I'm not big on the "touchy-feely" stuff either and I really like what
Vana Prewitt has to say,"In general, I prefer to make any learning
assignment real and valued, not just "fluff." I have used one particular
"Ice-breaker" several times with the most outstanding outcomes.
This works in large or small groups. First thing is you count how
many people are in the room, yourself included. Then have everyone take
out a piece of paper and go around to each individual and find out seven
things that no one else in the room knows about this person, ( It's
important that each person being interviewed give seven different answers
to each person asking questions.) So, if you have a room of 10 people each
person should have seventy different topics of interest written down total
for everyone in the room, (that's seven for each person, ten people adding
up to seventy.) The topics are strictly up to the level of comfort each
person has and is willing to give up to the group as a whole. After the
questions are all collected then the facilitator writes down each of the
seven collected topics from each group member and charts them down on the
board making sure to keep them under each persons own category.
I think you will find that this task will bring clarity to each persons
make-up, show how similar we are with each other and will give the group
members a better idea of who they are working with as well. This assignment
should only take 45 minutes for the question gathering and another hour to
fully write out and discuss all of the individuals topics, totaling roughly
two hours.
--"William Auvinen-Bray" <Bosatsu@home.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>