60 Get to Know You Questions for Work, Grouped by Situation

Most get to know you questions for work fail the same way: a manager says “let’s go around,” 14 people brace, and everyone gives the shortest true answer that ends their turn.

Business improv training explains why. A good question isn’t really about the answer. It’s practice in speaking up without a script and in listening closely enough to ask a follow-up later. Improv teaches that the listener matters as much as the speaker, and the best get-to-know-you rounds work the same way.

The 60 below are grouped by situation, each set notes the skill it trains, and the section at the end covers how to ask them so nobody braces.

Safe Questions for Someone’s First Week

For a call with a new hire. Nothing personal, nothing that needs company history, everything answerable in one sentence. What it trains: speaking up early, with an answer nobody can get wrong.

1. What did you do the day after you accepted this job?
2. Coffee, tea, or something stranger before 9am?
3. Best thing within walking distance of your home?
4. Which app do you open first in the morning?
5. What on your desk would you grab in a fire?
6. What was your first job, and what did it pay?
7. What is a small skill you are quietly proud of?
8. Morning person, night person, or neither?
9. What place would you send everyone to visit?
10. What food would you refuse to eat for money?
11. Last thing you fixed with your own hands?
12. Which season do you actually like?
13. What is the best gift you ever gave?
14. Which show do you rewatch instead of starting a new one?
15. What did you want to be when you were ten?

Funny Questions to Ask Coworkers

Funny get to know you questions for work get a real laugh instead of a polite one because every answer is a small confession. What it trains: committing to an answer on the spot, which is thinking on your feet.

16. Most useless thing you know a lot about?
17. What would you be terrible at teaching?
18. Which chore would you pay to never do again?
19. What food combination do you defend that nobody respects?
20. Worst haircut you ever paid for?
21. If your search history were a person, who would it be?
22. What is your most irrational fear?
23. Least impressive thing on your resume?
24. What word do you always spell wrong?
25. What rule do you follow that makes no sense to anyone else?
26. Your unpopular opinion about a sandwich?
27. Longest you have gone without checking email?
28. Which emoji do you use wrong on purpose?
29. What did you buy that you would never admit the price of?
30. What compliment did you get once and still think about?

Questions for a Team That Already Knows Each Other

Skip the biography. These settle a few long-running arguments. What it trains: “yes, and”, because the best answers build on shared history someone else just mentioned.

31. Strangest thing that has happened on a call with this team?
32. Which project from three years ago would you do differently?
33. Best mistake you have made here?
34. Who on this team would last longest in a power outage?
35. What did you think this job would be on day one?
36. What tool did we stop using that you secretly miss?
37. What has changed about how you work since you started?
38. What jargon do we use that you have never fully understood?
39. Which meeting should be an email, and which email should be a meeting?
40. What habit did you pick up from someone on this team?
41. Which team decision aged the best?
42. What would you tell a new hire about this team on day one?
43. What do you know about this company that most people do not?
44. Oddest customer request you have handled?
45. Whose desk would you least like to be locked in with overnight?

Questions That Reveal How People Like to Work

For a 1:1 or a small team meeting. The answers change how you schedule and hand things off. What it trains: reading the room, by learning how each person actually wants to communicate.

46. Do you want the answer first or the reasoning first?
47. What time of day is your best thinking, honestly?
48. How do you want to be told something is wrong?
49. Chat, call, or written doc when it is complicated?
50. What reliably derails your day?
51. Do you want a deadline or a priority?
52. When you are stuck, do you want help early or late?
53. What kind of meeting do you leave energized?
54. How much context do you want before starting a task?
55. What does “urgent” mean to you, in hours?
56. Present your own work, or have someone else do it?
57. What do you wish people would stop apologizing for?
58. How do you like praise: public, private, or written?
59. What did a previous manager do that you want to keep?
60. What would you rather nobody asked you to do again?

How to Run Get to Know You Questions for Work Without a Go-Around

Pick one question and answer it first. Five in a row turns a warm-up into an interview. The host goes first with a real answer, not a safe one, because whatever honesty you model is the ceiling for everyone after you.

Use chat for anything over ten people. On Zoom, ask everyone to type at once on the count of three, then read four aloud. Everyone contributes, and nobody waits through a long go-around.

Let people pass, once. Say it up front. People who know they can skip are more likely to answer.

Ask one follow-up, from someone else. After an answer, invite one person to ask a single follow-up question. That turns a question into listening practice.

Stop at three minutes. It is an opener, not the meeting. End it while people still want another turn.

Where to Start

Use the first-week set for anyone new, the funny set on a Friday, and the working-style set in your next 1:1. The 75 icebreaker questions for work post overlaps very little with this one. When a question is not enough, there are funny ice breaker games for adults and 20 virtual team building games for a full block of time. Funny get to know your coworkers questions and practical ones share one trait when they work: the answer takes under ten seconds and starts a second conversation later.

If you want the hour version with someone else running it, the Virtual Office Shenanigans Game is live business improv training on Zoom: 60 minutes for 10 to 50 people, nothing to prepare, hosted by Groundlings-trained Scott Topper. The improv games practice the same skills these questions do, listening and speaking up, at a faster pace.