Ice breakers - I hate them with every fibre of my soul but have been asked to organise two for Friday

[catin8oots]

9 colleagues. 4 new, never met before. All women if that's relevant?

Please help me before I quit my job 😀

Play Scribblo

The key (if you have to do one) is to keep it neutral so the ones where you are asked to provide a fact etc. are awful and make introverts feel miserable. A good ice-breaker simply increases the noise level in the room and makes it feel less formal

Having said that these are some ideas I use with students if I have to:
1 - If you have an international group you can ask them to orientate themselves around a central point depending upon their country of birth. So a chair in the room is your current location, and everyone has to stand in the room based on where they were born. And that's it - it just allows a bit of chat to work out where people think different locations would be
2 - You can ask people to form a line based upon birthdays (day and month only) which means people talk to each other to work out where in the line they should be
3 - Bingo cards - with things on it like 'I had a pet as a child'; 'I can speak a second language'; 'I have visited Japan' etc. People have to get a line or a full card depending upon how many boxes there are on the card. There is chat, but it is very informal and neutral, you can have a prize for first card completed.
4 - You can ask people to sit in groups and then each group is given 30 seconds to answer a question e.g. name something blue; or name types of fruit etc. You go round each group in turn and they shout out their answers, you can have a prize for the winner if you like

I think someone mentioned it earlier, if you've got Internet access then do the Chronophoto quiz of the day in small groups. You get shown 5 random photos and you have tk guess what year they were taken in

I loathe them too but I was at one of those team building days recently and thought the ice breaker was quite painless - the facilitator called out a month and if your birthday was that month you stood up. Then you said firstly your role and how long you had been working for the organisation and then a country you’ve always wanted to visit.
They called out the months in random order until everyone got a chance to stand up.
I thought it worked because it wasn’t terribly personal, you didn’t have to try to be funny and it generated conversation about people realising they had same birthdays and also about holidays. One of the easiest icebreakers I’ve experienced

I don't know if I am unlucky or just because I have done millions of icebreakers but I seem to work with tons of people who have been national level champions in a sport. More niche sports so taekwondo, ice skating, climbing, hockey etc. but always makes me feel shit when there are tell me an interesting fact type ice breakers.

after 20 years in corporate life I can tell you that the least horrifying one is:
pair up (or have one group with 3 if the group is an odd number)
tell each other your name, your job title and where you will be working (eg hybrid, in office, full time at home)
after 5 mins each pair presents back, ie I would tell the group about you and you about me

The second ice breaker could be to get into different pairs and see what you can remember about the person you’re newly paired with.

I like these and am going to steal them.

I like arrange yourself in a line ice breakers, low stakes and fun. Birthdays - alphabetical first name, house number, no of pets, favourite colour etc

The icebreaker things are awful, but it mostly depends of the group you have.

did a quick google and saw this which I’ve not heard of before

Find your pair
Prepare word pairs, like salt and pepper, milk and honey, sail and wind, etc on separate pieces of paper. Tape one to each person’s back. People then have to walk around and ask closed questions (with a yes or no answer) to find out what their phrase is. Once they find out, they have to find their pair & by continuing to ask questions (these can be open or closed) they have to learn 3 new things about the other.

Ask the whole group to put their hand up if they quite like ice-breakers at the beginning of sessions. Whoever puts their hand up gets to do the ice-breaker, the remainder get to go and sit at a table with coffee and biscuits.😂

I used to be a trainer in the NHS and there are pros and cons. It is true that everybody hates them but we used them with every new cohort of students where nobody knew each other. We did it because they get people interacting. We would do straightforward ones such as "introduce yourself to the person next to you and describe your journey here" . I always prefaced it by saying "And now here is the bit that everyone hates, the dreaded ice breaker" . Our training course was long, with a lot of group and one to one exercises, reflective study and a work placement and we wanted to ease people in.

It would be interesting if the person who picked up the shoe had to try to guess who it belonged to.

Best so far

The best one I ever did was 'show everyone something you carry about in your bag and explain why' so it's easy to pull out something work-related and impersonal.

