Team Building Questions: A Fun Way to Forge Bonds at Work

The success of an organization heavily relies upon the efficacy of its teams. To create a winning team, you’ll want to make sure your organization’s group members know how to communicate and trust one another. To do this, it’s helpful to integrate a fun team building activity on a routine basis, like sharing team building questions.

Questions don’t have to be work-related and can take place in different settings. In this article, we’ll look at 5 different types of team building questions and examples of questions you can use as the center of sessions to boost team engagement.

Understanding each other better

In this category, you can focus on questions about the team’s hobbies, likes, and dislikes. It’s a great approach for teams to share personal details about themselves in low-key, low-stress environments, such as lunch hours or after-work events.

1. What’s your most treasured memory?
2. If you could star in one movie, what would it be?
3. What’s your earliest childhood memory?
4. Who’s the funniest or smartest person on TV?
5. What’s your favorite breakfast food?
6. Are you involved with community service?
7. Name your top three bucket list items.

People are instinctively curious about one another, and these questions open up opportunities to share more about their lives.

Finding solutions

Questions relating to solutions help team members better understand what makes others tick and how they’d approach a situation. These are great questions to ask at company retreats or breakout sessions.

1. What do you do if your alarm doesn’t go off and it disrupts your morning routine?
2. What are your strategies when working on a time limit?
3. How would you make the worst job in the world more fun?
4. What’s a better activity, a scavenger hunt or an egg drop?
5. How would you handle being stuck on a deserted island with your worst enemy?
6. In a small office space, what’s the most important equipment to fit?
7. What best advice would you have for the CEO of <insert name of a prominent company >?

These questions share insight on what type of problem-solver the individual team members are and where their strengths may lie. Understanding how others solve problems can easily transition to work situations.

Questions relating to solutions help team members better understand what makes others tick and how they’d approach a situation.

Just for fun

Humorous questions relieve tensions or add some fun to the day. Perfect settings to ask the following questions would be when kicking off brainstorming sessions or when providing breaks during long meetings.

1. Did you have an imaginary friend growing up?
2. Did you ever pretend to live in a fictional world?
3. What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?
4. What are the weirdest food combinations you eat?
5. If you were famous, what would your entrance theme song be?
6. What’s the worst fashion trend you remember?
7. Are you a morning person or a night owl?
8. If you could have a late night talk with a celebrity, who would it be?
9. What’s the current ratio of junk food vs. healthy food in your fridge?

These fun questions, especially for multi-generational teammates, offer teams the ability to get a glimpse into the experiences or memories of others as they recall an embarrassing fashion trend or share personal habits.

Sharing values

Questions relating to personal values are useful because they offer a perception of what matters to other teammates. They’re perfect questions to ask during breakout sessions or as breathers during training seminars.

1. Would you rather be a famous person or have a million dollars?
2. Which historical figure do you admire most?
3. What’s your dream job?
4. After you retire, how do you envision spending the rest of your life?
5. What’s the most important quality in a best friend?
6. What’s your dream house?
7. Who is the smartest person alive?

These questions help teammates pause to consider what’s important to others and offer them a glimpse into members’ personal values, which can also lead to stronger communication levels.

Getting to know you

Icebreaker questions can help alleviate tensions, introduce new team members, encourage speaking up, and generally help people feel more comfortable.

Icebreaker questions can help alleviate tensions, introduce new team members, encourage speaking up, and generally help people feel more comfortable with one another. The best questions aren’t tricky or embarrassing – try to stick to topics such as a favorite food, guilty pleasure, or hidden talents.

1. What’s your favorite movie character and why? (Or mix it up a bit and expand to a favorite cartoon character or favorite TV show.)
2. Where did you grow up?
3. What’s your favorite song?
4. What’s the best Halloween costume you’ve worn?
5. Are you a cat person or a dog person? (A neutral question and gets people sharing about furry friends.)
6. What’s your favorite food?
7. What’s the oldest article of clothing you still wear?

These straightforward and non-controversial questions get people talking about their favorites, which also offers insights into personalities.

Team building questions bolster teams

Team building questions help everyone feel involved and included. You can even mix it up a little and choose one person to start the session or rotate event leaders. Try structuring sessions into large groups or break out into small groups. Alternatively, put one person in charge of each team building experience to help individuals strengthen their leadership skills. Or, plan a combination of online and in person events — the possibilities for integrating question-based team building activities are endless. Be creative!

Featuring events with team building questions help build positive relationships, reduces conflicts due to misunderstandings, and decreases hostility. In the end, the result is stronger, cohesive teams that exhibit better productivity, efficiency, and decision-making.

Looking to learn how to help your teams be the best they can be? Contact Zenefits today.