
• What Brings Me Joy Outside of Work

Take the profiles and post them around the room. Ask participants to walk around, read, and respond in real time. I’ve had success with having participants add “comment” with sticky notes to show appreciation, agreement, questions, or connections. I’ve found it to be a great way to humanize coworkers, identify common ground, and celebrate diverse strengths all while encouraging organic conversation. In one instance, I found that this activity helped to shift the tone surrounding a new team from “us vs. them” to “look at these untapped resources.” While this may be considered fun, it also works well for more serious groups because it keeps things grounded in work and strengths, while still creating space for informal connection.  ~ Cody Krumrie

9. Imagining Success

To get people in the mindset to share ownership over making the learning event successful, I often do an ‘appreciative’ exercise.

Divide participants into groups of three or four and ask them to think about a peak experience of whatever the topic is (e.g. the best meeting you ever attended – or if that’s too hard, how about a reasonably successful meeting in the last month? / the most interesting presentation you remember / the most successful piece of writing you’ve done etc.).

Ask them to think about what made this so successful.

Get them to share the experience with the other members of the group and the group to come up with some of the elements of success.

Collect these “Elements of Success” on the flip chart. This exercise engages everyone and encourages positive attitudes. Posted by Melissa Biro

10. Speed Intros

I do a meet and greet version of speed dating. Have people pair up with someone they don’t know, then find a non-work or non-workshop connection with the person. 30 seconds per individual, 1 minute per pair. 3-5 minutes overall (meet 3-4 people). If people in the room know each other well, then they should find out something about that person they didn’t know before.

11. Where would you rather be?

Start by asking:  “If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you be and who would you be with?” To this day, no one has ever answered, “At work” or “In training with me.” (I can’t take it personally-LOL.) But that simple question sets the stage for why we’re there: If we spend over 2,000 hours a year in a place and with people we wouldn’t naturally choose, why not make it better? This small exercise also helps participants connect, sparking conversations and common interests that create a more open, engaging learning environment. ~ Shared by Christie Hennessey

12. Find your Match

What has worked for me is to give each participant a slip of paper with information on it that is relevant to the topic or participants in general. They have to find the corresponding participant with the same information, introduce themselves, and talk briefly about what the information means to them.

13. Thiagi’s HELLO exercise

“Hello” is an opener that directly relates to the workshop process and content. It uses a deck of playing cards and a few other items.

The basic idea is that you prepare four questions related to individuals’ expectations, experience, questions and changes regarding the training.

Teams of players are charged with the task of collecting responses from everyone in the room in just a few minutes time. The exercise is high energy and lets participants meet one another, while remaining focused on the day’s agenda.  The exercise is described in full on Thiagi’s website: [email protected].

14. A Picture and a Few Words

Lay out a great collection of picture postcards (or a deck of images like Climer Cards) on a table at the back of the room and having opened the workshop, introduced the topic and myself, and given participants a road-map for how the session will run, I invite them to go back and choose a card that represents “Where you struggle most when presenting your ideas to others/getting ideas from your team/engaging with hotel guests”… whatever the overriding subject of the workshop is.

Go around the room and ask each person share their name and a brief description of their role (for my benefit, if they all work together) and tell us, in a couple of sentences, why they chose the card they did. I will take the card and move it round the group (almost always seated in a large U shape for my workshops) so that everyone can look at it while the speaker is sharing. I might echo their reasons or get clarification if I need it as I stick it up on the wall.

Once I have them all up there, I sometimes will facilitate a grouping of the cards, so that we can identify 4 or 5 common issues around the workshop subject.

The process has many benefits: 1. Needs assessment 2. Sharing of common challenges 3. Ability to share ‘through’ the picture choice, which allows for less personal exposure — not saying ‘I’m not good at xxx’ but rather ‘I chose this card because it represents times when I xxx” 4. Good storytelling tool… curiosity level of group is high when they see what cards others have chosen. 5. Allows me to observe how comfortable they are with public speaking and what sort of audience members they are when others are sharing 6. Facilitating the grouping of challenges helps the group to identify commonalities and helps us all identify what we need to work on during the session. Posted by Teresa Norton

15. Name Tents

We provide a name tent that is a full 8 1/2 x 11 paper. We ask attendees to introduce themselves in pictures. I might say “if you were going to tell us about yourself, draw what you would like us to know (family, hobbies, sports teams, favorite stores/brands, school, etc…).”

When they finish their pictures they explain what everything means to the participant next to them. The pairs then introduce the rest of the class to their new “friend.” Really helps to open them up on a first day in training with strangers. Posted by Krishna Clay

16. Frosty beginnings pay off for a great debrief

In a workshop about teaming, I decided at the start of the day not to introduce myself, and not let my delegates introduce each other either.  About 2 hours in, I found the answers to my group questions were getting shorter and shorter. All going to plan! Why? I wanted a frosty group, non trusting and not willing to respond, because they knew nothing about me, or each other!

