Team Meeting - Simple Ice Breaker?

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Team Meeting - Simple Ice Breaker?

51 posts & 44 voices | Started 11 months ago by benz | Latest reply from stevemtb

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Help - meeting BS

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benz - Member

Done the usual

Tell us one fact about yourself that others may not know.

True or False

No time for 'Guess the baby'.

Anything else

Posted 11 months ago #
clubber - Member

Favourite position?

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

Posted 11 months ago #
The Southern Yeti - Member

A radiator

Posted 11 months ago #
jon1973 - Member

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.

Posted 11 months ago #
Surrounded By Zulus - Member

How about a game of MTFU.

Posted 11 months ago #
j_me - Member

A game of "who would you sack?"

Posted 11 months ago #
jon1973 - Member

How about a game of MTFU.

Cage fighting. Last man standing gets a pay rise.

Posted 11 months ago #
Anna B - Member

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!

Posted 11 months ago #
CharlieMungus - Member

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.

Posted 11 months ago #
TurnerGuy - Member

all have to attend in only their underwear?

Posted 11 months ago #
1freezingpenguin - Member

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

Posted 11 months ago #
thepurist - Member

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.

Posted 11 months ago #
LenBuch - Member

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.

Posted 11 months ago #
Junkyard - Member

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.

Posted 11 months ago #
willard - Member

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.

Posted 11 months ago #
benz - Member

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

Posted 11 months ago #
SiB - Member

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

Posted 11 months ago #
ART - Member

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 ...

Posted 11 months ago #
HoratioHufnagel - Member

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.

Posted 11 months ago #
jon1973 - Member

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.

Posted 11 months ago #
schnullelieber - Member

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.

Posted 11 months ago #
rootes1 - Member

sit in the meeting naked?

Posted 11 months ago #
Papa_Lazarou - Member

just skip this bit and proceed with the meeting

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

Posted 11 months ago #
jon1973 - Member

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

Posted 11 months ago #
jon1973 - Member

The team day from The Office wasn't far off the mark

Posted 11 months ago #
grum - Member

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 too 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.

Posted 11 months ago #
snakebite - Member

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.

Posted 11 months ago #
allthepies - Member

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.

Posted 11 months ago #
binners - Member

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

Posted 11 months ago #
ivantate - Member

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

Posted 11 months ago #
higgo - Member

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

Posted 11 months ago #
IanMunro - Member

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

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?

Posted 11 months ago #
CharlieMungus - Member

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!

Posted 11 months ago #
molgrips - Member

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

Posted 11 months ago #
andytherocketeer - Member

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

company I used to work for did that. well less of a brand change, and more of a "core values" thing. all abstract nonsense, plus a way to try to get people to talk to each other more. We complained to our line manager, telling him that it would cost the company about £1Million, but he was having none of it (actually probably agreeing, but had to "toe the company line").

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.

^^that. And in fact in that old place, that is how we occasionally interviewed potential new staff (ie ones that got past HR, and needed a 2nd interview for the project).

Posted 11 months ago #