An Ice-Breaker for a Team Development Off-site

If you lead a group and periodically take them off-site to build their capacity to work together or if you facilitate such sessions, this blog post might be useful to you. It’s about an ice-breaker I plan to use this week with a seven-member leadership team.

Let me tell you a bit about this group. This team leads a staff function within a major division of a global corporation. People work in two locations, two time zones a part. They meet regularly through the use of technology, but are infrequently together in one room. Additionally, because of the demanding nature of their jobs, members seldom have time for collective reflection on how they are doing together as a leadership team. As a whole, they represent a relatively new team: the newest members having joined three months ago while others have been in their roles for a number of years. My client leads this group; he has been in his role for almost one year. Do any of these characteristics sound familiar to you?

The hoped-for outcomes are not unusual for a team development session, however, if you are familiar with Extraordinary Groups, you will see its influence on the design for the day.

• Draft statement of an inspiring team purpose
• Agreements about our meetings, communications, and collaborations
• Clear next steps for:  A) Gathering input on and finalizing purpose statement; B) Increasing our collective capacity as leaders
• Know each other better

As an ice-breaker, I plan to employ an engagement strategy that Geoff and I have been using to open our presentations on Extraordinary Groups. Wednesday will be the first time I’ve used this in a team-building, non-book event. This activity is simple to use, always gets people enthusiastically engaged, and beautifully sets the context for accomplishing the outcomes I’ve outlined above. In this way, I heartily recommend it!

Here are the steps to follow. As it is described here it takes about an hour. If you need to tighten up the time allow only 10 minutes in step 4 and eliminate steps 6 and 8.  In step 7 simply ask people to share the factors they had in common and have a short group discussion about those points.  Make sure you pay attention to points made during this discussion that you might want to refer to later in the day. 

Begin this ice-breaker after you have reviewed the outcomes and agenda for your meeting.

1. Say that the purpose of this ice-breaker is to help people get to know each other better and to set the context for the team development topics you’ll address throughout the day. (2 minutes)
2. Ask people to think of a time when they were involved with a group that they would describe with words such as amazing, wonderful, surpassing expectations, or even magical. This can be a group from any part of their lives—school, sports teams, work, community involvement, family. Encourage each person to jot a few notes to about this group. In particular, ask What helped this group to be so outstanding? You might want to write this question on a flip chart or white board. Note: if people have a hard time identifying such a group, ask them to think of the very best group experience they can recall. (5 minutes)
3. Next, ask people to find a partner, ideally the person in the group they know least-well. Once seated, give them these directions:   A) Briefly tell your partner the situation of the story: limit yourself to three sentences.  B) Discuss the factors that enabled the group experience to be so memorable.  C) Identify any factors that you have in common.   Note, if you have an uneven number of participants, pair up yourself with the person who doesn’t have a partner. In such a case, you will have to watch the time carefully. (3 minutes).
4. Sit back and enjoy watching the pairs take off! Call time half way through, allowing 7 minutes for each person in the pair. (15 minutes)
5. Ask people to bring their conversations to a close. This may take a few minutes, depending on how involved people have become in their conversations. (4 minutes)
6. Ask: What was it like for you to share these stories with one another? Take a few comments or observations, encouraging people to play off each others’ thoughts. (5-7 minutes)
7. Then say you’d like to build a list of the factors that enabled such wonderful experiences. On flip charts or a white board, ask people: What helped your experiences to be so wonderful? Go from pair to pair, collecting one new item from each pair and recording it. Continue until there are no more to add or you’ve made two swings around the group. (10 minutes)
8. Then ask, What are the implications for us in this list? What do we particularly want to remember from this exercise as we move through our agenda today? Simply listen to the responses. Pay attention to points you might want to raise later in the day. (5-7 minutes).

If you put this exercise to use, send me a comment.  I’d love to know how it goes! It’s lots of fun and brings great energy into the room.  Good luck!