5 No-Prep Icebreakers For Adults

So you're searching for icebreakers for adults and you've stumbled on this video with five no-prep icebreakers for adults. I get to do this for a living. I'm gonna just share the best of for you. I'm also gonna help you navigate one of the biggest pitfalls when people lead icebreakers with adults because if you're leading an icebreaker for an adult, you want it to be no cringe, you want it to be genuine, you want it to be meaningful and purposeful. You don't want animal sounds, shouldn't be involved in the icebreaker. It should be something thoughtful, intentional, meaningful that also leverages and leans on somebody's life experience because an adult has, I don't know, 30 plus years of life under their belt. So these five methods that I'm gonna share with you kind of offer the ability to teleport in to really good conversations. And let me start out with this. You think it's easier to sell painkillers or vitamins? Based on revenue of pharma companies, I would suggest painkillers for better or worse. Why is that? So I think when sometimes we do icebreakers, we're like, we wanna do icebreakers for vitamin kind of reasons. We wanna do icebreakers to connect. We wanna do icebreakers to bond as a group. It's like nice to have things. And I would say that framing an icebreaker and thinking about, for you, thinking about them as painkillers. No, an icebreaker for an adult skips the five to 10 minutes of small talk that makes people cringe and drains people at an event. Another painkiller assumes the social risk for people. You don't wanna, if you're trying to break the ice and create a warm, comfortable environment, you don't want people to be taking lots of risk. As the person watching this video, hosting and leading one of these five exercises, you wanna be assuming the social risk for people. Opening advice to create effortless, really phenomenal, no-prep icebreakers, ditch the word icebreaker. Forget it. Cut it out of your vocabulary. Don't say it around adults. Because I know that some percentage, let's say 20% of adults, when they hear the word icebreaker, you get hives on their back. Like, ah, not one of these. But just by not saying that word, you're on your way to increasing buy-in. I would suggest replacing icebreakers with the phrase connection before content. And for me, connection before content also connects to the purpose and the reason why people are there. Many decades of adult learning theory would say, oh, shocker, adults like to do things that matter. Things that are important to them. Activity number one, we're gonna talk about timeline teleportation. Activity number two is so effortless, you can do it in your sleep, but makes a big difference. Activity number three called goldmine of goodness will actually make your group smarter while also building meaningful connections. Activity number four is my absolute favorite and I've led it with over 100,000 adults and it hasn't flopped yet. If it flops for you, you can write me an angry email and I'll send you a refund on this video. And activity number five, it would be impossible for this exercise to not fit perfectly into your really specific niche or context. Number one, timeline teleportation. Hey adults, open your phone. Turns out probably over the last several years or decades, you've taken a lot of photos. So open up your photos app and when you click the top of your screen on most phones, it scrolls all the way to a really early on photo. And oh my goodness, this is kind of an interesting idea. I haven't actually looked at this photo in a long time. Kind of the purpose of an icebreaker. This was unplanned. Place your hand here, have stranger place their hand here. Remove hands when no longer strangers. The exercise timeline teleportation is invite people to go to their phones, scroll up to one of the oldest photos and just find one of their earlier photos that has a fun story behind it. Click that photo open, pair up either in pairs or small groups and just share that photo and the story behind it. And the reason this is magical is one, even before they talk to anybody, the group will connect with themselves and a memory that will be like, ooh, most people don't take photos of themselves while they're crying or their family members while they're crying. They take pictures of highlights, things that they want to remember. And so by doing this, you're saying, hey, five years ago, you wanted to remember this. Bring it back up and share it with somebody in a way that's meaningful. The magic of this for the brain and thinking about adult learning is that when you pair a photo with somebody's face, you're much more likely to remember that interaction. Whereas if you just said, hey everybody, get together and share a story from five years ago, in one ear, out the other. And so just by teleporting into people's timeline, you could say, change the prompt to a recent photo, a photo from 2019, a photo from March of 2020. The idea of teleporting around your timeline is you give people the timeframe, have them go back to that place in their photos, takes less than a minute, and then share with folks in pairs or small groups. I always invite a little bit of debrief after an icebreaker with adults to make sure that it's purposeful and that you kind of build community as a whole. And so after people share, you give people five to 20 minutes to share and exchange those stories and talk. I would then bring people back and just ask, what struck you or what'd you notice about those conversations? And that's where magic happens because no one's gonna reference the specific stories. What they're gonna say is, I was struck by how open people were. I was struck by how willing to share people were. I was struck by how good it felt to share a story with somebody. You're gonna share things that are about process and like group culture. And when you're talking about breaking the ice, as they reflect those things back, what you're doing is saying, this is a safe environment, it's comfortable, it's meaningful. We talk about things that matter to us here. And that is a phenomenal way to lead an icebreaker with adults. And it takes zero prep and you don't have to bring any materials because everybody carries this computer around in their pocket. The second exercise is a bit more of a strategy and I'm gonna call it assume the risk. What I mean by that is really phenomenal facilitators assume the social risk for people to just teleport into a good conversation. You can teleport with a photo, but also one of the best modes of teleportation is a question. It's speaking a sentence that ends in a question mark. And the reason Will and I chose to make the title of our book ask powerful questions and not ask awesome questions or cool questions or great questions is the idea of powerful is a question actually