Have you ever had an employee who seemed to be checked out? Employee engagement is the opposite of that. It is a strong mental and emotional connection employees feel toward the organization that employes them, the work they do, and the team they take part in. Your engaged employees do not check out, because they believe that their efforts make a difference, and that difference matters to them. They care about patients, yes, but also the teammates they work with day in and day out. Highly engaged employees are your most highly motivated team members, but not because of their salaries. Tim Smith(1) says, “An engaged employee is in it for more than a paycheck.” They are self-motivated to keep working hard because they find what they do gratifying. Clearly, every healthcare organization wants and needs to have a staff comprised of engaged employees. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of employees do not feel engaged.
According to Gallup,(2) only 21% of employees worldwide and 31% in the United States fall under the “engaged” category. The majority of employees are either “not engaged” (present but going through the motions) or “actively disengaged” (resentful and potentially harmful to team morale and outcomes). This is a very troubling finding. Gallup says, “Based on decades of employee engagement research, Gallup knows that engaged employees produce better business outcomes than other employees, regardless of industry, company size, or nationality, and in good economic times and bad.”
This article focuses on one strategy you can use to build employee engagement that is simple, cost-free, and effective — to ask carefully constructed team-building questions at your staff meetings and facilitate the discussion that follows. We’re not talking about simple icebreakers you might use at a party here. The questions you use for team-building must help your employees to feel much more connected to one another. At the same time, they need to feel comfortable. Unlike other more gregarious and livelier team-building activities, thoughtful questions and discussion will likely be comfortable for both the extroverts and the introverts on your team. Moreover, your creative and analytical employees will embrace them, too. This article provides 150 questions broken down by category that you can use with your team. Before that, let’s learn a little more about why and how to use these questions.
Team-Building Questions
What Are Team-Building Questions?
Team-building questions are designed specifically to prompt meaningful responses, foster connections, increase trust, and reveal insights about team members that may otherwise remain hidden. TeamType(3) says, “Unlike casual water cooler conversations, effective team-building questions are strategically crafted to achieve specific outcomes whether that’s increasing psychological safety, uncovering shared values, or identifying complementary strengths within your team.”
Good team-building questions create opportunities for authentic sharing while maintaining professional boundaries. For example, asking “What’s one professional skill you’d like to develop this year?” invites personal disclosure while keeping the conversation work-relevant. In contrast, poor team-building questions can feel invasive (“Why did your last relationship end?”) or too superficial (“What’s your favorite color?”) to build meaningful connections.
The psychological theory behind effective team-building questions is known as self-disclosure reciprocity. Here’s how it works: When one person shares something meaningful, others feel comfortable and are motivated to reciprocate by sharing back. Mia Belle Frothingham(4) explains, “We form more intimate connections with people with whom we disclose important information about ourselves.” Reciprocal sharing usually happens in a trusting environment where we can feel confident that the information we share will not be criticized, ridiculed, or released inappropriately to others, causing embarrassment. The give and take of the reciprocal sharing builds trust incrementally, which TeamType says, is “the foundation of high-performing teams”
Why Use Team-Building Questions Regularly?
Breaking the ice with new teams, or when you add a new team member, is extremely important to help your team gel. However, that’s not the only time you’ll want to ask team-building questions. TeamType suggests the following benefits to asking team-building questions regularly, not just as an icebreaker:
Improved communication: Questions and the discussions that follow encourage meaningful exchanges that may not occur otherwise. They can build psychological safety, which predicts high-performing teams. They can establish good communication norms and reduce misunderstandings, both of which will come in handy when the team meeting is over and everyone gets back to their daily tasks.
Enhanced team cohesion: The discussions encouraged by good questions also can help your team to form connections with one another beyond their everyday work communications. They can increase employee engagement, especially when used regularly, because team members may start to feel that they are on a team with people they know. Also, they can help team members share their values and seek common ground that can be especially helpful among diverse team members. Discussion questions can help strengthen a team’s identity and its sense of a collective purpose, too.
Better conflict resolution: Team-building questions can help employees to establish rapport before conflicts arise. This rapport will make conflict de-escalation and resolution much more likely. Through repeated discussions, teams can create language patterns for constructive feedback and build empathy that transforms potential conflicts into collaborative problem-solving opportunities. Healthy communication patterns also will teach employees to ask questions of one another rather than to jump to conclusions.
Less isolation for distributed teams: Do you have teams that are located on different floors, in different buildings, or that work at different times? If so, they may not have many opportunities to get to know one another. Team-building questions and discussions can help you foster a positive team culture, despite the distances of space and time.
