Good, non-cringey icebreaker type games?

[Catnary]

I’m involved in a work team “Away Day” soon. I’m not the organiser, but I was asked today for suggestions as to how we can get people into the right frame of mind to feel relaxed about contributing ideas to the various discussions.

The group is about 20 people, all levels from very junior to the Big Boss. Roughly even split male/female. Ages from mid twenties to mid fifties. Everyone does more or less the same job, just at different levels of experience/seniority.

It’s all in-person, no remote participants. A few people speak English as a second language but we all work in English.

The criteria are as follows:

Nothing that requires sharing of personal information or feelings.
No popular culture references (so no trivia based on TV, or things like making people guess the celebrity name on a post it on their head).
Possibly with scope to poke mild fun at our work (eg jokes about the bad canteen food or the IT system) but nothing that singles out individuals.
No singing or dancing.
No putting people on the spot (eg “do the next line of this funny story”).
Competition between teams is fine, but more in terms of pooling points than making people work together to do things like build structures or make up a story.

Does anyone have any bright ideas?

My only thoughts (partly after Googling) were:
Pictionary on a big white board, with clues being “things”, actions etc rather than films, songs etc
Everyone writes their name backwards and someone reads them out, team that correctly guesses the most wins.

Does anyone have any suggestions of things you have enjoyed? We really really don’t want to end up with a backlash against “enforced fun” but there needs to be something to make it more dynamic.

PS this is not “AIBU to want to do icebreaker games” inviting a hundred comments about how the whole idea of away days and team building is bollocks. It’s just a plea for ideas!

That’s a good idea @steppemum

We last did an “Away Day” about 6 years ago. At the very start, our head of dept stood up and told everyone that the wife of one of our senior colleagues in another office had just been killed in an accident.

There were legitimate reasons why the team had to know but it was a really really bad moment/way to do it. Unsurprisingly, that Away Day did not go down in history as a success. So, frankly, we’re starting from quite a low bar….

I've had a flashback to a time it did really matter and we all stopped chatting at the socialising part and shuffled awkwardly.

Among our many icebreaking tasks we'd all had to write down an anonymous interesting fact about ourselves. I can't remember what mine what except that I'd made something up to sound more interesting.

Someone put "I enjoy white water rafting". Everyone guessed Ian who liked extreme sports. One of the things he liked was climbing. Proper climbing like up the north face of the Eiger not at a wall at your gym with bouncy crash mats if you fell off.

It wasn't Ian. I can't remember what made Ian interesting. It was our boss who loved this kind of event and things like making the office party fancy dress. No one had guessed her because she was the sort of person you couldn't imagine walking to the bus stop in the rain. But it turned out she'd gone white water rafting one afternoon on a very expensive holiday to Colorado and never done it again.

As I said, we were enduring drinks at the end of the day all hoping someone else would leave so we wouldn't be the first. Laura (not her real name) said to our boss: "I'd never have guessed you liked white water rafting." Laura was a nice person who meant no harm but new to the office so didn't realise our boss was what you'd politely describe as mercurial.

I always thought people were exaggerating when they said: "You could have heard a pin drop." It did not go well for Laura. Our boss was quite offended. Enraged, in fact that Laura had not noticed that she was a sporty and adventurous person and demanded to know why. The one good thing was that the tedious evening broke up fairly soon after that. Laura's career at the company continued to follow a downward trajectory until she left.

@Catnary you might get to tell people at work what to do but Mumsnet, like real life, is different

Aren’t you a peach?

It’s interesting how the concept of AIBU turned Mumsnet into a forum that encourages arguments, when the site actually began as a place for parents to share advice about prams and the like.

The idea of having separate topics was to confine the AIBU tone to AIBU (rather than “why the fuck would you want to buy a pram? Everyone knows that all babies not carried exclusively in slings will be psychologically damaged for life!”)

Call me weird, but my idea of “chat” generally doesn’t involve people forcing their irrelevant opinions on me.

Anyway I have got some great ideas here so cheers to those who offered them. And to all the icebreaker-haters, your concerns are duly noted.

I don't know about being a peach @Catnary. IME people call you that when you say things they don't like.

Anyway, have you ever read Christopher Brookmyre's comic thriller A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away? Normally I'd recommend it but you might not like it so if you see it, choose something else. There is a team-building exercise that doesn't end in the way the person who planned it expects.

@steppemum The problem I have with just having coffee and talking is that some people are equally quiet and uncomfortable in that context, and don't go up to people they don't know well.

Well I'd think it's unlikely that those people are going to enjoy any group activities then, so making them do pointless "icebreaker" exercises isn't going to help them much.

In fact, the more I think about it, all that these types of games and activities is going to do is show you who the extroverts and competitive joiners-in are. It's not going to help you actually get to know anyone at all.

well that really depends on the structure of the exercise.

I share people's cringe with inappropriate games, and some of the ones mentioned I would hate. But there are many gentle ways of getting people talking which are fine, and include those who might otherwise not contribute without putting them on the spot or making them feel uncomfortable.

The exercise I outlined above with the 'one thing that would imporve communication is such an exercise. I have seen that done with a more 'ice breakery' type question very well, or done as part of the process of bringing ideas to the table for the meeting to follow. It allows everyone to contribute but maintains some level of anonymity. It can also generate discussion as people go round to tick or cross the ones they want to talk about.

I often lead training and groups. the danger is that at the end you get the opinions of the competitive/loud few coming over as the consensus. It is a skill to draw everyone's opinions in.

Dingbats. Get into teams of 4 and solve the puzzles. Prizes for the winning team.

You can download them from the internet.

It's a safe non threatening fun way

Perhaps this discussion has gone beyond my particular scenario but for us, nobody needs to get to know anyone else. It’s about getting people in the right mood. Perhaps I should have called it “Foreplay” instead of “icebreakers”.

Eww. Do not call it Foreplay. That’s enjoyable-icebreakers are not.

Then I stand by my previous suggestion of putting out some coffee and biscuits and just letting people chat. If everyone works together and knows each other anyway, why make them play ridiculous games or quizzes or whatever?

The problem I have with just having coffee and talking is that some people are equally quiet and uncomfortable in that context, and don't go up to people they don't know well.

I have memories of usually being the one on the periphery with no one to talk to. Horrible.

What did you decide on?

Sorry you have this experience. I spend half my time at events trying to gently include people who find it hard to march up to people and start talking.

Thanks for asking. No decision made as yet but I have put forward a few ideas based on things people said here. I like passing treats round the circle in response to the story, putting events in chronological order (industry themed) and a version of two truths and a lie that is confined only to professional facts.