Interesting 5 min max ice breaker for a meeting of 8 CEOs -women/men

[KingfordRun]

Any interesting ice breaker recommendations for a meeting? Delegates don’t know each other well and this will serve as an opener on a workshop re: personal growth/development. Many thanks

Ask them what is the worst ice breaker/training day activity they have had to do is.

Nice idea but that won’t work in this context - any other ideas?

Would you rather game.
Eg would you rather eat fruit or cake, and then they go to one side of the room for each.
Can make the questions as simple or as funny as you wish.

Desert Island game? Ask each delegate in advance for the one record, luxury and book they would take to a desert island. Then the group guesses which collection belongs to which person.

Alternatively show them this cartoon and just ask them to introduce themselves. If they’re CEOs they’ve probably had their fill of ice breakers!

dilbert.com/strip/2011-10-03

@ ‘isthisaproblem’ exactly re: ice breakers - looking for something snappy yet not patronising/genuinely interesting that chimes with a personal development theme. Thank you.

Marshmallow and spaghetti towers- winner is the tallest structure at the end of 5 mins. Could do two groups of four or four pairs. Or maybe indivualy to resonate with personal growth?

God, I hated ice-breakers. You'd win me over if you said there wasn't going to be one.

Take chocolate. Do a quiz. Every time someone gets a right answer throw them a chocolate.

This turned a room of 20+ silent women into a more relaxed group who were actually willing to chat.

Ask them all to go in their purse pocket and pull out a coin. (Have some spares with a mix of years on them)

Ask them to share a significant or positive event that happened in that year family / career / holidays. Some will go really personal, some play safe. Usually all very nice.

what about a piece of advice you’ve given someone to help the person development.

Eg im icjump I told someone that even the project felt ill timed if they delivered it well it would be worthwhile.

Give them a cup of coffee and tell them to chat. Far better than any enforced fun!

What about ebay your partner; each person gets 3 minutes to tell their partner their qualities, any ‘minor faults’ the buyer should be aware of etc. Because the time’s short they do usually get straight to the point and makes them think positively about themselves as well as identifying weaknesses you might later be looking at. Used it before and it works well as there’s always someone who makes it funny with jokes about bidding wars, delivery costs etc.

The partner then presents it, forgot to say that bit, good luck OP!

Three statements about themselves. Two are true, one is false. The others have to guess which is the false one.

•Have a bowl of smarties or M&Ms on the table
•tell them to choose one
•flip over your flip chart to reveal colour= questions

For eg.
Blue= favourite season
Orange= best meal
Green= favourite film
Red= favourite film etc.

For different groups you can do different colour matches- red
imitate an animal, blue sing a song etc.

Bingo with find someone else who:
Likes cats, was born in January, is vegetarian, is left handed etc.

For big groups the best one is to get them to line up in birthday order, day and month not year, it gets everyone moving and talking.

Just give them coffee and let them chat for 15 mins, ice-breakers are toe-curlingly awful.

All of these (bar the spaghetti tower weird thing) are 100x better than any ice breaker I have ever had to do.

the worst being when a manager pulled a guitar he just happened to have with him and sang an acoustic version of Daydream believer

I still have flashbacks to events of this kind in the 90s. The least cringy is the 2 true 1 false statement as mentioned above. Good luck!

The coin one was used at an away day I went to and I thought it was the least traumatic, apart from one coin being 15 years older than our apprentice so she couldn't participate. The organiser had our a bowl of 1ps on the table and we all had to pick one.

Since 'the power of stories' is in at the moment, how about 'tell us a 2 min story about something or someone who has inspired you'. Trainer goes first to give them time to think.

But I hate ice breakers and they make me cringe as a trainer and participant

Also hate them as a trainer and a participant. 'Speed dating' type time on their feet in an open area to meet and chat in pairs for 2 mins exchanging key info on who you are, what you do, what you intend to get out of this training, please now find and introduce yourself to someone you haven't met with yet has worked as a more adult and reserved way to get started without having to 'play' or share personal info.

Two truths and a lie is generally good and I hate ice breakers.

What has been your most challenging role in your career and tell us why in 3 words

All ice breakers are terrible. Time for coffee and an introduction is so much more professional.

I usually just ask people to introduce themselves, and I am a little specific, eg if it was a conference about education, I would ask them to tell us their link to education.
And I ask them to tell us one thing about themselves to help us to get to know them better. could be - I bake brownies to relax, or, I I drive a yellow car so I can always find it in the car park (two from a recent event)

That way it is pretty none threatening, and it does start a conversation.