Ice Breakers are essentially short activities designed to break down barriers and get everyone working together before an event.
A few of the ice breakers that we use at our team building activities are shown below.
Organisers need to be careful not to choose ideas that make individual people in a group feel uncomfortable or silly.
This can work well with a large group and takes no more than 15 minutes.
The objective is for the group to form a circle around the room standing in the correct order of their date of birth, so starting with early January and ending with late December.
They cannot talk whilst they organise themselves, so there will be plenty of sign language and interaction.
Once everyone is in place the host, preferably with a microphone if it is a large group walks around the circle asking each participant to state their date of birth.
This always elicits friendly cheers and jeers and, if there is a run of success, a good build up towards the end. A good host on the microphone makes this ice breaker.
We have used this game many times to great effect. It is great fun and also very visual, particularly if you have more than four teams.
Essentially the group is divided into teams and each team is given a colour and a corner or zone in the room.
Hundreds of balloons are then released into the room in colours corresponding with the team colours.
The objective is for each team to herd balloons of their team colour into their zone and keep them there. This is chaotic and one of the best ice breaker events.
The Balloon Game is made particularly challenging if the room is full of tables and chairs as balloons go under them. It is not a good idea if a pristine room is required afterwards!
This is another good idea for either an ice breaker or as an energiser during a conference.
Bring in a qualified expert to run some low impact aerobic exercise and stretches.
In many cases stretches alone will be adequate and a high energy workout should not be undertaken unless all team members have undergone a medical check.
Firstly, this is fun and striking the stretch poses with colleagues creates goodwill and is undoubtedly team building.
However, the main advantage is that aerobic exercise and even stretching will get the blood flowing and feed oxygen into the brain.
This will freshen the minds of delegates and put them into a peak state before their event.
In many cases teams will have stayed in a hotel, had a big breakfast and maybe had a few drinks the night before.
Going straight into a conference without even a breath of fresh air is a guarantee to have delegates dozing off by 11 a.m.
A quick Energiser in the hotel gardens can be exactly what is called for and the best Ice Breaker idea for many events.
Reminder: hire in an insured and qualified professional; many hotels have these on site.
More ice breakers will be added soon. Make sure you bookmark our website and come back regularly!
You need to be relaxed to get the most out of a team building exercise, see how we manage to achieve this with our
- To name just a few.
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