Icebreakers: When, Why and How to Use Them.

Michael Goldman
Saturday, 9th June 2007

Icebreakers are a great way to start a meeting or a training session; it get the teams together and "breaks the ice", however when should you be using icebreakers? Will it take up too much time?

One of my client was particularly concerned about an upcoming facilitation with a new group.

She wanted to open with an engaging activity that would get attendees talking, but worried how they would feel about a ‘game’ using up their limited meeting time.

Below is my response, and I look forward to reading additional thoughts that any of you have, so drop us a line with your comments.

When to use icebreakers

As a Pattern Interrupt - helps people to stop and focus on the here and now. Ensures people are present and focused before entering in to the substantive part of the dialogue.

As a Metaphor or Lesson - by choosing the right icebreaker you can create an experience that speaks to the meeting purpose or the core of the problem or opportunity to be discussed. How people behave during the icebreaker and lessons learned can be reincorporated in the facilitated session to further accentuate a point or intended outcome.

To Build Familiarity - especially with people who don’t know one another, icebreakers get people talking to those who they may feel apprehensive to disclose personal or emotional information.

To Alleviate Status Concerns - icebreakers help people to experience working together on ‘common ground’ where status or expertise can’t take the upper hand.
To Set the Tone - a fun icebreaker helps set a lighter tone which may be necessary before entering into a difficult conversation.

When to NOT use icebreakers

As Dorothy Strachan states in her book Questions that Work, “you don’t need icebreakers when there’s no ice.” Essentially if people know one another and feel comfortable with their peers icebreakers will be perceived as meaningless or a method for filling time. In these cases it’s best to do a starting exercise for the purposes of helping to:


Reveal meaningful information that can assist in helping to identify expectations
Uncover potential resistance upfront by identifying concerns and solutions to those concerns for the event

Debriefing an Icebreaker

In order to transition an icebreaker from being just a ‘warm up’ to something that provides insight or learning (i.e. about how the group works together to deal with issues or make decisions), a purposeful debrief is required. Questions to use during the debrief could include:


What learning did you get from the icebreaker?
How is the learning from the icebreaker tied to our upcoming discussion?
What lessons did we learn from our icebreaker that we can apply to our upcoming discussion?
What did we learn from the icebreaker that we need to keep in mind for helping engage in successful dialogue?

A Generic Icebreaker

A simple roundrobin icebreaker that I use frequently:


State your name
Tell us what you do (in the organization, as a consultant, back at work, etc.)
What’s your #1 expectation for this event (flipchart their responses. Use their expectations as a final technique for determining at the end of the session what expectations were in fact achieved during the session)
What is it about you that makes you (this is the fun one! Choose 1 or 2 to focus on)…

A great team member (or consultant, project lead, manager, etc.)?
A pain as a team member!?
Passionate about something?
An innovator?
A strategic thinker?
Fun to be with?
A collaborative team player?
Etc.

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