[Closed] Team Meeting - Simple Ice Breaker?

Favourite position?

I learnt my management style from that edumentary 'The Office'

A radiator

I really hate all this BS stuff they make you do at team meetings. It serves no purpose whatsoever.

We had to tell everyone about an embarrassing moment at a recent one. Most people told boring stories to which people did an fake laugh, and a couple of people who think they're Bob Hope or someone just created themselves another embarrassing moment to talk about at the next team meeting.

How about a game of MTFU.

A game of "who would you sack?"

How about a game of MTFU.

Cage fighting. Last man standing gets a pay rise.

One I use is to get everyone to pair up with someone they don't know/don't know very well and give them 2 minutes to find out as many things as possible that they have in common with each other. The pair with the most "wins", and it's a good way to wake people up and get their brains working!

name game
If enough people...
Get everyone in a circle, first person says their name, but preceeds it with and adjective which begins with the same phoneme (sound) as their name. e.g Cheerful Charlie, the next person has to remember all that have gone so far and then say their own. All in a socially supportive way, don't leave anyone hanging for too long.

all have to attend in only their underwear?

I'm with jon1973 I hate this sort of bullshit.

Speaking corporate bobbins. Everyone adopts a holistic synergistic approach to vocalise the remit of their diurnal task portfolio, and everyone else has to guess what they actually do at work during the day.

But really I'm with jon1973.

Be different and refreshing - dont do one!!!
Everyone hates it and as said, serves no purpose.
Anyway - if its a team meeting everyone will know each other anyway.
More useful to have a coffee break and let folks network on their own.

i once got asked if I was a fruit what fruit would I be and why
i said lemon because I could not grow in this environment and i was bitter on the inside it was not well recieved.

Seriously? New team and team meeting? Unles people are worried that you are an employee-sacking angel of death, probably best just let them get on with things.

Or do greco-roman wrestling.

Righty,

I intend taking some comments from here and some true ones (about initial response from folks when I said 'Icebreaker' and putting up a matrix.

All attendees will be asked to guess who the response was from.

Intent - bit of humour, bit of honesty and also to reinforce that everyone has different interpretations of a single word let alone complex issues.

Me? I hate to have to be the meeting organiser and facilitator

Game of hide and seek and hide extremely well back at home.

They are complete and utter bs, they keep organisers of such get-togethers in a job, nothing else

Wot they said ^^^^ just leave it alone and get on with whatever it was you were meant to be meeting about. Thank the lord I don't have that mind numbing crap anymore 🙄 and at least if you are organising/ facilitating you've got something to do ... 😉

I quit my job following one of these ridiculous patronising meetings.

The managers were in fancy dress doing all sorts of embarassing stuff in front of everyone. At one point we were required to get in a group, make up a song about the company and sing it in front of everyone. At the time the company had a brand change and lots of people were worried about getting made redundant.

I never went back in after one of the coffee breaks. I dont think i was alone.

Game of hide and seek and hide extremely well back at home.

Ah! a good opportunity to dissapear down the pub for an hour and emerge victorious as the best hide-and-seeker.

Years ago in one of my previous jobs, the chief executive got in one her of her posh friends to (cough) facilitate the organisation away-day. This woman had just returned from an 'inspirational' trip to central Africa. Her ice-breaker was to teach us a couple of verses of an african folk song, some sort of Watusi version of 'Micheal row the boat ashore'. We were then split into four groups, the first group starting the song then the other groups starting staggered one bar apart (disclaimer: i'm musically illiterate, it may have been more than one).
Not content with this we were then asked to release our inhibitions by breaking out of our groups and walking, still singing, around the conference room. 'Smile at your colleagues! Dance if you want to. Express yourselves!' she exhorted us.
Cue some apathetic shuffling (public sector- we're all idle wasters don't you know) and some reluctant jazz hands from the more extrovert amongst us.
I'm guessing that bonding through group embarrassment was a cutting edge management tool back then.

sit in the meeting naked?

just skip this bit and proceed with the meeting

no one wants this bollocks and it's just toe curling

you'd get more team bonding by taking everyone out for a meal.

The team day from The Office wasn't far off the mark
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I naturally hate stuff like this, but it can work - there's a reason why people do them. Doesn't need to last longer than 5 mins or be [i]too[/i] cringey though.

CharlieMungus' one (or a variant thereof) has worked for me in the past. I've only ever done them running workshops though, not just a team meeting - seems a bit OTT possibly.

I had to attend one last week, 2 min stand up stuff and to tell everyone something that they may not know about you...

I told everyone my dads brother was Iggy Pop. they all just looked at me so I sat down.

I told everyone my dads brother was Iggy Pop.

Genius! You should have told them that in tribute you were going to perform "The Passenger" and taken your shirt off in dramatic fashion..

...or attempted to flog them car insurance.

If anyone seriously asked me to take part of in any of this crap, I'd slap them. For their own benefit

I knew there was a damn good reason I've spent the vast majority of my career self-employed

A big fart as everyone is going into the room is a good start.

a bit of something 'liberating' in the table water?

[i]Me? I hate to have to be the meeting organiser and facilitator[/i]

In the good old days, before cellphones, we didn't have facilitators. People who needed to introduce themselves did just that, people who didn't didn't. And then time was spent getting on with solving whatever the problem was, and in the fullness of time you'd find out who was actually capable.

