Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 51 total)
  • Team Meeting – Simple Ice Breaker?
  • benz
    Free 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

    clubber
    Free Member

    Favourite position?

    I learnt my management style from that edumentary ‘The Office’

    TheSouthernYeti
    Free Member

    A radiator

    jon1973
    Free 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.

    SurroundedByZulus
    Free Member

    How about a game of MTFU.

    j_me
    Free Member

    A game of “who would you sack?”

    jon1973
    Free Member

    How about a game of MTFU.

    Cage fighting. Last man standing gets a pay rise.

    Anna-B
    Free 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!

    CharlieMungus
    Free 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.

    TurnerGuy
    Free Member

    all have to attend in only their underwear?

    1freezingpenguin
    Free Member

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

    thepurist
    Full 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.

    LenBuch
    Free 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.

    Junkyard
    Free 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.

    willard
    Full 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.

    benz
    Free 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

    SiB
    Free 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

    ART
    Full 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 … 😉

    HoratioHufnagel
    Free 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.

    jon1973
    Free 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.

    schnullelieber
    Free 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.

    rootes1
    Full Member

    sit in the meeting naked?

    Papa_Lazarou
    Free Member

    just skip this bit and proceed with the meeting

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

    jon1973
    Free Member

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

    jon1973
    Free Member

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

    grum
    Free 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.

    snakebite
    Free 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.

    allthepies
    Free 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.

    binners
    Full 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

    ivantate
    Free Member

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

    higgo
    Free Member

    a bit of something ‘liberating’ in the table water?

    IanMunro
    Free 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? 🙂

    CharlieMungus
    Free 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!

    molgrips
    Free 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 🙂

    andytherocketeer
    Full 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).

    ElVino
    Full Member

    one I have been on the receiving end of which I thought worked well, tell me one thing you would like to change about this place and one thing we should never change.

    loads of variations on this – i.e. love / hate about job etc.

    Take some notes and do your best to follow up on the gripes. My newish boss did this and actually sorted some of our long standing complaints about the business, results most people have given him their support.

    llama
    Full Member

    the only good one I’ve ever been in was when the manager distributed a double scotch to everyone which we were all to down in one. Then he said, meeting over, lets go to the pub.

    redthunder
    Free Member

    “Gentleman!, you’re all [the quote from sexy beast ;-)]”

    Drac
    Full Member

    You see another reason I’m glad I don’t work in an office environment. Just get on with the bloody meeting that no one wants to be at so you can all go home.

    buzz-lightyear
    Free Member

    “BS stuff they make you do at team meetings”

    We just do

    Name
    Affiliation and role
    What interesting stuff you’ve been doing recently
    What can you contribute and what you expect to take away

    Someone who can’t answer the last two is deadwood.

    Drinks, coffee and sharing food are the best ice-breakers.

    Tables are a nuisance because they prevent people from sitting physically close together.

    Have a chairperson in charge, with an agenda with specific topics. If a topic overruns, have an action to follow up and move on. Cut-off time-wasters promptly. Agree and record actions on a computer: what, who, why and when. Print and sign minutes immediately before breaking up.

    Meetings can be quick, fun and valuable if well planned, if everyone has aligned objectives and there is good intent. Just watch out for the time-wasters.

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 51 total)

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