Read this before skipping your team's icebreaker
3 popular arguments against icebreakers, overruled.
Ever been on the receiving end of a crappy icebreaker? You may be inclined to bypass the activity altogether in the future.
In fact, I wouldn't blame you if your predominant thought was, “this warm up stuff - what a colossal waste of time!”
But if you facilitate workshops, you know the benefit of the warm-up exercise.
So today, we’re defending the virtue of the humble warm-up and explaining why they are critical to keeping your workshop on track.
Here are the excuses I hear the most, for skipping icebreakers:
1. We work with each other every day, we know each other.
The truth is… no. You don’t know each other, not today anyway. When you left the office yesterday, you were a totally different version of yourself. A whole life has happened between that 3 PM meeting you had yesterday and today’s half-day workshop that starts at 10 AM.
A lot happens in 17 hours.
It's unlikely that we are all arriving to the workshop already in the mindset to be creative, make collaborative decisions and to hear other people’s ideas without judgement.
An icebreaker gently places you in the frame of mind necessary to achieve the best version of the outcome you require from the workshop.
2. We’d rather spend the time on an outcome-based activity
Your day job is demanding, and the couple hours you could spare for this workshop is already a stretch. You are under pressure and easily triggered by anything that seems like a waste of time.
We’re here to help.
Not every activity needs a warm-up, but when they do, they really do.
Here’s why.
Workshop participants waste time when they are not in the right frame of mind. They are slow, they are closed-off, they get defensive, they are disruptive, and they are non-cooperative.
The following scenario happens a lot:
*** pre-workshop consultation ***
Client: Hey, let’s skip this 15-minute icebreaker and jump straight to the ideation part.
*** post-workshop review ***
Client: Well… that was a disaster.
And why was it a disaster?
Those guys completely railroaded us!
They kept reiterating the same old ideas
The discussion was long and pointless
Everyone left feeling even more frustrated than when they walked in
Essentially you just burned time, willpower, money and credibility.
3. We use [insert tool name] all the time; we know how to navigate it
We take our expertise for granted, and just because we’re comfortable with something, doesn’t mean everyone is as comfortable as we are.
The 5 minutes it takes to get people accustomed to a whiteboarding tool saves a bunch of time explaining how to do things during the workshop.
Interrupting people while they’re working also disrupts their creative flow. It slows them down for future activities because they have been knocked out of their groove. It’s also embarrassing for the person experiencing the issue. Embarrassed participants do not engage well in workshop activities.
Technical difficulties (especially with globally dispersed teams) are unpredictable, and it’s better to catch them during a warm-up than in the middle of, let’s say, a decision-making activity.
So icebreakers are important…
To be completely honest, I’ve squeezed 3-minute icebreakers into workshops before, AND IT MADE A DIFFERENCE.
Remember icebreakers should be fun, but now you know they set the workshop up for success.
I hope you enjoyed the debunking of these three arguments against workshop warm-ups.
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