The phrase “Let’s get started with an icebreaker” will inevitably be followed by groans and mumbles or shouts of “I hate icebreakers!” from your participants. Yet, breaking the ice at the beginning of a workshop or presentation is an essential ingredient to building rapport between audience members and establishing a relationship between the audience and you.
Choose an Icebreaker Related to Your Content
The first step is choosing an activity that is related somehow to your content and sets an appropriate tone for the remainder of your time with your audience. Here is a list of sixteen icebreaking activities that you may keep you from screaming ‘I hate icebreakers!‘
Five Questions About Your Icebreaker
Once you think you have an icebreaker that’s going to work for you, here is a list of five questions you’ll want to ask before you finalize your choice of an icebreaker.
I Hate Icebreakers Bracket Challenge
In the spirit of the Sweet 16 stage of the NCAA basketball tournament, I’ve concocted a little game – a bracket challenge – if you’d like some help narrowing your selection of icebreaking activity.You can fill out the I Hate Icebreakers Bracket here. If you do decide to take me up on this bracket challenge, I’d love to hear which ice-breaking activity would be your champion. Drop a line in the comment section.
Do you hate icebreakers? Do you have a preferred ice-breaking activity that didn’t make it to my Sweet Sixteen list? Let’s hear about it in the comment section below.
Lots of great ideas! The issue was once I saw M&Ms, I knew I would somehow find a way to ensure they would be “required.” Thanks for sharing this!
Laura – that’s pretty sweet (literally!).
Just be careful how many you take… if you take a handful you may be talking in front of the large group for a while! Though I suppose if they’re peanut butter M&Ms, it might be worth it…
Dude. This was awesome! So much fun!! “I Got Your Back” was my winner – I haven’t used it as an icebreaker before, but use it as an illustration during a customer service training class that I do. May have to try it as an icebreaker sometime!
Thanks Michelle. It’s actually an activity that a friend of ours uses as an “icebreaker” for his annual Christmas Party & Game Night (so if you want to get REALLY geeky, you can use this stuff outside of work, too!).
LOVED THIS! Thanks for posting. (links worked for me, btw)
Thanks Tania! And thanks for checking the links. Did you come up with a champion ice breaker??
The Beach Ball activity was new and put up a good fight, but BINGO took home the Championship! p.s. The interactive Bracket via Google Drive is also really great 🙂 Do you have a how-to post on that somewhere?
Thanks Tania. Yeah, the Beach Ball activity is definitely a fun one! (And BINGO is definitely a way to get everyone involved at once!).
The interactive bracket was built out in Articulate Storyline, and then I used this in order to post it via Google Drive (shout out to Mike Taylor for this post): https://community.articulate.com/articles/how-to-share-your-e-learning-course-for-free-with-google-drive
Brian, I am unable to open the List of 16 Ice Breakers. Is anyone else having the same difficulty? Can you check the link? The other links seem to work well for me. Great topic, thank you.
Oh no! Sorry Amanda. If it helps, here is the link to the 16 ice breakers: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By6nhY12Tfy_X2I4RDVfWEZLOE0/view
You can also download them from inside the Bracket Challenge – there’s a little link in the upper right corner titled “Resources”: https://8cf27b6d666a410b4868fa9ac53888f0d80fbee7.googledrive.com/host/0By6nhY12Tfy_fl9Ubmc3UDE3VTZBNUJHT2ZYR2RwSHB4SkNBc2czVFRXSDlMdEhncHJQR1E/.