Five Factors that Influence Self- Disclosure
You know from your life and work experiences that some people open up about themselves much more freely than others. In fact, some need little to no provocation to share while others may need to be asked repeatedly and cajoled. Five factors will influence how willing the members of your team will be to self-disclose when you ask them your team-building questions. Some of these factors are within your control, others not as much. Nonetheless, you must manage both the over-sharers and the tight-lipped employees within your team. Here are the five factors and what you can do about them:
Basic personality: The members of your team who are naturally extroverted are likely to self-disclose early on in their relationships with their coworkers. Conversely, Frothingham explains, “People who are reserved or naturally introverted tend to take much more time getting to know others.” Most often, introverts will hold back and prefer not to disclose much about themselves, at least not right away. However, they will self-disclose more willingly with people they know well. That means that things can get easier for them over time. They will require some patience. In the meantime, their lack of self-disclosure at the onset of team relationships can make it challenging for others to get to know them. What to do: Structure your team-building question activity in a way that is most comfortable for introverts. For example, they may find it easier to self-disclose in one-on-one conversations rather than larger group discussions. Or they may be more willing to self-disclose after they’ve had time to think about the question and prepare a response. If that is the case, you can circulate the question you’ll be asking at your team meeting or other event in advance.
Mood: Employees who are in a happy, optimistic, or confident mood are the ones most likely to self-disclose. Those who are in an unhappy, pessimistic, or sour mood are more likely to clam up. What to do: Pay close attention to mood. You usually can feel it in your gut. If you sense a foul mood brewing in your team, now may not be the best time to spring team-building questions on them. Rather, it is the perfect time to address the behaviors you’ve observed and let them talk about what is going on. Save your team-building questions for another day.
Loneliness: Lonely employees tend to self-disclose a lot less than those who do not experience loneliness. Unfortunately, a lonely employee’s lack of self-disclosure can make it more challenging for their coworkers to get to know them. This can confirm and deepen the lonely employee’s feelings of isolation. What to do: Loneliness is a doubly troubling challenge. There’s the loneliness, and then there’s the shame many people feel about feeling lonely and isolated, especially when they are surrounded by other people who seem more connected. This may be a situation that calls for a thoughtful one-on-one conversation. See the next section, “Fear,” for more on this.
Fear: Employees who are worried or afraid about something may go either way. They may self-disclose to gain support from their coworkers in an attempt to ease their fears. Or they may try to hide what they’re afraid of and soldier on to deal with the problem alone. What to do: If you sense that you have an employee who is worried, afraid, or lonely, your best strategy will be to meet one-on-one to see if you can help or direct the employee to someone who can. Tread very carefully here. Employees who are unwilling to self-disclose may not jump at the chance to work with a therapist or other counselor you suggest precisely because the work they do would require self-disclosure. Do your best and meet again after some time to see how things are going. Sometimes, it takes more than one attempt to get an employee to take advantage of the resources available to them.
Position: How your employees position or rank themselves with their coworkers will differ from one person to the next. For example, employees who feel on a par with their coworkers may be very willing to self-disclose. An employee who feels superior to coworkers may be even more willing to do so. In fact, you may have trouble reigning in employees who believe that it is their place to take up as much air space as possible at team meetings. What to do: Your challenge will be to keep your most comfortable, confident employees engaged but not dominating your discussions to the exclusion of others. Unfortunately, those who prefer to hold back or lurk at meetings because they feel inferior, or for other reasons, will be all too willing to let the talkative disclosers among them rattle on. It will be up to you to encourage everyone to participate, even if you must politely cut off one employee to give the floor to another.
How to Use Team-Building Questions
Think beyond the obvious moments for team-building questions such as new employee orientation or retreats. Incorporate questions into your regular team meeting schedule so they become part of your culture. You need not devote huge blocks of time to this team-building activity. Even five minutes is sufficient to engage your team in answering one small question meaningfully.
For example, ask a quick team-building question at the start or end of weekly team meetings. Set a five-minute timer to encourage quick discussion. Divide larger teams into pairs or small groups. Choose questions that are light and easy to answer in the short time you have.
Monthly meetings, quarterly meetings, and team retreats can give you more time for team-building questions. That’s your best opportunity to ask questions that require more time to answer. Or string several questions together.to fill, say, 20 minutes, half an hour, or more, depending on how much time you can afford to spend on this activity.