gives someone the power to share something that matters to them. And so if you can very easily assume the social risk for adults by just choosing a question that allows people to connect to each other and to the purpose of why they're there. And so that question might be, hey everybody, what is one of your favorite topics of conversation? Do you see how that question just teleport somebody right away into something that matters to them? Some people love knitting, some people like sports and some people love whales. And when you ask this question, you literally just go drop right in to something that matters to somebody. You skip past that small talk. And so assume the social risk by just starting your gathering with a question that also perhaps connects to why you're there. Third one, I promise it would make your group smarter and it will. It's called gold mine of goodness. And it assumes that your group of adults has a whole bunch of knowledge locked in the eight pound block that sits on the top of their head. And so the prompt is, I want you to think about something like some really genius piece of advice or I want you to think about one of the best things a mentor ever said to you or I want you to think about one of the most valuable lessons you learned in your youth. Some prompt that accesses people's expertise or knowledge, it's even better if it applies to your specific meeting purpose or context, but something that applies and all you're inviting them to do is go into the gold mine of goodness that is their brain, go back in the filing cabinet and pull out something that they have found really, really useful in their life. So an example might be, what is one habit that you've actually stuck with and how do you stick to it? If you have a group of four people sharing their responses to that question, they're gonna come back three perspectives smarter right after that little conversation. If you wanna put this into action, pause this video and just write down your own prompt for a meeting that you've got coming up or whatever you're planning whenever you're watching this video and think about what's a prompt that I would access people's expertise and be fun and useful for people to share. Number four, my absolute favorite exercise, which I've led with over 100,000 adults in organizations, top universities, ranging from Starbucks, Crayola, Notre Dame, CIA, and it is a question swap. It uses these questions that I created called, they're not this big, they're like this big. These questions I created called WeConnect cards, which there's a free printable version in the description. And if you want the actual box shipped to you, I'm sure there's a link down there for that as well. But this is not a pinch. It's just an instruction for my favorite exercise, which is called question swap, which is everybody in the group ranging from 12 people to 1,200 people get a question and they pair up with each other. Hello, person A. Hello, person B. Person A asks the question on their card. Hey, what is the goal you're planning on accomplishing this year? Person number B thinks, answers the question. And this person asks the question on their card. They just have a short conversation. And then after that, the instructions are they swap cards and pair up with somebody new. Toss their hand in the air, signaling that they're looking for somebody new to pair up with. And it's just a self-facilitating, self-swapping thing. And the magic for adults with this exercise is it gives people a massive amount of autonomy in the types of conversations they're having. For adults specifically, I would remind folks that one of my favorite features of questions is that you have 100% autonomy and choice in how you answer any given question. And so I could answer this question, hey, what's been taking up lots of my brain space lately? Filming this video. I really want this to be the most useful video I can possibly make it. And that would be true. But I can also choose another answer. What's taking up lots of your brain space lately? How to raise kids with technology. I got two little ones, and that is a conundrum, and I haven't found a parent who's totally figured it out yet. You see different levels of vulnerability, two totally different responses, same question. And that is the power of doing a question swap like this is you get tons of choice in the mix. And because of the swapping mechanism, people can be in conversation for as little as they want to or as long as they would like to. And so when I lead this exercise during a keynote at an annual conference with 1,000 people, I'll watch some people be in a quick one-minute chat, give a little nod to each other, swap, and pair off. And then I'll see two people talking, they're standing up, they keep talking, they keep talking, and eventually they sit down and they just talk for 20 minutes straight. That is just as meaningful and important as the option to be in conversation briefly and then move on. And number five, I told you that it would be impossible not to apply to your context, and I think that's true. It's take the mechanics of a question swap, which works so well, and turn it into a different type of swap to fit your purpose. So it could be an idea swap, it could be a solution swap, it could be a problem swap. And the idea is the same mechanics, you're pairing up with somebody, you're sharing perhaps a problem or a challenge that's been on their mind, and you're just talking for a few minutes with that person to get a new perspective, perhaps some advice, some coaching around that idea, and then you swap problems. Then the person shares their problem with you and you have a little five minute mini coaching moment there and then you high five, handshake, move on to the next person, and you just do this for somewhere between five and 20 minutes. You can make this quick and fun, like a problem's kind of heavy, so you can make this quick and fun by doing a quote. So pair up, share your favorite quote. Oh, I really love the idea that mistakes are the portals of discovery, or that every problem has a gift for you in its hands, or, and this is the most powerful quote to think about all five of these exercises with, is that listening, giving people a chance to listen to each other, actually is being willing to be changed by the other person. And so by doing just an icebreaker, you're actually transforming your group in a really meaningful way. It turns out I've spent a whole lot of time creating a lot of tools, really practical, hands-on tools, things that you can print for free or get a box shipped to your house to lead amazing no-prep icebreakers for adults. And so check out the links in the description. I hope you are not offended by a one-sentence pitch to check out my stuff, and that this video was invaluable to you. Have an awesome day.