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Funny Ice Breakers
Kicking off a meeting can be an uncomfortable challenge. You’re always worried that your audience is going to sit stony faced and fail to participate. If the participants aren’t responsive, there might be a silence and a lack of momentum that keeps the meeting from achieving its goals. That’s why it’s a good idea to have some humorous ice breakers on hand to get the session started on the right track. With some of these handy gadgets in your back pocket, you’ll approach your next meeting with confidence.
What is the purpose of funny ice breakers?
One of the keys to a successful meeting is encouraging participation, and there’s nothing like fun icebreakers for meetings to get everyone involved. They immediately bring talk to a quiet room, and they help to build camaraderie and a level of rapport. Some quick ice breakers reduce the intimidation many people feel in a roomful of others. Fun icebreakers ease the fear factor and put the introverts on the same level as those who are comfortable speaking out in a group.
When there are funny icebreaker questions, attendees get to know each other and are less likely to view the other participants as strangers. If you want to go a step further and help your colleagues better understand their co-workers and the ways in which they like to communicate, then icebreaker games can work wonders. They’re an excellent way for people to start learning about the folks they’ll be working with to a depth that facilitates both present and future teamwork.
Thus the purpose of funny ice breakers is not limited to the immediate meeting agenda and its objectives but also toward building relationships between attendees that will persist long after today’s meeting is over.
What are different ways to use icebreakers?
One of the quickest and easiest icebreakers for meetings & training seminars is to ask a question that everyone in the room gets to answer. For example, use one of these quick ice breakers questions: “When you were a child, what superhero did you want to grow up to be?” Or, “Tell us something you saw or heard in the last few days that made you laugh.” When you use funny meeting ice breaker questions, it can serve to release the tension that a lot of participants feel in a room full of men and women they don’t know. Shared laughter puts everyone more at ease.
If you want the icebreaker to have more depth but still keep discussion at a light and friendly level, there are conversation icebreaker questions you can use. If the group is large you might prefer to divide the attendees up into teams so talking in a conversational manner is more natural. Having each person in their small group relate a humorous incident involving a pet, a hobby or a former job can help build ties that will be of benefit not only in the meeting but also when those people work together in the future. It can be even better to have the group cooperate in performing a task with some results to be presented to the whole meeting.
Another way to enliven your audience is with ice breaker games for meetings. These can be quick ice breaker games such as finding out who at each table has lived farthest away or has the most interesting middle name. Icebreaker games for work include exercises that encourage everyone to get up and move around. For example, have participants find their colleagues who have a birthday in the same month. Or have everyone write down something unusual about themselves on a piece of paper, pass the sheets around, and let folks find the person whose description they received.
Team building icebreakers for meetings can be done with the entire room if there aren’t too many attendees, or the participants can be divided into smaller groups. For instance, each group might come up with an animal that represents them and an explanation of why that is.
There’s also the matter of timing. While icebreakers are most commonly employed to kick off a meeting, you can also use them in the middle of the meeting to re-energize your participants if the meeting starts to sag. They can be employed immediately before or after the group takes a break. When you create your meeting agenda in a tool such as Docket, make sure to include the ice breaker right at the top to help everyone settle into the meeting or in the middle to break things up.
Use funny ice breakers for different groups
The type of icebreaker you use should be attuned to the group that you’re dealing with. A business meeting might call for a different approach from a social gathering. A club or organization activity is more likely to involve people of a similar age and background and lend itself to an icebreaker attuned to its demographic.
For example, you wouldn’t use the same questions in icebreakers for kids or icebreaker games for kids as the icebreaker questions for women’s gathering or icebreaker games for small groups adults. One might focus on the funny and aggravating things grown-ups do and the other on bizarre and unpredictable antics of children, family, dating, or other adult behaviors.
Always be aware of the age of the meeting or group you’re dealing with. It’s OK to design icebreaker games for college students and adults that require thinking and patience. On the other hand, you’d be reluctant to do that with active icebreakers for youth. And ice breaker questions for kids should be attuned to topics that are relevant to them. Ice breaker questions for youth might include asking which musical artist they would most like to be or what they would say to that idolized artist if they sat down next to them in class next week. Quick ice breakers for students could ask what funny thing they’d like to see appearing on the whiteboard some day. Quick ice breaker games for youth can be a lot more physical and active than those for adults. If there’s a gym or an outdoor area available the possibilities increase.
Icebreaker games for youth might include props such as dice, blocks or other things they’re asked to build and experiment with. Be as imaginative as you like in selecting items that can be incorporated into icebreaker games for students.
When it comes to the littlest students, icebreaker games for kindergarten need to be simple and to hold the children’s attention. Name games for kids are a good choice, such as asking them to come up with a pet name for an alligator or a hippopotamus. You can also use getting to know you icebreakers for kindergarten where each one tells, for example, what their favorite thing in their bedroom is.
Things to consider when using ice breakers
Beside the age of the participants, there are other factors to think about when tailoring your ice breaker activities. Always keep the company or the organization culture in mind and design activities that fit within it. Remember that, for every gathering, there are appropriate and inappropriate ice breaker questions. Avoid religion and politics unless, of course, you’re working with a religious or political organization.
The size of the group is an important factor. Icebreaker games for small groups or ice breaker questions for small groups can be more intimate and collaborative than icebreaker games for large groups. If you want a lot of close face-to-face interaction, it might be best to break a large group into teams. Then you can more effectively employ funny icebreaker questions for small groups and communication icebreakers for small groups. People are often a lot more willing to be open and frank with a handful of people than with an entire room. By breaking big groups into littler ones, you can draw on your inventory of icebreakers for small group meetings and repurpose them to be useful in larger assemblies.
Icebreakers for small groups at church have both challenges and opportunities that you might not find with other meetings. While there are topics to steer clear of, there is also a common vocabulary and experience for religious communities, which is especially useful in designing icebreakers for youth church. You can base questions and games on youth camps and other experiences that these young people share. Youth group ice breaker questions can include both the religious and the secular in ways that are often fun and surprising.
Icebreakers for small groups of adults often vary depending on how much the people in those groups have in common. If it’s a group from diverse backgrounds, general questions and games that get them to talk to one another are good. If it’s a homogeneous group, you can use activities based on their similarities and the group’s mission, but often it’s more effective to bring in something not obviously related to the business at hand.
Just about any meeting can benefit by the judicious use of funny icebreakers. Improve your meeting effectiveness by developing a supply of these useful tools.