Icebreakers as a source of disdain, annoyance or derision comes up often in my feed and I get it. Folks resent being set up to reveal themselves superficially or to potentially end up as the punchline of a bad joke. This occurs more often than we likely admit.
As a facilitator, my responsibility is to ensure that all participants feel welcomed and respected. Regardless of why we are coming together, my attention must be focused first on participant presence - ensuring that conditions support folks showing up as best possible.
Opening activities designed to get folks interacting with each other are in my toolkit. To be effective I need to know my audience and consider factors underlying the ways folks may or may not want to engage. How do I make interaction low stakes and still meaningful?
Coming back to this in a bit...
I'm back. When we bring folks together we owe it to them to demonstrate how much we value their time, attention and engagement. "Breaking the ice" already indicates a need for a kind of force to get people involved with each other.
The fact that many ice breakers try to use humor as an entry point seems to ignore the fact that humor is neither universal nor necessarily harmless. It's easy to make someone uncomfortable/ feel put off with a poor choice of activity. This is largely avoidable.
If you want to offer folks a way to connect with each other, consider processes that allow individual think/writing time. Ask folks to share with 1-2 people at a time rather than the whole group. Perhaps building on that, ask Qs of large group.
This way all voices enter the room and are heard - in distributed fashion. It's an opening, not the main course. Be clear about your purpose and state it. Tell folks why you've chosen this activity and what it should achieve. This is honoring your participants' energy & time.
Every action counts when you're facilitating but that doesn't mean you stay on your guard. Instead it means preparing carefully for your audience, adjusting pace and tactics to meet them where they are and being genuine in the way you show up. Clarity and authenticity help a lot.
Rather than 'break the ice', can we instead begin in an atmosphere that is not cold and hard? Especially when participants have chosen to attend, we can work from a place of shared purpose & enthusiasm.
In situations that are required/mandated, facilitators need to be particularly thoughtful about how they plan to *not* waste people's time. Even more so if you have role authority. No throw-away activities! People's time is far too precious for that!
I don't think any of this is news. Strong facilitation is invitational, carefully planned and choreographed while still flexible. This is the group facilitation we all deserve. I hope you experience it sooner rather later and/or enact it next time you are tapped. Done.
