67 Simple Team Building Questions for Work

Favorite questions to build trust & connection with your team

Relationships, both personal and professional, require conscious effort. At work, just like in our personal lives, we have to build trust with the people around us, including co-workers.

Managers have an important role to play, too. A TINYpulse report found that 93% of employees surveyed believed trust in their direct supervisor was the most important factor in workplace satisfaction.

In other words, your team members need to get to know you too.

As a leader, your most important responsibility is building trust on your team. Without it, a team can't collaborate and can't achieve its goals.

“Building trust” may sound like a big and daunting mission—but it doesn’t necessarily need to be. There are small actions you can take with your team every day to prioritize connecting and building empathy with each other.

One of my favorite ways to get to know teammates on a personal level is through team building questions.

In this article, we’ll talk through what makes for productive team building activities. I’ll share with you some of my favorite questions for team building, why I like them as a leader, and how each has helped me learn something new about my teammates.

The importance of team building questions

Big company events and virtual team building activities—like learning how to make wood-fired pizza, a Zoom tarot reading, or the classic ropes course—are great ways to jumpstart or restart the team building of a company, but these things alone won’t establish a foundation of trust.

Believe it or not, those sometimes awkward icebreaker questions can help you and your team make great strides in establishing the sense of belonging that underlies all great teams.

These questions are powerful because they provide team members an opportunity to share small pieces of themselves. (This is how we begin to build trust.) Over time, these answers begin to paint a more complete picture of the unique individuals around us.

And only by better understanding the people we work with can we hope to function as a healthy, high-performing team.

It’s been interesting to watch how something as simple as a question can morph into a powerful team bonding moment even in virtual meetings.

Icebreaker questions are especially important on a remote team because they can spark discussions that lead to deeper connections and more effective teamwork, even when in-person meetings aren’t an option.

Favorite team building questions

I tend to gravitate towards creative questions and ones that are good conversation starters.

In reflecting back, these are some of the favorites that really stand out for me.

1. Kids today will never understand the struggle of what?

Why I like this team building question: Talk about nostalgia. This is such a fun question, and it's a great one for bringing a little excitement and laughter to the start of a day or meeting. When I thought back into the time machine of my childhood history before Netflix, my family life, and my hobbies—dial-up internet, floppy disks, and trying to record mixtapes from the radio—the frustrations from my morning commute just disappeared.
What I learned about my teammates: I couldn't wait to see how my teammates answered this question, and I wasn't disappointed. I got a tiny glimpse into what my coworkers enjoyed or what they were like in their youth, and that told me a little about what they might enjoy today as adults.

2. What’s the furthest away from home you’ve ever been?

Why I like this team building question: I went straight to a map to answer this question for myself, but this question isn't one that has to be answered literally (based on physical distance). It's up for interpretation—physical, psychological, or experiential distance and that's why I like this question so much.
What I learned about my teammates: “What is home?” someone asked. It sounds a bit flippant, but think about it. In the context of this question, how do you define home, and then how do you choose to interpret distance?

3. When looking back at your youth, what was your silliest fear?

Why I like this team building question: Some of my biggest fears as a kid are still going strong today well into adulthood. Humans aren't designed to be rational. Sometimes we just need to be reminded that the people around us are human, too.
What I learned about my teammates: While I expected to read a response or two about ghosts, I was surprised to see that some of my colleagues took this team-building question as an opportunity to be vulnerable.

4. How do you recognize when you’re stressed?

Why I like these team building questions: The ways in which stress manifests with each of us and how we manage that stress has a direct impact on our team, our career, and our team's success.
What I learned about my teammates: When stress is on the horizon, some of us vigorously plan, some take a walk, and some make time to talk.

5. What is a passion of yours you’ve yet to act on?

Why I like this team building question: This is an opportunity to share with your team some of the side projects you have (or wish you had) worked on over the years.
What I learned about my teammates: A few people on your team are going to surprise you when you hear their answers to this question.

6. Looking back, what do you admire most about your childhood self?

Why I like these team building questions: This question prompts introspection and vulnerability.
What I learned about my teammates: So many of our responses were so similar. That genuinely surprised me.

7. What’s one misunderstanding that’s happened on your team recently?

Why I like these team building questions: This one's a doozy. Honesty, vulnerability, and introspection are all being asked of me.
What I learned about my teammates: I found the responses of my team ran the gamut when it came to the scale of the misunderstandings they described.

60 More Team-Building Questions To Use Right Now

Fun team building questions

How was your weekend? What did you do?
What does your name mean?
You’re stranded on a desert island. What’s the one thing you couldn’t live without?
What’s the last dream that you remember?
What categories of trivia are you the best at?

How are you feeling? Team building questions

How are you feeling today?
How would you describe your personality to a new friend?
What did you get into the most trouble for as a kid?
Are you afraid of heights?

Aspirational team building questions

When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up?
If you had to move to a different country, where would you go? What would you miss?

Gratitude team building questions

What seemingly tiny thing are you especially grateful for?
What’s a part of your job that you particularly enjoy?
Who has helped make your job easier recently? What did they do?
What’s a simple pleasure you enjoyed this week?

Workplace team building questions

If you could choose your own working hours, would you be a night owl, early bird, or something in-between?
Where, outside of work, do you get your best ideas?
What distractions prevent you from doing your best work?

Feedback team building questions

What would you rather hear first, good news or bad news?
Think of a time when feedback felt like a gift. Why did it feel that way?

Leadership tip: Get to know your team on a personal level.

"One thing that I've employed with my reports is setting aside time with them remote or in person that is not about work. We'll talk about random stuff in our lives, what we're up to. That kind of stuff helps to create first and foremost a trusting environment where we get to know each other on the human level.”

The right questions can prompt very real and very powerful shifts in the ways we think and the dynamics of our teams.