So, here you are Googling (or “AI-ing” around…doesn’t have quite the ring to it, does it?) for icebreakers for adults that aren’t awkward.
I have field-tested the five activities I’m going to show you, not just share with you, with well over 100,000-plus people. So I know they will not be awkward for your group. And I guarantee there is a 100% chance they do not exist anywhere else on the internet.
Why Novelty Beats Cheesy Every Time
Just by doing something new, you’ll stand out. What can be really good for breaking the ice is novelty. Not cheesy novelty, not cringy novelty. Things that people haven’t experienced before are naturally interesting, so people are drawn to them.
The exercises I’m going to share with you come from a deck of cards called Future Focused We! Connect Cards. For accessibility and ease, you can get a free printable sample the deck at weand.me/tools.
In my humble opinion, really amazing icebreakers should not just dive into people’s past experiences. They should actually move people forward. In other words, the questions we ask, the activities we engage in, the conversations we invite people into, ideally they serve as an edit button to change and improve the future. Improve people’s relationships. Improve people’s connection to the purpose of why they’re actually there in the first place.
The thing that most icebreakers miss is connection to why the heck are we doing this. If anybody at any point in time in your icebreaker is wondering why the heck are we doing this, it might get awkward.
Icebreaker 1: Choose a Single Word
Quick intro first. This deck of cards has words on one side, beautifully visually illustrated words, and questions on the other. Each word is meant to be an ingredient. Like if you were to crack open a fortune cookie, what would be a word that would make your life a bit easier, make the future feel a bit easier?
So for icebreaker number one, you have people walk into a room and simply choose a word. The best icebreakers are highly non-threatening. It’s like, what is the lowest psychological risk that I can invite you into that still sets the tone for participation and ideally ties to meaning?
Everybody comes in and chooses a word that represents something they’d like to experience today. There’s a digital version of these as well, a free web app. Everybody walks into your room and they choose sustainability, energy, reflection. They choose a word they want to experience that day. They’re casting their vote. And what they’re actually doing is setting the tone to personalize and make their own room a bit more comfortable, because they’re casting their vote on what they want to tune into that day.
Icebreaker 2: Listen for Your Word
Get ready. It’s crazy. You could do this icebreaker at an annual conference with a thousand people. Walk into the room, choose a word that represents something you’d love to experience today.
I think the best icebreakers for meetings don’t just happen in moments where you’re like, “Okay, now we’re going to start the meeting.” They’re actually something you instill culturally in the day that keeps doing work for the rest of the day. They keep breaking the ice.
So when I say listen for your word: let’s say you have an annual conference with a bunch of presentations happening. If you chose sustainability, I want you to listen for that thread all throughout. And then all you say to the group is, “When we go on break and you’re left to your own devices about what you’re going to talk about, feel free to share what struck you related to your word.”
Now all the hallway conversations become purposeful icebreakers tied to words that people care about. What you’re doing is lowering the barrier to people just getting into an awesome conversation with no social risk whatsoever.
Icebreaker 3: Groups of Three With Icebreaker Question Cards
You ready? This is absolute rocket science. You are going to break everybody into groups of three. This is the most magical configuration, in my humble opinion. It’s not as vulnerable as a pair, not as threatening as speaking in front of a large group or going around in a circle and introducing yourself. But there’s enough perspective that it’s a group, so it kind of takes the pressure off of you.
All you do is have people break into groups of three, flip over the card of the word they chose, and answer the question on the back. Music: what music always makes you feel better? Mindfulness: what’s something you’d like to stop doing? Energy: what does your perfect morning look like? Reflection: what is something you’d like to do more of?
The questions all in some way pair with the word that people chose, like a laser pointer. You could do any one of these individually and they would help warm up, break the ice, and create connection. But when you stack them, especially if you add number four and number five, it creates not just an icebreaking experience but a genuinely meaningful connection-building experience. Which I think is what you’re probably going for when you’re aiming at icebreakers.
Want to try this with your team? Download free printable cards, book excerpts, and more here.
Icebreaker 4: The Reaction Commercial Break
This is one of my favorites. It’s a great one to have in your back pocket if you’re ever presenting and you’ve got a group gathered.
Most meetings, you’re not going to just meet and break the ice for three hours. The idea is we want to warm up, break the ice, connect, and then we have stuff to get to. We’ve got business to get down to. The most masterful facilitators, presenters, hosts, and connectors, when they see content, they look for ways to weave connection throughout the content. They don’t only do connection before content.
So, the reaction commercial break. What that looks like on slide 15 is saying, “Hey everybody, I just shared a lot of stuff with you. At the beginning of the day, you chose a word that represented something you wanted to experience today. Can I ask you kind of an odd question? With somebody next to you, can you think about all the content we just talked about through the lens of the word you chose? And share what really struck you about that content related to the word you chose when you walked in?”
Now you have all these personalized debriefs about something somebody cares about, relating to the content. What they’re doing there is, A, they’re connecting, but B, they’re actually learning. They’re passing the content you’re sharing through their brain in a really useful way.
Icebreaker 5: The Closing Calendar Invite
This is pretty epic. You will not find this anywhere on the internet. You won’t even find this on Claude or ChatGPT, I dare say. Until AI scrapes this page I suppose.
At the end of your program, think about icebreaking at the closing. You don’t want to break the ice in a moment. You want the connection to actually continue on. So this is an icebreaker as a closing exercise.
Get together with the group of three you paired up with, or somebody you met here, and really simply create a shared calendar invite with all of you on it. Pair people at your table, it doesn’t matter. You get to decide based on your context. Create a shared calendar invite, invite everybody, and make the title of that calendar invite a question that you all would love to come back to a month from now, a year from now. You get to pick the timeline.
If you’re at an annual conference and you want to future-proof that event, or you’re at a training and you want to future-proof its impact, have everybody create a calendar invite for six months later, maybe even when the next annual conference registration is coming around. Have them build in a Zoom link or a Google Meet link so they hop on, and the intention is set that they are reconnecting over that question they voted they wanted to come back to.
This is a little bit of effort. It’s a task. You’re inviting somebody to do something. But in a room of a thousand people, you are creating several thousand new connections beyond the scope of your event, and they’ll all reflect positively on your event for that happening. It’s a really great way to extend impact and keep the connection and momentum going.
You can probably ruthlessly steal and reinterpret that idea and apply it in five different ways.
The Tip of the Iceberg
If you thought these ideas were cool, your brain will either melt or explode if you choose to attend the Connectors Summit. You can register your interest there for free.
