50 Remote-Friendly Icebreakers: Quick and Easy Warmups and Energizers for Better Meeting Mojo

By Ben Crothers

Say goodbye to boring meetings! This book by Ben Crothers contains easy instructions and variations for introductions, energizers and warmup activities, guaranteed to help get everyone more engaged, more interested, and more productive. This book is for you if you run any kind of meeting, workshop or corporate offsite (online or physical). Whether you're new to the facilitation game or a seasoned veteran, you're sure to find lots of fresh ideas to up your meeting mojo. 

 

PLUS, you'll get full unlimited access to the companion website, with even more icebreakers and the ability to bookmark your favourites as a customised list. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ben Crothers
• Release date: Apr 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393642664

Ben Crothers

Ben Crothers is on a mission to help as many people as possible think better and solve problems better by drawing better. We're inundated with so much information every day, and visual thinking is becoming more and more crucial to making sense of it all. Simple drawing is a fantastic shortcut to thinking better, and expressing ourselves better. Ben has been a designer and facilitator for over 20 years, and a teacher of visual communication and facilitation for a good chunk of that time, too. His first book, Presto Sketching: The Magic of Simple Drawing for Brilliant Product Thinking and Design (O'Reilly) has helped loads of people all over the world to increase their visual thinking and sketching confidence.  Ben lives with his wife and two children in Sydney, Australia. When not drawing, designing or teaching, he's often found at the beach or at the barbecue... or both!

Book preview

Contents

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

Your online meetings are about to get more awesome!

Who is this book for?

What are icebreakers, anyway?

Online meetings can (and should) be awesome

Shifting your facilitation technique to be more remote-friendly

What you will need

PART 2: THE ICEBREAKERS

Different icebreakers for different purposes

Introductions

Energizers

Warmups

PART 3: SPREADING YOUR ICEBREAKERY WINGS

Go forth and make meetings more awesome!

Icebreakers online and proof-of-purchase code

Acknowledgements

About Bright Pilots

Appendix: Sources

Part 1: Introduction

Your online meetings are about to get more awesome!

I’m glad you’re here! But before we dive into the icebreakers themselves, let’s establish what they are, what they’re for, and how they can help you and the groups of people that you’re facilitating, especially in remote working environments.

It’s also useful to look at what equipment and materials that these icebreakers assume you have.

Who is this book for?

This book is for you if you facilitate any kind of meeting, and you’re after some fresh ideas about how to start your meetings well, build trust and rapport in the group, keep people energized and focused, and otherwise just to add some variety. It’s also for you if you’ve been facilitating for a while, and you want to collect resources to keep yourself at the top of your game, or help other people in their facilitation game.

This book is particularly for you if you are a:

Scrum master, Agile project manager or Agile coach – It has loads of ways to add variety and depth to Agile rituals like stand-ups, retrospectives and team health diagnostic sessions.

Team leader, facilitator or consultant – It has ideas to help your group switch from one mindset to another, e.g. convergent to divergent, or reflective to creative.

New to online meetings – Have you had that feeling where you’re in an online meeting, and it’s just not clear who’s meant to start things off, or guide the discussion? And then you think It might as well be me, but I don’t know how? Starting things off with an icebreaker is an easy way to boost your confidence, and start being that facilitator that your meeting actually needs.

Teacher – It has a treasure trove of ideas to get your students thinking and engaged

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What are icebreakers, anyway?

Icebreakers are short, fun, interesting activities that facilitators use to put everyone at ease, and to help them focus on each other and the group work ahead. They typically happen at the beginning of meetings, workshops and long meetings and offsites, or just after a lunchbreak and other breaks.

There are actually different types of activities like these. Terminology varies (and feel free to stick to whatever terminology you use), but in this book, I’m going to use these three terms:

Introductions – Great for getting everyone acquainted with each other at the start of a meeting, especially if they don’t already know each other well. They help to build trust and rapport, and help people feel comfortable for what lies ahead.

Energizers – Great for lifting the energy and mood in a group, especially during long sessions, and after a big lunch! Energizers work well, no matter whether the group is new to each other or have been together a long time.

Warmups - Great for getting everyone’s brains ready for the task ahead, especially trickier tasks like creativity, problem framing, problem solving, prioritizing and deciding.

No lame icebreakers here!

Let’s face it, there are lots of cheesy, cringy icebreakers around. The good news is, though, that there are lots of great ones too. They’re a fantastic way to liven up any session, if they’re attuned to the