I'm an introvert but I love things like this because I love games, especially games where you actually don't have to say too much about yourself. I find games so much easier than actually having to socialise with people in a more formal way.

@HeronWing
What seems to unite people who self-identify as introverts on Mn is a complete misunderstanding of introversion, and a rooted conviction that those ‘bubbly’, loud-mouthed over-sharing extroverts are out to get them doing karaoke.

I absolutely agree with your post. The vast majority of people are ambiverts. Even Jung said there are no pure introverts or extroverts.

You won't find me named on a list for a karaoke night.

Probably the uncomfortable-looking person standing with one sock and one identical shoe to the one the 'guesser' was holding?😂

There's a great thread on the world's most miserable biscuit somewhere! An impassioned defence of the universally-hated Malted Milk would get your day off to a flying start, I suspect ..... 😴

But I agree with practically everyone else: they're tortuous, so it's simply a case of 'best of a bad job'. I've had to do this at welcome events with students on a fairly regular basis and this presents no real problem: the student body can always be placated with pizza. My own colleagues and peers are another matter entirely. Some departments love their soul-sucking all-day events, one recent one having involved the icebreaker of research 'speed-dating' where unintereseted colleagues give other uninterested colleagues a stilted elevator pitch of their individual research interests. I left! (No doubt there'll have been mutterings of the dreaded word 'uncollegial' before everyone rapidly forgot) ...

No one does this in our own research fields ranging beyond our home institutions: our employers by and large don't have a clue what we do and wouldn't care if they did, as long as we tick the REF metrics. Academic conferences don't need 'ice breakers' so why do we? Employers/departments are wedded to this tedious farce for reasons which entirely ecape me.

That was cathartic ....

I decided last year that I am never going to take part in an ice breaker again.

Sadly, no one has asked me to since.

What a waste of time they are plus unnecessary stress.

Anything that puts people in the spot or forces them to think on their feet will be unpopular. Also anything too intrusive, some people don’t want to share how they spend their weekends or their favourite tooth.

We did a fun one in a new business group. Not so much an icebreaker, but some interesting chatter. Most people knew each other for quite some time.

We had to talk to each other and arrange ourselves in a line for length of service. As the organisation only existed since 2000 and most had come in after (not inherited) it made for interesting chat and an interesting line. Me having started in October 2003 was near the front but not at the front.

On my first day of a postgrad course the tutor announced we all have to do a rap about why we chose the course. I was dying at the thought of it, but one of the oldest there and thought I'd be the only one. I was frantically trying to come up with rhyming stuff and we were told someone had to start. One girl put her hand up (compared to me was very much a girl!) said that a rap was way out of her comfort zone and very unapologetically said she wasn't going to rap, but just speak like an adult, and hopefully we'd understand. I could have kissed her there and then, and everyone else just read out their reasons.

The absolute worst one I had to do was a training course regarding young children with severe speech/language impairments. We were paired up man/woman and were given toys to 'play' with on a mat, without speaking to each other. Most people were dying with embarrassment, with the exception of 2 people who were absolutely loving to show off their non verbal communication skills.

I'd honestly go back and suggest a simple introduction (name and which department you work in) would be the most inclusive approach. If they force you to suggest a ridiculous ice breaker, please don't suggest people bring in personal items/photos or give personal details. The least painful suggestion I've got is to give people a packet of marshmallows and straws and tell them to build the tallest freestanding tower they can in 3min.

Interesting. Do ice-breaker events sort out the sheep from the goats in relation to that apparently straightforward divide?

I've no idea whether I'm an introvert or an extrovert - it's not a matter that preoccupies me but I suppose as the situation requires it I'm sure I can be both. It's like that silly, discredited Hawaaii questionaire meant to determine if you're a visual, reflective, theoretical learner or whatever the categories were. Ofc it was instantly discredited, as most people combine a bit of everything and different circumstances call for different measures. I don't want either to look at pretty coloured charts or listen to someone droning on for hours. It isn't how learning works.

We humans really do like to 'categorise' ourselves and each other!

That's just ... cruel. And some lecturers wonder why they can't get their students to speak or contribute to sessions? If this is an example of their preferred approaches there's no bloody wonder!