If you’ve divided your team, take a moment to debrief by asking for volunteers to share their answers. For example, you might ask, “Anyone learn something surprising?” or “Did you have the same answer as your partner?” to get the ball rolling. Make sure that partners and groups do not stay the same from one meeting to the next. The goal is to get your employes to mix and learn about every other member of the team.
Consistency will be much more important to the success of team-building questions than the duration of the activity. Regular brief connections will build more team cohesion than occasional intensive sessions. Ask team-building questions at your meetings and make them part of your team’s culture. TeamType says, “The key is integrating questions into existing workflows rather than treating team-building as a separate activity.”
Introducing Team-Building Questions to Reluctant Teams
Even excellent team-building questions can meet resistance from teams unaccustomed to this kind of structured connection activity. TeamType offers the following suggestions:
Begin with your own vulnerability. Demonstrate appropriate self-disclosure by answering questions first, setting the depth benchmark. TeamType says, “Research shows leader vulnerability increases psychological safety by 34%.”
Link to outcomes. Explicitly link team-building to performance metrics the team values. For example, tell your employees that teams with stronger connections show 21% higher productivity. Then say, “That’s why we’re investing the next 10 minutes in better understanding each other.”
Offer opt-out language. Provide permission to pass. TeamType says that doing so paradoxically increases participation rates by 27%.
Start small and be consistent. Begin with five-minute exercises at the start or end of your existing meetings, rather than dedicated sessions. Gradually increase the duration of the questions/discussion exercises as your team becomes comfortable with them and experiences their benefits.
150 Team-Building Questions
The following list provides 150 team-building questions on a variety of topics. Start with questions that will be easy to answer in a short time and build up from there.
Meet the Team/Background Questions
What is your role within our team?
What other jobs have you held before joining our team?
What is the most interesting or funny moment you have ever experienced while working?
What is your favorite work memory?
Where did you grow up and what’s one thing you loved about it?
Who is in your family and which one of you is the funniest?
What’s your earliest childhood memory?
What was your favorite TV show as a child?
Who was your first celebrity crush?
What did you want to be when you grew up?
What was your least favorite food as a child? Do you still dislike it?
Where did you go to school? What did you study?
What was your first job and what did you learn from it?
What is the best piece of advice your parents or grandparents gave you?
What is your favorite season and why?
What is your favorite food and best place to have it?
What is your favorite music and musician?
What is your favorite movie? Why?
What is your favorite television show? Why?
What is your favorite sport? Why?
What are your hobbies? Which is your favorite?
Do you collect anything? Why?
Do you have any pets? Tell us one thing you love about one of them. Or, if you don’t have one, what would be your fantasy pet?
Who is your hero, real or fictional? Why?
Do you have any special talents?
What are you looking forward to most right now?
What has been the best day of your life so far?
What can you talk about for hours?
What is the coolest place you have ever visited?
Where is your dream destination for a two-week trip?
What is something you would like to learn?
If you could instantly learn a new language, which would you pick? Why?
When are you the happiest?
What was the last TV show you binge watched? How was it?
What is the best meal you have ever eaten? Where?
What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten? Did you like it?
What would your warning label say?
If you could have dinner with a historical figure, who would you choose? Why?
If you got stuck in an elevator with a celebrity for an hour, who would it be and what would you talk about?
Who would you want to play you in a movie?
What’s a small everyday item you couldn’t live without?
If you could teleport anywhere for lunch today, where would you go?
What is one thing that stresses you out?
How do you deal with stress?
What’s your favorite way to recharge after a busy work day?
What simple pleasure always improves your day?
What fact about you might surprise people?
What’s the best compliment you’ve ever received?
What’s one thing most people don’t know about you?
What do you most want the team to know about you?
Quick This-or-That Questions
Early bird or night owl?
Lead a team or be part of one?
Job with high salary and long hours or lower salary and more free time?
Detailed plan or spontaneous action?
Coffee or tea?
Digital notes or handwritten?
Climb a career ladder or make your own path?
In-person or online learning?
Learn by reading or learn by doing?
Big team meetings or small group discussions?
Text or call?
A job with a lot of travel or one with no travel?
Dress code or wear whatever you want?
Be able to read minds or control the weather?
City/suburban living or country?
Multitasking or deep focus on one thing?
Speak at a conference or be part of the audience?
Sweet or savory breakfast?
Physical books or e-books?
Dream job or dream home?
Give a substantial presentation to the whole team or be stuck in the elevator for an hour with your boss?
Planned vacation or spontaneous trip?
Have the ability to be invisible or to teleport anywhere in the world?
Bigger salary or a chance at higher bonuses?