I then allowed them (16) to ask me a questions each about any aspect of my life. Believe me, it got personal, but the mood of the room instantly changed. Laughter, positivity, all round behaviors changed once we all had had a laugh and knew more about each others lives.

It was a painful couple of hours, but the message about needing to know and understand each others background, beliefs, thoughts and motivations was certainly driven home. Posted online by Adrian Lowe

17. The 12-month project interview

I recently organised an icebreaker for a group of about 60 or 70 HR people and the feedback was really positive. We split into tables of 8 and it went like this:

“Imagine that we are commencing a 12-month, organisation-wide project. Success of the project depends on a diverse group of skills. You need to know how the skills of your colleagues will complement or support your own skill set.
You have two minutes per person to do three tasks:

• Introduce yourself and your role to your table
• Share a couple of your best strengths with your colleagues
• Talk about the biggest focus of your role at the moment and how you are using your strengths in that work”

We decided to leave the conversation there as there was a related exercise later in the meeting to build in the learning of their colleague’s skills. Alternatively, you could ask them to follow on with identifying one person from their table that they would like to work with, based on their strengths and experience being different to their own. Of course, you could also then have two or three volunteers share who and why they’d work with to the wider group.  Posted online by Maria Harrison

18. Origami Cup

In this icebreaking / team building activity everyone makes a very simple origami cup (all you need is a piece of paper for each person, card stock. You make 3 or 4 simple folds to create the cup).

Everyone put their cups on a tray. You fill each cup up with water and talk about how we are all like these paper cups. If all the cups are strong then the group is strong. If a cup loses some of the water then in spills on to the other cups. Each person on the team is like these cups.

The better they “hold” their part of the work the less work that spills onto the team. You can then let the tray sit for about 5 or 10 minutes and then go back and look at the tray to see if the water is holding in each of the cups or if water has spilled into the tray. No matter the outcome people can have a visual representation of what it means to hold their part of the work together.

The other part to this activity, if you are trying to talk about the value of healthy, “well” employees would be to show how a stronger paper (card stock) can hold water better than a paper that is worn out or thin.Posted online by Lynette Reed

19. “Improv” Games

Matt Warzel likes to incorporate improvisational activities into his career coaching sessions. Here are some favorites:

Presentation Skills Game: IMPROV “EXPERT ANALYSIS”

Have a person stand up front and talk about whatever topics you shoot at them as if the’re an expert. Give them easy topics like “the new KFC Double Stacker,” “health benefits of carrots,” or anything else you or other audience members come up with.  Switch topics every 15 or 20 seconds, forcing the speaker  to switch gears right away. To prevent shyness, explain that each participant will speak a total of only 2 minutes on roughly 10 topics. 

After the presentations, you can identify and discuss effective strategies,  individuals’ natural instincts, identify their strengths and discuss opportunities for improvement. Identify behaviors like:

• Hands in pockets
• Grabbing one hand and then the other
• UMM UH OH UMMs
• Reserved or quiet voice that isn’t delivered with energy,
• Shuffling feet (explain u need to walk with a purpose)
• Over-blinking (can be distracting to the audience)
• Hands on the hips too much (which can exude confidence but can also be too Superman pose like and a little defensive)
• Etc.

20. Finding Common Ground: “10 FINGERS”

Have everyone stand in a circle and hold up 10 fingers.  Moving around the circle clockwise, ask each person to mention something about themselves (past or present experiences, personal characteristic, a badge of honor, religion, etc…). If others have this in common, they keep a finger up; if not, they put one finger down.  Keep going until last one is holding a finger.

Posted online by Matt Warzel, CPRW, CIR

21. Personal Shield of Honor

Explain to the group that they will be creating a “shield” out of a large sheet of paper. On their shield will be 4 quadrants containing the following images or icons representing the following information:

• Quadrant 1: What skills and abilities do you bring to the workplace
• Quadrant 2: What skills and abilities do you need to improve upon in the workplace
• Quadrant 3: What frustrates you about our workplace
• Quadrant 4: What is a source of pride at your workplace

Remind the group that NO WORDS may be used on any of the shields…only doodles, symbols, icons, etc. After the groaning subsides, provide crayons as writing implements [or even magazines and scissors]. Put some music on while they take no longer than 10 min to create their shields.

Conclude the activity by giving everyone a chance to “present” their shields (1 min). If your group is big, break up presentation groups into sub groups of 6-8 or less.

