Icebreakers for welcoming a new team member

The questions, and why each one works

1. What is one thing about how you like to work that we should know?

   • Practical for everyone, and it gives the new person a polite way to say “I hate surprise calls” in week one.
2. For the team: what do you wish someone had told you in your first week here?

   • The newcomer gets real advice, and the attention moves off them for a while.
3. What is the last thing you got really into?

   • It gets at who someone is without asking for their life story or their CV.
4. Where is somewhere you have lived, and what do you miss about it?

   • Easy to answer at any length, and it often turns up something two people have in common.
5. For the team: what will the new person probably end up asking you about?

   • It is a map of who knows what. The new person learns who to go to in two minutes instead of two months.
6. What did you do before this, in one sentence that is not a job title?

   • Job titles say little. “I kept a shop’s computers running” says a lot.
7. What is a skill you have that would not show up on a CV?

   • The team learns what else the newcomer can do, and it is a pleasant thing to be asked.
8. For the team: what is our strangest habit?

   • Every team has one. Hearing it out loud makes the newcomer an insider straight away.
9. Coffee, tea or neither — and how do you take it?

   • Small and practical. In an office it means someone can make them a drink on day two.
10. What is a question you have been too polite to ask yet?

    • Gives permission to ask. New people sit on questions for weeks because they think they should already know.

How to run it

Let the team answer first. The new person gets time to settle and to hear how long and how personal answers are here.

Keep the newcomer’s turn short, and give them a question they can answer from knowledge, not personality.

Follow up in a one-to-one. The icebreaker opens the door; the conversation that matters happens after.

What to leave out

Three fun facts on day one

It is a performance under pressure, in front of people whose names they do not know yet.

Quizzing them about the company

They have been here a day. Testing them tells them nothing except that they are being tested.

Making them go first

Going first means guessing what is expected. Going last means they can copy the tone.

Questions

What is a good icebreaker for a new employee?

One that asks how they like to work. It is easy to answer and useful to everyone in the room.

Should the new person go first?

No. Let the team go first so they can see how answers are pitched here.

How long should the welcome take?

Ten minutes at most in a regular meeting. The rest of the welcome belongs in one-to-ones and the first piece of real work.

Icebreakers for other meetings

Every occasion →