While meetings are necessary, they can also be tedious, time-consuming, and energy-draining at times. 

The good news is, there are fun activities you can do before starting a stressful meeting to give everyone a mental boost or entertain participants.

If you’re looking for enjoyable ways to kick off your meetings and make them less painful for you and your participants, then this guide is for you. 

Below are five activities — from simple icebreakers to tech tools for stress-free virtual meetings —  to relieve some of the strain that often comes with long, exhausting sessions. 

1. Simple, individual games

Fun activities don’t always have to be done in groups or through vigorous activities. 

Depending on your participants’ energy levels, you can start meetings calm and slow, such as getting everyone to play individual games.

For instance, you can have participants play free, online solitaire games and declare a winner based on who finishes a game first. 

It’s a familiar game, so you won’t need to explain the mechanics too much, and anyone can easily win. 

Other low-energy activities you can include are:

• A brief reflection on personal best achievements. Pausing and reflecting on the previous accomplishments can help attendees who are burnt out or worn out find their motivation again.

Then, have everyone share a success story or personal best from the last week, month, or year. 

Using this activity for internal meetings is also a great way to hear about what your employees are proud of. 

This helps give you insights into how employees approach their work and what they care about.  

• Brief meditation. Ease the stress of meetings by giving your attendees a few minutes to reflect and meditate in silence. 

While this isn’t exactly “fun” for everyone, it offers a way for attendees to pause from their busy day and refocus their minds. 

Simple pre-meeting activities can help wake up your low-energy participants and give them a quick mental boost before starting your meeting.

2. Energy-boosting activities

If your meeting attendees’ energy level is high (and if they’ve had a cup of coffee or two), consider activities that will get them up and moving.   

This includes:

• Scavenger hunts. While scavenger hunts require more preparation and planning, it’s a great way to engage and get people moving. 

You can hide clues around the entire office and include a company or project-related theme, which can help prep everyone for the meeting. 

• Charades. You can go the traditional way of playing the family game or add a bit of a twist. For instance, you can have one member try to guess while the other members act out the animal, movie, food, etc. 

3. Creative challenges

If your meeting calls for rapid exchange of ideas and creativity, jumpstart the event by doing hands-on activities that can get your attendees’ creative juices flowing. 

This can include: 

• Tower building competition. Break your attendees into teams and provide materials, such as dry spaghetti, marshmallows, paper, and tape, to build their towers.
  
  The team that builds the tallest structure within the given time frame wins. 

While this can seem like a middle school project, it’s a great way to engage attendees who like to work with their hands and encourage teamwork.

• A drawing challenge. Another activity that helps encourage collaboration is the drawing game. 

Assign each team member one part of a whole drawing, such as an elephant. Each member has to draw their assigned part, whether the tail, head, trunk, legs, or ears. 

In one paper, the first member has to draw the assigned part within, let’s say, one minute. 

When the time is up, the person has to pass the paper on to the next members to complete the rest of the elephant parts until the whole drawing is complete.     

The game results are often funny, and it helps foster teamwork while encouraging people to think in new or creative ways.  

4. Engaging events for large, cross-departmental meetings

Meetings with mostly unfamiliar people can add to the awkwardness around already stressful meetings.

Liven things up a bit and help participants who’ve had little interaction get a bit more comfortable with each other by trying these pre-meeting activities. 

• Share things in common. Break attendees into groups and have them write down three common things among members within five or ten minutes. 

Once done, ask each group to share common things with the rest of the participants. It’s a fun way for everyone to learn a bit more about coworkers and feel more connected.  

• Speed friendships. Use the speed dating format to pair attendees with someone they don’t know. 

Participants can talk to each other for ten minutes. Then, have each participant introduce each other based on what they learned during the conversation.  

You can implement free form or guide the conversation with a few prompts, such as their hidden talents, greatest fears, memorable birthdays, etc.  

5. Low-key, warmup activities

Not everyone is comfortable with being the center of attention or speaking in front of people. 

Also, it’s not always appropriate to begin meetings with high-energy games, especially for new people to the team or job. 

Consider these pre-meeting activities to help facilitate conversation and engagement without adding stress to your attendees. 

• Bowl of questions. Prepare a bowl or box filled with questions written on slips of paper. Then, everyone can take turns picking one question and answering them. 

Ask fun, non-work-related questions such as “Who is your favorite movie villain?” or “What superpower would you like to have?”

Try to keep things light and avoid using questions that are too personal. This is one way of promoting a light and stress-free environment before diving into a serious and potentially rigorous meeting.  

• One-word description. Prepare a few prompts for your meeting attendees to easily respond to in one word. 

For instance, you can ask participants to describe themselves, the company, their team, or a project in one word. 

One-word descriptions shouldn't be too hard to answer, and it allows everyone the opportunity to talk briefly and warm up. 

It can help make everyone comfortable and ready to face the meeting head-on.  

Start your meetings on a positive note

Starting your meetings doesn’t have to be as serious as the meeting itself.

Throw in some pre-meeting fun to get the ball rolling, make your attendees feel comfortable, and help them warm up before tackling long and stressful meetings. 

Leverage the fun activities in this guide and see which ones work best for your teams and attendees.