Ice breaker - personal object - what sort of thing to take

[DayIntarnishedarmour]

I’ve never been to a formal meeting with this activity. The item is supposed to say something about you. I don’t want to take anything too personal or shows my softer side , as I’m not wanting to reveal that in this setting as I don’t know anyone and all who are attending are senior posts to me. I literally have no clue what to do take. All ideas welcome

Remote control as you love Netflix

Whisk as you love baking

Passport cover as you love holidays

Pasta as you have Italian grandmother

Tennis ball as you like playing tennis

Gym locker padlock as you love gym

One of my hobbies is bonsai, and I'd be strongly tempted to take in one of my bonsai pruning tools to show them all.

The knob cutters.

I used to take something that represented my work life last course and took a paper cup with a hole in the bottom.

I used to take the piss at this sort of unnecessary stuff. Last one I had to do, I took a white stone (from the garden outside the hotel, luckily nobody recognised it) and said it was a stone off my great grandma's grave that I'd taken aged 5 and kept ever since, and made up some nonsense about her being governess to a branch of the deposed Russia royal family that were exiled to England after the Russian Revolution, and I had been taught a few Russian words eg 'kniga' which means book (my best friend did Russian at school so I knew a couple of words).
*I never met my great grandmother, she was dead before 1917. She wasn't a governess and I'm sure she'd never have had a need to speak Russian.

My go to for this is to make shit up.
"I've brought a banana because it organically curves away from the sun, which is exactly like me".
Expect someone to bring their bronze medal from the Commonwealth Games.

if only I had some knob cutters Yamadori Would be excellent in this situation

😂

< adds to Christmas wishlist >

@ApathyMartha, thanks for this excellence!

Loving the replies to this. As a facilitator it is really hard to choose an opening discussion which isn't cringe but I am also like you @DayIntarnishedarmour I hate revealing too much of myself to a crowd I don't know. I should also say this is an exercise that I hate too and will totally be taking some of these ideas when I next forced to do this.

The "best" ones in my experience are the funny ones. Even where the person brings in something completely random and says they forgot until they were about to leave the house.

In other words, don't worry about it. The idea is just to give someone a chance to introduce themselves. No one remembers the item after 5.mins anyway.

Your first born's umbilical stump. With clamp attached. If you didn't keep it (what on earth were you thinking?) then improvise with a bit of dried out chicken gristle and a clothes peg.

Don't worry, nobody is going to look too closely.

Daffsarealwaysyellow. I’ve got some chicken legs that need cooking so I’m sure I can rig something up 👍🏻

@TeaandScandal in my case it was a small creative writing group, not a work thing & it was interesting.

My work would never do anything so cringe, but if they do lose their minds I'll take along my volcanic rock.

I once had to do a 5 minute talk on something important to me and bring something that represented this passion. Did I talk about my political beliefs? No. Did I talk about my love of music, art, photography? No. Did I talk about my family? No. None of this is any of their business.
Crisps. I talked for 5 minutes about my love of crisps. Flavours, brands, ordinary ones v handcrafted fuckers that slice the inside of your cheek. As a final flourish I produced several packets of crisps to pass round. Apparently it was the best talk of the day 😁

Most definitely, whatever happened to the day's of going to work,do a good job,get paid.

😂😂😂

OK, I realise, I am likely to get flamed here judging by the way the thread seems to be going, but, why do people hate these things so viscerally?

I totally get not wanting to make stuff up on the spot but if you know you're going on a training event, you know that there will be likely be an ice breaker, that might involve suggesting a fact about yourself, so think about it before hand. It doesn't even have to be true. An ice breaker is there to get people more comfortable with discussion in the particular group. It's not supposed to be a hideous exercise in making you uncomfortable.

If anyone has ever delivered a training course, you will know how difficult it is to engage miserable people who think they don't need to be there. It makes a session flow so much more if people actually engage and it's nicer for everyone.

Otherwise you're just left with pages of powerpoint and the trainer talking on which is very draining and for the majority people (who don't learn that way), a bit pointless.

IF the person delivering the training course is not an evil control freak who gets a kick out of putting a bunch of strangers into an inappropriate position of vulnerability then they should bring something to the meeting that people can discuss and critique - or even, as I suggested earlier, pick something already in the meeting room and make that the subject of ice-breaking discussion in that group.

Not , please, something personal to the training deliverer, none of your victims are interested in you, either.

People hate it viscerally because it is a hateful situation to be put it.

How does hearing about Doris from accounts bangle that she got on a trip to Outer Mongolia bring anything to any training day? 9/10 people in that room probably couldn't give a fat rat's crack about it. Plus it just prolongs the agony of such events. Get in, do what needs to be done then go would be the best way for anyone to endure such things.

😂😂

Definitely make it up in an area you'd be comfortable with and depersonalise it so it doesn't affect you but gives you something to say.
Or go wild with something weird !
Biscuits is a great shout as is jewellery - maybe a cheap necklace the like of which you get from a museum shop and say a child or relative bought it for you. Bingo.
No emotional connection that'll stress you

Many thanks to all of you. Yes, it's a book. To be really honest, I've never been asked to do anything like this.

It doesn't make anyone more comfortable talking. It puts people under pressure to think of something interesting to say, potentially to share more than they're comfortable sharing or to have to think up a lie and then deliver it to a crowd. Introverts in particular can find this excruciatingly hard. Everyone would prefer to skip the 15 minute cringefest and get to leave 15 minutes earlier.

I don't mind if it's a session where you learn a tangible skill (random example: how to create Powerpoint presentations), going round the room, saying your name and whether you have any previous experience in doing the thing you're learning. At least that helps the trainer know how to pace the class. But arbitrary "talk about an object that has special meaning to you" or "two truths and a lie" - no thanks.

Even as someone who isn't an introvert and doesn't mind public speaking, I still find it all a total waste of time.

In a similar situation I took my old magnetic name badge from when I first joined the business 20 years ago, before everything went digital and we had to swipe in and out of everywhere. It was to indicate that I've been here a very long time and I've seen it all before.

It is really a great insight into the matter

Is this a work-related task assigned by your office? I'm having trouble understanding the context.