To hate icebreakers

I'm so sorry this happened to you.

Do you work in an organisation with HR? And/or does your organisation have any kind of focus on mental health and wellbeing?

If so, on one or both accounts, I'd chat with HR about this especially given how dismissive your manager is being about the impact on your mental health. I wouldn't necessarily make a huge deal of it, but feeling so overwhelmed at work that you have to leave a meeting isn't acceptable at all

@LondonBound88

"I don’t think these exercises are inclusive; they seem quite ableist."

Agree 💯

I once worked somewhere that took the to the next level; everyone (about 80 people) had to tie a balloon around their ankle and go round bursting other people's balloons until only one person/balloon was left

Today I was supposed to attend a training course via Teams, the icebreaker was to turn your camera on, introduce yourself and tell us of a time in you life that you would like to go back to.
As I sat there listening to 10 other people before waffle on I just became so overwhelmed with anxiety that by the time it was my turn I was already crying and then totally freaked out and clicked the 'leave' button and then 'appear offline'.
My manager told me I was overreacting when I spoke to her but as someone with depression and anxiety about past experiences it's already a daily struggle not to spend too much time dwelling on the past and to keep the intrusive thoughts at bay.
I did try to rejoin the training a little later but they wanted us to work in groups but by this point I was so overwhelmed I wouldn't have been able to to utter a single word so I left again.

This thread has helped me feel a lot less weird about not wanting to share personal info at work 🙂

It's irrelevant how intrusive it is or isn't. Its personal information that has nothing to do with my current role and/or ability to do it, ergo no business of my colleagues or employer, and therefore inappropriate and irrelevant to share at work.

But why? If it's a work thing, you ask name, job title, maybe how long they've been in the business and a very brief summary of what they do.

If it's a non-work thing, like my first aid course, you ask name, maybe job or volunteer role and why they want to do the course (might just be "because my certificate is up for renewal" and that's fine too).

There's really no need to play silly games.

I agree - people really should be more aware of this now. I don't pretend to be even remotely attuned to what neurodivergent people need but at least I am aware that they may need something different to the normal extrovert model of behaviour.

But what’s the point when you know lots of people hate this rubbish, and it causes anxiety when you don’t have any ‘fun things’ to tell everyone. When your home life is a drudge morning till night caring for a profoundly disabled person you don’t have time for fun stuff you’re happy to have time to sleep. I don’t want to make up shit to say something ‘fun’ and I don’t want to be giving out personal details, Give people a badge or sticker to write their name on if you want people to know who everyone is.

What is it with Mumsnet and never wanting to share any information about themselves ? As a trainer I would never ask anyone to get up and do a song and dance routine but asking the group to write their 1st job on a post it and asking to guess who's is what isn't too intrusive surely ?

I agree. However, this is MN, where people can't cope with the things most of us take in our stride.

It's tedious, I remember having to pick an item of my clothing and relate a funny story to it. This was in social services when I had enough to do without attending stupid team days.

We had one the other week "what keeps you awake at night", so I said my cats 😂. I wasn't going to get all deep at work to someone I don't know.

I’m with you, OP. I’ve got a team building day coming up, and I think I can feel a sickie coming on (and I’ve never pulled a sickie in my life)

ew no I hate them as well! I’m not that interesting a person

Ye they can be very cringe and formulaic

I had to introduce my t-shirt to the group once. About 37 years ago and it still makes me cringe.

I hate them too. Proper cringe. Who came up/invented this rubbish in the first place anyway? Is it American?
I hate management speak too…’blue sky thinking’ that sort of thing. Just reminds me of David Brent to be honest.

I used to make them up too.

I am world champion at speed crochet.

My hobbies include foot massage.

I am the UK's leading expert on the Slovenian renaissance composer Jacobus Gallus.

I once appeared in Australian Vogue as a hand model!

I work in software dev and a lot of my colleagues are very private, introverted people. They are not prepared to play along with exercises. What they excel at is doing their core job in a methodical and creative manner.

For many people on the autistic spectrum, these exercises would be excruciating and would totally put them off attending.

I don’t feel your view is accurate for all jobs or industries.

I don’t think these exercises are inclusive; they seem quite ableist.

@parkrun500club I'm guessing that was in response to my post? If so, I completely agree with you – as I thought I made clear in the other 80% of the post you're quoting, and my previous one on this thread 😉

TLDR is: I'm totally with you – an icebreaker does have a clear and important psychological role to play in working with groups – and many trainers and facilitators are lazy in the way they design them.

Ice doesn’t need to be broken, just teaching the effing course!

But surely avoiding the TV thing just means having exercises that are related to the topic of the session in hand? You don't need to ask people irrelevant question or ask them to play with a ball to engage them.

NOTE TO TRAINERS: Everyone hates this so stop doing it!!!!!!!

@Flyingcarpetintraining it depends what the topic of the event is, but I'll usually get people into small groups to start with (so the people who don't like talking to large groups don't panic) and ask them to share something about the subject at hand.

Ideally it'll be something that gets people starting to connect their own experience with the subject, so a super-simple one like why the topic of the workshop matters to them – and/or why it's not that important to them (so the breadth of experience in the room all gets airtime) – is an easy one. Or what part of the subject they find easy, and what part they find hard... I know these aren't exactly the juiciest examples, but it's very topic-dependent.

Then I'll get someone from each group to feed back the most interesting thing that came up in their group to everyone – which often gets them 'bigging up' someone else in their small group (and the 'someone else' is frequently the quietest one who wouldn't dream of speaking out loud to the whole group, but gets to feel proud that their opinion was the most interesting – and it usually is the quiet ones who have the best stuff to say!)

The point of icebreakers (to me at least) is to get everyone using their voices, warming up their brains to engage with the subject, and forming some kind of bond with others, especially if they're people that don't know one another well.

Otherwise you often end up with a room full of people who have forgotten it's meant to be an experience that's both for them and by them, and they're looking at you like you're the TV instead😁

With respect, how is matching photos or telling the team what their favourite food is even remotely part of a job?

Unless you work for eg Associated British Foods and are asked which of their brands you like the best.

So what would be an example of a good icebreaker, rather than a shit question? I’ve definitely seen lots of the latter

I went to a first aid course a couple of years ago where the question was what was your favourite food. That wasn't too terrifying :) and it rather oddly led to a discussion about whether people liked tea or coffee (or neither). Nothing too controversial or likely to create problems for peoples' promotion prospects (hopefully!).

It was also quick - there were about 8 of us in the room so it only took about 10 minutes max. Things like having to match photos etc takes ages!

(just seen that a pp didn't like the favourite food question - well that kind of shows that any icebreaker could be an issue - so don't do them!)