Save first or spend first?
Fun Work Questions
If we poked around your workspace right now, what surprising thing might we find?
If our team had an animal mascot, what would it be and why?
If your desk chair could talk, what embarrassing secret would it reveal?
If you could implement one ridiculous work policy, what would it be?
What’s the best prank you’ve pulled or seen pulled on a coworker?
What was the dirtiest job you ever did?
If your job had a warning label, what would it be?
If your boss’s personality were a cheese, what kind of cheese would it be and why?
If you had a chance to teach our team a non-work skill, what would it be?
If you could choose a fictional character to join our team, who would it be? Why?
If our team had a theme song, what would it be?
If price were no object, what new features should our breakroom have?
If aliens landed and asked you to explain your job, what would you say?
If you wrote your memoir about your career, what would the title be?
Would you rather have a free massage therapist or a hairstylist on call for our team every morning before work?
If our team could have a view of anything while we worked, what would you like it to see?
If you had to come to work dressed as a cartoon character, who would it be?
If there were a TV show about our team, what would it be called?
If we got a karaoke machine for our team, what would be the first song you’d sing?
What color would you paint our workspace if you could choose absolutely any color?
If we could have free lunch delivered to our team every day, what should we order today?
What’s the best gift to put into a team gift exchange, if price were no object?
Where would be the best place on earth to have a team retreat?
Which would you choose: A chauffeured car to drive you to and from work? Or a good dinner delivered to your home after work every night?
If we could have a trained animal join our team to help with the work, what should it be?
Team Dynamics Questions
What’s one thing our team does exceptionally well that we should continue?
Do you have a pet peeve? If so, what is it?
What’s one meeting we have that could be improved, and how?
What’s your preferred communication style when collaborating on projects?
What or who is missing from our team?
What do you think has been our biggest challenge this month?
What’s one assumption about our team’s work that may be limiting our effectiveness?
Do you think any of our team meetings are unnecessary? If so, which ones?
When you’re stuck on a problem, how do you prefer others to help?
What type of recognition is most meaningful to you?
What’s one thing you wish team members knew about your work style or preferences?
What should your teammates know about when and how do you recharge during the workday?
What’s one team process we currently use that you think could be streamlined?
What information do you need more of or less of to do your best work on our team?
What’s a recent team success we should celebrate more intentionally?
How has our team changed since you first joined it?
What’s one way we could better leverage each team member’s unique strengths?
How could we improve our team culture?
Looking back, what’s one thing that you wish we had done differently?
How do you prefer our team to handle disagreements at work?
What’s one thing our team could start doing that would make a positive difference?
What new team-building activities would you enjoy?
Could our team meetings be improved? If so, how?
When did a team member have your back?
What are the most important connection points for our team during the workweek?
Deeper, More Serious Work Questions
What is a lesson you learned from a challenging experience that has shaped who you are today?
What aspect of our team culture do you value most?
If you could have a conversation with your younger self, what advice would you give?
What’s something you’ve accomplished at work that you rarely talk about?
What’s something you wish you had known when you joined the team?
What matters most to you about your job (other than your salary/benefits, being part of our team, or helping patients)?
How do you handle failure or setbacks in your professional life?
What’s the best way to approach conflict resolution in a team setting?
What inspires you to stay motivated and engaged at work?
What is a project or task that challenges you to step out of your comfort zone?
How do you contribute to creating a positive and inclusive work environment?
What’s one thing you’ve learned not to do from a negative role model?
Who is your most important professional role model today? Why?
If you could swap roles with anyone on the team for a day, whose role would you choose? Why?
What does being part of a successful team mean to you?
What skills or knowledge would you like to share with your team?
If you could implement one change to improve our workplace, what would it be?
How do you handle failure or setbacks?
How do you approach conflict resolution in a team setting?
What inspires you to stay motivated and engaged at work?
What career would you choose other than the one you have?
How do you contribute to creating a positive and inclusive work environment?
If you could afford to give any gift to our healthcare organization, what would it be?
What could we, as a team, do better to support one another?
How can we make our workday more fun?
Facilitating Meaningful Discussions
The difference between superficial exchanges and transformative conversations lies in skilled facilitation. Here’s what to do:
Act as a guide. Offer your team support and guidance. Your role is to keep the conversation going and encourage participation, not completely take control of it. The Indeed Editorial Team(5) says, “If you notice there are pauses in the conversation, give your team a moment to think things through. If the conversation is at a standstill, bring up a new point or ask thoughtful open-ended questions.”