Posted online by Jordan Chouljian

22. Non-Verbal Line-Up

Ask everyone to line up in the correct order without verbal communication in order of shoe size. If this goes well and only takes minimal time,  ask them to line up by birthdate, month and day only. You can control how much time this takes and if it becomes frustrating it’s a great lead in to the importance of communication and team work. Just by doing this exercise, you can see before you begin what type of team players they are and who stands out as a leader, followers, trouble shooters, etc.. This information is useful in engaging people about missions and goals.  Posted online by Maureen Dolson Mukka

 23. Discussing the Elephant in the Room

Here’s a great way to get people talking about “undiscussable issues,” a.k.a. “The Elephant in the Room.” Distribute blank cards or sticky notes to each participant.

1. Have them write down the top three things the group needs to talk about and isn’t.
2. Have the group post the notes up on the wall and ask them to roughly group them into like clusters
3. Ask the group to put the issues on a continuum from the most discussable to the least discussable.
4. Pick the three “most undiscussable” issues and have the team discuss them one at a time. Let the group pick which they will tackle first.

Posted online by Crispin Garden-Webster

 24. Your Ideal Life in Three Acts

Ask them to write the story of their ideal life as a 3-act play: past dreams achieved, present situation (the good and bad), and their ideal future. I often use that with executives over 40 who are in transition. It really gives them a positive perspective about the possibilities ahead. Posted online by Liz DiMarco Weinmann, MBA

25. Personal Brand Tagline

Have them write a personal-brand tagline as a tweet, only 140 characters to promote themselves. I often use this with 20-somethings, esp. students, and the results are as hilarious as they are creative. Posted online by Liz DiMarco Weinmann, MBA

26. Company Poem

Divide into groups of 3 to 4 participants. Give the group 15 minutes time for preparation. Have each group write a poem about their organization (six lines minimum). Their organization’s name must come at least once. Then have each group to come on stage to “perform” their poem. By this activities they feel that their stage fright has gone. Secondly, now they see their organization in new way. I found this activity very useful for all kind of participants. Posted online by Suresh Kumar

27. Stand-up Sit-down

Here’s a quickie. In under a minute, he gets folks up and out of their seats, generates a few laughs, refocuses their minds. It doesn’t take much! One way to do this (courtesy of Tami Shaw), is to have people answer three questions on a “Unique Me” card that has these 3 questions:

1. Likely ALSO true for Many others in the room
2. Might be true for Some others
3. Unique Me. I’m guessing I’m the only one in this room who this is true about.

Do stand-up, sit down activity around these three questions for a handful of cards than have the “unique me” person briefly introduce themselves. Have all stand up… stay standing if #1 is true for you; stay standing if #2 is true; stay standing if #3 is true for you.

Pull a few cards at the start. Over a longer session, you can pick different ones throughout the workshop.

~ Tami Shaw

28. Dot-Vote for the Topics of Most Interest

Set up a bunch of flip charts around the room that people can “vote” on . Include session topics, as well as possible demographic information, interests, etc. Particpants can add dots to the descriptions that are true for you.

29. On the Continuum

Form selves into a line and stand where you’re most comfortable. Topics could include any continuum, for example….  Love icebreakers / hate ’em; Love personality tests/Hate ’em… For more continuum ideas, see the Which are You Thumball. Don’t do it JUST for fun. Make it purposeful. Have options that are pertinent and connect to the content you’re covering.

30. Draw a Duck

Katie Muldrew explains, “This is one of my favorite ways to open a workshop or meeting. I’ve used it soooo many times, with teams of 6 to 60.

• INSTRUCTIONS: Simply, ask every participant to “DRAW A DUCK.” Tell them, “You have one minute. No questions.”
• RESULTS: You’ll quickly see ducks of every kind. Some realistic. Some cartoonish. Some abstract. Some detailed. Same instructions. Completely different interpretations.
• DEBRIEF: Have everyone share their images.
• ASK & DISCUSS: Why does a simple, clear instruction yeild so many different results? feels like a clear task to the person giving the instruction… often lands very differently with the people receiving it. Unless you’re SUPER specific, everyone applies their own assumptions – adding different levels of complexity, detail, or simplicity.
• LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES: This exercise is not just a fun opener – it’s a mirror of how misalignment can show up at work. If the group wants to “get their ducks in a row,” and improve collaboration skills, they must achieve seek greater clarity.
• VARIATIONS:  Try the same activity with a handful of six matching LEGO pieces for each participant. Ask participants simply to “build a duck.”

300 MORE IDEAS

On Linked-IN this month, Aditya Nugraha offered to share a collection of 300 Presentation and Icebreaker tips. Many people requested his notes and commented that they were happy to have them. Thank you to Aditya for allowing me to share them here:   Presentations_-300_plus_ideas.

• 
• Comments
• 
  Share