ONE REASON YOU HATE ICE BREAKERS…
Many facilitators separate ice breakers from their content by picking a random activity and spending a short time getting people connected before starting with the content. This means that it often feels like 5 minutes of irrelevant, time wasting at the start of the session. In my experience it is far more engaging to integrate the ice breaker into the theme of the session by crafting an icebreaker that explores an entry level topic on the theme of the workshop. This makes the ice breaker more relevant and engaging and it becomes a crucial step in exploring the content itself while simultaneously building safety for progressively more honest conversations.
For example, if you’re running a session on the theme of ‘self compassion’, as your icebreaker, you could use your favourite game of ‘human bingo’ which involves participants remembering five other participant's names and one ‘curious fact’ about each person. Many facilitators will simply leave the activity at that. But why not adjust it slightly so that instead of just a curious fact, participants are collecting facts from each other that are related to the theme of the workshop. You could ask participants to remember five people's names and the most compassionate person they know. You could then do another round and have participants remember five different people’s names and their personal definition of compassion. After two rounds, you’ll be 10 minutes into the workshop and participants have already had a laugh, remembered some names and chatted with 10 people on the exact topic that they are all there to explore - you’ve begun building connection, trust and safety and provided a gentle entry into the subject matter.
Many facilitators won’t think to debrief an icebreaker. If the activity is relevant to your content, and your debrief questions and mode of communication are low risk, it’s a golden opportunity to begin exploring participants’ experience. If your theme is resilience, how did they respond when they couldn’t remember names during the ice breaker? If your theme is collaboration, what was their experience of someone else winning the ice breaker game? If your theme is empathy, how do they think the icebreaker was for others?
This approach may seem like more work, but a minute or two of pre-delivery thinking on adjusting your ice breaker to fit the purpose can make the rest of the session so much easier to facilitate because participants are far more engaged by the time you get into your main activities.
An ice breaker at the start of a workshop, training or class can really set the tone. If it’s irrelevant and not intentional it can feel like a waste of time and diminish engagement. On the other hand, if your first activity is intentional and relevant, it’s more likely to build connection, trust and safety and you’ll get more engagement in deeper conversations faster.
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