Provide a structure. Will you break team members into pairs or smaller groups to discuss your question? If so, how will those pairs or groups be formed? Will you have a round robin discussion where everyone gets a chance to speak? Or will you have a free-for-all where anyone can speak?
Establish ground rules. Be clear about time limits, participation expectations, respectful communication, and confidentiality.
Introduce the three-second rule. Ask team members to wait three seconds after someone finishes before moving on or jumping in. That ensures that the speaker has completed the thought and creates space for more introverted team members to contribute.
Acknowledge without judgment. Respond to shares with “Thank you for sharing that” rather than evaluative comments.
Praise positive behaviors. Use positive reinforcement. Offer praise at the end of the discussion if you noticed that your team is fluidly sharing their ideas and building on what one another has to say. The Indeed Editorial Team says, “By identifying what you liked about the discussion, your team members can learn what they should do during your next discussion.”
Take notes. Record the main ideas team members shared. Highlight which ones led to further discussion. When appropriate, use your notes to help your team continue the discussion another time, without rehashing the same things.
Highlight patterns and bridges. Draw connections between teammates’ answers to build collective insights. For example, you might say: “I’m noticing several of us mentioned inventory challenges in different contexts.”
End with a recap and next steps (if any). Having a brief recap can help everyone remember what you discussed and what you still need to talk about in the future. Work with your team to decide together what you need to do as a result of the discussion.
Sidebar: What to Do If the Discussion Gets Off Track?
It may be human nature for us to take our discussions wherever our minds lead us. In fact, that often is how our discussions go when we are engaged in our casual conversations. However, you need to have a firm hand when you facilitate team discussions to make sure they do not get off track. Otherwise, the discussion may degenerate into a waste of time. Unfortunately, team members who have had a worthless or frustrating discussion experience may dig in their heels the next time you introduce a team-building question at a meeting.
It’s up to you to make sure that your team-building questions and the discussions that follow are positive and worthwhile experiences for your team. Here are nine smart strategies you can use to prevent meandering and get off-topic team-building discussions back on track:
Share your goal. Explain at the start that you are asking questions as a team-building activity and that your goal is to help everyone get to know one another better. Emphasize that there are no right or wrong answers and that team members should not share anything that makes them uncomfortable. Stress that whatever is shared confidentially should be treated as such and that everyone’s participation is very important.
Review conduct ground rules. Establish standards for civility and mutual respect.
Encourage your team to be brief and concise. Create and share with your team the nonverbal signal you will use to let them know when it is time to finish their thought.
Set a time limit for each question. Tell your team how much time they will have and set a timer. Let them know when they’ve hit the halfway mark.
Assign one person to take notes. Rotate this assignment.
Speak directly to a team member who gets off track. Interrupt in a subtle and polite way. For example, say; “That’s a great point, Susan. We don’t have time to get into that today, but I think we should talk about it. Let’s put that topic on our agenda for next week.” Or say, “Ryan, thank you so much. That’s a great story. Can you sum it up now so we will have time for others to share theirs?”
Repeat the question. Point to the question if you have written it on your agenda or projected it on a screen.
Reopen the discussion. Review what was said prior to the off-topic comment, drawing from your notetaker’s notes. Or share something you’ve observed about the discussion and ask a relevant follow-up question. For example, “I’ve noticed that a number of you had experience with or prefer X. Do any of you feel differently or have you had a different experience with it?”
Meet with a repeat meanderer. Some people are more prone to meandering than others. Meet with a team member who has pulled discussions off topic or taken up too much discussion time more than once. Keep things positive but ask for their cooperation in getting things back on track.
References
Smith T. What is employee engagement? Definition, strategies, and examples. Investopedia blog. June 20, 2024. www.investopedia.com/terms/e/employee-engagement.asp . Accessed July 7, 2025.
What is employee engagement, and how do you improve it? Gallup.com. www.gallup.com/workplace/285674/improve-employee-engagement-workplace.aspx#ite-691856 . Accessed July 7, 2025.
200+ effective team-building questions to strengthen your team. TeamType blog. May 19, 2025. https://teamtype.co/team-building-questions/ . Accessed July 7, 2025.
Frothingham MB. How self-disclosure affects relationships: examples and benefits. Simply Psychology blog, November 2, 2023. www.simplypsychology.org/how-does-self-disclosure-influence-relationships.html . Accessed July 7, 2025.
Indeed Editorial Team. How to facilitate discussion: 7 tips for communication. Indeed blog. June 6, 2025. www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/facilitate-discussion . Accessed July 14, 2025.