The Truth About Icebreakers 03 – real and effective

The truth about Icebreakers (and energisers) Part 3

In The Golden age of Ice Icebreakers we heard how people feel about the old style of icebreakers. In part two, we identified that, if we think a little about outcomes and designing an emotional connection into the session, we can use Icebreakers as a powerful learning tool for our learners. In this final article, Paul explores how this might look in a real life situation.

Getting real and effective

Here’s how the lessons from parts one and two could translate into an opening session for, lets say, a one day coaching programme.

The outcomes we want from the session are:

• To create some content for later in the day
• To get the learners talking amongst themselves comfortably
• To get learners into a curious frame of mind for what’s to come
• To help them to focus on the topic of the day
• To help the trainer identify some learning preferences early on

So here’s how: This takes 10 minutes tops:

As people enter the room ask them to sit in pairs.

When everyone has arrived welcome them and tell them that you would like each pair to take it in turns to describe a real coaching scenario that they have either experienced recently or are likely to experience soon.

These could be good or bad – it’s up to them.

Invite the other person in the pair to tease out what happened, get the full story and write it up on a flip or a post-it or whatever is available.

After 5 minutes swap roles.

Get all the scenarios posted up and invite everyone else to wander and read each others stories.

They can ask questions if they want to.

And that’s it.

The ice is broken, no-one got stressed by being exposed to creeping death, no-one threw anything at anyone else and we have achieved some positive learning outcomes that will help set the learners up for the rest of their day.

In addition, the trainer has been able to observe the group and get an initial sense of the learners’ preferences.

• Some people will talk more readily than write (audio preferences)
• Some will doodle, draw pictures, write freely (visual preferences)
• You will also notice some kinaesthetic, intra and inta personal preferences if you look for them but that’s all about facilitation skills and that’s a whole different topic!

So lets throw away the old tired icebreakers and lets get serious about thinking more deeply about how we might use them to deliver some real benefits for our learners.

Icebreaker image by Juska Wendland
Conversation image by Paulão Fessel

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