Meeting new people sucks about 90% of the time. Small talk is boring. People are not very forthcoming when making new acquaintances. And so, while I do not subscribe to the view that everyone is interesting in some way (some people are monumental bores in every way), I have been trying to come up with ice-breaking questions to at least give people the chance to showcase any spark they may have.
We all know the standard corporate ice-breakers: hobbies, five words that describe you, 2-truths-1-lie - the issue is, they are all terribly predictable (though the second one can be revealing of cultural differences: a friend told me his organisation used it at an offsite with both Chinese and British colleagues; most the Brits came up with adjectives like "creative" or "innovative" (the irony of their commonality being lost on them, I presume), but the Chinese picked "loyal" and "disciplined").
So, here are my suggestions for ice breakers to ignite interesting conversation. The first two are de moi, the third I stole from a friend:
To be clear, and contrary to what the name of the third game suggests, my purpose in coming up with these games is not to spark discord and animosity (or, in the vernacular, to sh**stir), but to start interesting conversations. Ideally, people who'd play these games would leave a meeting or party with a better understanding of diverging view points.
Send me any suggestions for other ice breakers or good party games - I'll add them here if I like them.
We all know the standard corporate ice-breakers: hobbies, five words that describe you, 2-truths-1-lie - the issue is, they are all terribly predictable (though the second one can be revealing of cultural differences: a friend told me his organisation used it at an offsite with both Chinese and British colleagues; most the Brits came up with adjectives like "creative" or "innovative" (the irony of their commonality being lost on them, I presume), but the Chinese picked "loyal" and "disciplined").
So, here are my suggestions for ice breakers to ignite interesting conversation. The first two are de moi, the third I stole from a friend:
Five Skills
Pick five skills or activities, so that if I could pick anyone in the world to compete with you in these five, you'd win in at least three of them.
The trick here is that you need to pick things that do not correlate with each other. For example, I could put down Greek, English and Chinese - but it'd take just one Chinese linguist to wipe me out. Similarly, you cannot just put down five sports - odds are I'll be able to find a single good sportsman to beat you at three of them.
The beauty of this game is that it compels people to talk about diverse things they are good at. If you do not explain the trick above, it also serves to test their intelligence.
Note: you can make it much easier, but possibly more entertaining, by asking people to pick five things so that they can beat any other person in the room at three of them. And you can then have people battle it out.
Unpopular opinions
Ask people to state and defend three unpopular opinions they hold. And really challenge them - do not accept "I think Lost made no sense". You can even introduce a scoring mechanism - the more people who disagree with your stated opinions, the more points you get.
The good thing with this one is that it skips dull talk about the weather or "hobbies" and gives you an actual insight on how people think and what they value.
Discord
I was introduced to this by a journalist friend: at each round, one person picks two other participants, and tries to guess a topic on which the two of them disagree. The two must then have a quick debate on it (if they actually do disagree).
I like this one for two reasons: first, it leads to debate, which is always great. Second, it reveals how people come across to each other. Did someone pick you thinking you'd argue in favour of, say, the death penalty? Why? What does that say about how you come across? &c
The beauty of this game is that it compels people to talk about diverse things they are good at. If you do not explain the trick above, it also serves to test their intelligence.
Note: you can make it much easier, but possibly more entertaining, by asking people to pick five things so that they can beat any other person in the room at three of them. And you can then have people battle it out.
Unpopular opinions
Ask people to state and defend three unpopular opinions they hold. And really challenge them - do not accept "I think Lost made no sense". You can even introduce a scoring mechanism - the more people who disagree with your stated opinions, the more points you get.
The good thing with this one is that it skips dull talk about the weather or "hobbies" and gives you an actual insight on how people think and what they value.
Discord
I was introduced to this by a journalist friend: at each round, one person picks two other participants, and tries to guess a topic on which the two of them disagree. The two must then have a quick debate on it (if they actually do disagree).
I like this one for two reasons: first, it leads to debate, which is always great. Second, it reveals how people come across to each other. Did someone pick you thinking you'd argue in favour of, say, the death penalty? Why? What does that say about how you come across? &c
To be clear, and contrary to what the name of the third game suggests, my purpose in coming up with these games is not to spark discord and animosity (or, in the vernacular, to sh**stir), but to start interesting conversations. Ideally, people who'd play these games would leave a meeting or party with a better understanding of diverging view points.
Send me any suggestions for other ice breakers or good party games - I'll add them here if I like them.
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