The One Word Icebreaker

Need a quick, no preparation ice breaker that works like a charm to break the ice in a meeting or training session? Highly adaptable, this ice breaker leads the participants right into the content of your meeting or training class. Here is my one word ice breaker and my suggestions about how to endlessly adapt this ice breaker to your participants' needs.

One Word Ice Breaker Steps

1. Divide the meeting participants into groups of four or five people by having them number off. (You do this so that your participants get to know fellow attendees. People generally begin a meeting by sitting with the people they already know best, when your goal is normally team building across a group.

2. Tell the newly formed groups that their assignment is to think for a minute and then to share with their group the one word that describes X. In my first venture with this ice breaker, I was leading a session about organizational culture. So, my request of the group was that they think about their current culture and come up with one word to describe it.

This ice breaker helps the group explore their thoughts on a common issue. This ice breaker is a perfect segue into the topic of the meeting or training class. The group was fascinated with the variety of the words chosen. Consequently, the ice breaker did provide a snapshot into the current thinking of the group about their culture. (The group's one-word culture descriptions ranged broadly: funky, family, fun, bipolar, fractured, cohesive, inspiring, and motivational are samples of their chosen words.

3. This ice breaker sparked spontaneous conversation in every group as the participants questioned each other about the meaning of their one word. They asked for examples and found that the combination of the participants' chosen words did describe their current organizational culture.

4. Upon completion of the initial spontaneous discussion, ask the participants to share their one word with the larger group. Ask for a volunteer to start and then, ask each participant to share their one word that described their culture. (Even your most quiet participants were comfortable sharing their word.)

5. Next, after the participants have listened to the variety of words from the larger group, ask them to explore several questions in their small group. In this instance, asking each participant to select one word to describe their organizational culture, I then asked these follow-up questions.

--Is this culture consistent across buildings and departments?

--Is this the culture that you want to have in your organization? Does this culture support the accomplishment of the environment you desire for employees and the accomplishment of your company goals?

Your opportunity for follow-up questions is endless. These debriefing questions can support the content of your training class or meeting.

6. Debrief the ice breaker by asking for a volunteer from each group to share a point or two that highlighted their discussion. (I noticed that many session attendees took notes.

7. Because participants are almost always your best source for laughter and fun, each of these steps generated remarks, insights, ah-has, and examples.

8. Upon completion, move into the rest of the material you have prepared for the session.

This one word icebreaker takes 10 – 15 minutes with the initial enthusiastic, unstructured discussion that the ice breaker generates. Total time will depend on the number of additional questions that you ask the group to discuss as part of the debrief of the one word ice breaker.

Thanks to Susan M Heathfield for sharing this on "Your Guide to Human Resources"