Team building questions for work.

How to use team building questions

1. 1.

   One question, everyone answers

   Five to ten minutes

   Ask one question at the start of a team meeting and go round in a fixed order. Answer first yourself, so people see how long and how personal an answer can be.

2. 2.

   Pick the group for the moment

   Fun first, deeper later

   Fun questions suit any team. Save the deeper ones for a team that already knows each other, or for an offsite with time to listen properly.

3. 3.

   Write the answers down

   For the how-you-work questions

   Answers to "How do you prefer to get feedback?" are worth keeping. Put them in a shared doc, one section per person, and point new teammates to it.

4. 4.

   Do something with the team questions

   Or they stop working

   If you ask "What should we say no to more often?", pick one answer and act on it. People answer honestly when they see the answers change something.

Fun team building questions

Playful questions about the team itself. Good for opening a team session, a social call or a quiet Friday.

1. 1If our team were a band, what would we be called?
2. 2If the team had a mascot, what would it be?
3. 3Which fictional character would fit right in on our team?
4. 4If our team had a theme song, what would it be?
5. 5If we could swap jobs for a day, whose job would you want to try?
6. 6What would our team's reality show be called?
7. 7If we opened a restaurant together, what would we serve?
8. 8What superpower would make your job easier?
9. 9On a team road trip, would you be the driver, the navigator, the DJ or the one with the snacks?
10. 10If you could add one perk at work, with no budget limit, what would it be?
11. 11Which job would you be terrible at, and why?
12. 12If your work week were a film genre, what would it be?
13. 13What would the title of your autobiography be right now?
14. 14If we had our own team holiday, what would we celebrate?
15. 15What's the most useless talent you have?
16. 16If you could have any animal as a coworker, which would you pick?
17. 17Which three things would you take to an office on a desert island?
18. 18If it were up to you, what would we call the meeting room?
19. 19If you could master any skill overnight, which would it be?
20. 20What would be on the menu at the perfect team lunch?

Team building questions about how you work

Each person's user manual: how they like feedback, help and focus time. Teams that ask these early save themselves a lot of guessing.

1. 1How do you prefer to get feedback: in the moment, in writing or one to one?
2. 2What's the best way to ask you for help?
3. 3What time of day do you do your best work?
4. 4What does a good meeting look like to you?
5. 5When you're stuck, do you prefer to talk it through or work it out alone first?
6. 6What's something about how you work that people often get wrong?
7. 7How can teammates tell you need quiet time to focus?
8. 8What kind of recognition means the most to you?
9. 9Do you like detailed instructions, or the goal and the freedom to get there?
10. 10What drains your energy at work?
11. 11What's one thing that helps you do your best work?
12. 12How quickly do you expect replies to messages, and how quickly do you reply?
13. 13What's a pet peeve of yours in team communication?
14. 14What's a strength of yours the team might not use enough?
15. 15How do you like to celebrate when something goes well?
16. 16What would you want a new teammate to know about working with you?
17. 17When you disagree, do you prefer to say so in the meeting or afterwards?
18. 18How do you like to start a new project?
19. 19What makes you feel trusted at work?
20. 20Would you rather have a quick call or a written message for a tricky question?

Team building questions about the team

About how the team works together: what's going well, what gets in the way, and what to try next. Good for a team session or a quarterly check-in.

1. 1What's one thing this team does better than any team you've been on?
2. 2What's an unwritten rule on this team?
3. 3What should a new person know in their first week here?
4. 4What's a team moment you still think about?
5. 5What do we spend too much time on?
6. 6What's one thing we could try as a team next month?
7. 7When did you last feel the team really pulled together?
8. 8What's one habit of a teammate you'd like to borrow?
9. 9What would make working together easier for you?
10. 10Which of our meetings could be a message, and which needs more time?
11. 11What's something we stopped doing that we should bring back?
12. 12How do we celebrate wins, and how should we?
13. 13What's a tradition we should start as a team?
14. 14If you described our team in three words, what would they be?
15. 15What do people outside the team get wrong about what we do?
16. 16What's a skill the team has that we don't talk about?
17. 17What would you change about how we share updates?
18. 18What's the best decision this team made in the last year?
19. 19What should we say no to more often?
20. 20What does a great week look like for the whole team?

Deeper team building questions

For an offsite, a long team session or a team that already knows each other. They take a few minutes each, and they're worth it.

1. 1What's a moment at work you felt proud of, and why?
2. 2What made you choose the work you do?
3. 3What's a value you try to bring to every job?
4. 4Who has had the biggest influence on how you work?
5. 5What's the hardest thing you've learned at work?
6. 6What does success look like for you a year from now?
7. 7What's a risk you took at work that paid off?
8. 8When do you feel most like yourself at work?
9. 9What part of your work would you keep doing even if nobody noticed?
10. 10What's something you've had to unlearn?
11. 11What's the kindest thing a colleague has done for you?
12. 12What did your best manager do that others didn't?
13. 13What would you like to be known for on this team?
14. 14What's one thing you'd like more help with?
15. 15What's the best team you've been part of, and what made it work?
16. 16What do you wish you'd known when you started your career?
17. 17What gives you energy on a hard day?
18. 18What's one thing you'd like the team to understand about you?
19. 19What are you most curious about right now?
20. 20What's a piece of advice you'd pass on to everyone here?

What makes a good team building question

• Everyone can answer. A good question doesn't depend on age, seniority, where someone lives or what they do at weekends. Anyone on the team, from their first week, has an answer.
• Nothing private. Leave out family, relationships, health, money, politics and religion. Even the deeper questions here are about work and how people like to work.
• Passing is fine. Say at the start that anyone can pass or answer briefly. A question people feel made to answer stops being team building.
• Says something useful. The best ones are fun to answer and leave the team knowing something it didn't: when someone focuses best, what drains them, what they're proud of.

How we picked these

We wrote these for small teams at work, with the rules above, and grouped them by how much a team knows each other and how much time there is. For a one-minute warm-up before a standup, our icebreaker questions are quicker; these take a little longer and tell you more about how the team works. We add to the list as we find good ones.