Can you imagine when they were designing the spitfire that this sort of bollocks was entertained? 🙂

I'm guessing that bonding through group embarrassment was a cutting edge management tool back then

It makes everyone look forward to the 'substance' of the meeting a lot more!

give them 2 minutes to find out as many things as possible that they have in common with each other

Easy.

I'm from Earth
I breath oxygen
I'm not immortal
My mother was born a woman

etc etc 🙂

i said lemon because I could not grow in this environment and i was bitter on the inside it was not well recieved

It'd have been well received by me, I'd have PSML! Genius 🙂

At the time the company had a brand change and lots of people were worried about getting made redundant.

Guess what?

Next annual accounts posted a company loss of £1M almost exactly to the penny. Only 2 people were (voluntarily) made redundant. The CEO and the Cheif Finance bloke. Of course being directors, they get "compensation for loss of office", and iirc £20,000 compensation for "loss of company car".

So any of these "bonding" things make me very wary indeed. There were only 3 winners: the CEO, the finance guy, and the external management consultant who must have pocketed between half and 1 million notes.

you'd get more team bonding by taking everyone out for a meal.

one I have been on the receiving end of which I thought worked well, tell me one thing you would like to change about this place and one thing we should never change.

loads of variations on this - i.e. love / hate about job etc.

Take some notes and do your best to follow up on the gripes. My newish boss did this and actually sorted some of our long standing complaints about the business, results most people have given him their support.

the only good one I've ever been in was when the manager distributed a double scotch to everyone which we were all to down in one. Then he said, meeting over, lets go to the pub.

"Gentleman!, you're all [the quote from sexy beast ;-)]"

You see another reason I'm glad I don't work in an office environment. Just get on with the bloody meeting that no one wants to be at so you can all go home.

"BS stuff they make you do at team meetings"

We just do

Name
Affiliation and role
What interesting stuff you've been doing recently
What can you contribute and what you expect to take away

Someone who can't answer the last two is deadwood.

Drinks, coffee and sharing food are the best ice-breakers.

Tables are a nuisance because they prevent people from sitting physically close together.

Have a chairperson [u]in charge[/u], with an agenda with specific topics. If a topic overruns, have an action to follow up and move on. Cut-off time-wasters promptly. Agree and record actions on a computer: what, who, why and when. Print and sign minutes immediately before breaking up.

Meetings can be quick, fun and valuable if well planned, if everyone has aligned objectives and there is good intent. Just watch out for the time-wasters.

Wot they said ^^^^ just leave it alone and get on with whatever it was you were meant to be meeting about.

Just get on with the bloody meeting that no one wants to be at so you can all go home.

+1 to both of these, I fricken hate meetings and extending them with bullshit is not going to make you popular. Tell em just that - that you not going to extend the meeting with bullshit & you get em on side more than doing a corporate song & dance show.

Hi there in 1995 - seriously do people still persist in doing this shit? Just have the meeting already damnit

Used to do all that bollox years ago

I don't turn up now !

But I had............ (used too team up with a mate)

High score on 'bop-it'
= fail at the start - get to watch the competition!!!

If you were trapped in a lift, who you you like to be with
= Latest hot female on Lottery - "she can pull my balls out any Saturday night"
Which animal
= Favourite female's lap dog
= Favourite female's pu$$y

Contents of pockets of person next to you
= beer bottle tops - condoms - lube - anything small and stupid

All very old hat and pointless - or after 23 years at the same place, were we all know each other, I'm just sick of playing games! 🙄

Depends on the situation a bit imho.....

for business meetings just get on with it

for those "training sessions " no one wants to be at

Coffee and biscuits to start the day ...

BUT

you cannot get your own, some one else has to make it for you.

Limit cuppa making to 2 or 3 cups each,

win win situation

You get folks talking without them realising they are doing the breaker most times and they are in a good mood cos they have the biccies

I don't turn up either to these sort of things - total BS from start to finish

I have ****ing zero interest that Mandy [cos it says so on the big badge she is wearing] was once, nearly, almost selected for the England 3rd reserves hockey team

IO refuse to take part if I possibly can - one thing that sabotages it nicely is to work out the cost per minute to the company of the meeting and say that. "My name is Jeremy and I am watching the company waste £150 a minute on this"

I have also done (once I got the agenda) "is there anything useful going to happen?" "If not I have work to do" and left

Had to participate in one that a client organisation was running. The facilitator asked everyone to stand in a circle and pass a cushion to someone who then had to say what positive things had happened to them that day. Excruciating - especially as everyone else, apart from me, worked for the organisation so they all knew each other anyway. I had to make something up as I'd had a really s**t day.

I regularly train people in marketing who are thinking of setting up in business, so my "icebreaker" (stupid term) is just to ask them their business idea and a brand they admire - these brands can then be referred back to during different elements of the course.

You could ask your colleagues to come up with one thing a competitor organisation does better than you, or as suggested above identify an aspect of your business that could be improved.

Dear me, you lot certainly have a lot of disruptive, blocking behaviours to overcome your shyness!

I went to a training course that was pure bs, with all of the associated crap. The group was asked to make up a rule each for the day to make it all go smoothly. Mine was 'no dogs on the tables', cue stony silence and tumbleweed blowing across the room.
I was quietly peeing myself laughing, and none of them knew I was taking the p. Morons the lot of them.

Get everybody to say what sort of tail they would have, if they could have one from any animal - and why.

The slap game. Each person has to close their eyes, someone slaps, punches, kicks or bites them and they have to guess who it was.

Let us know how it goes!