🧊 Let's Talk Icebreakers (or Melters) Miro Heroes!

@Rachel Hehe, "ice melters" sounds nice.

As for using them in workshops, it depends. Most I've ever come across are too silly for my taste. I really like to sprinkle workshops/collaboration sessions with humor, but silliness in that particular context… Nah, call me boring but I just don't like it.

One question I often use though – that might be considered a sort of icebreakermelter – is this one:

Do you prefer odd or even numbers?

It's even become tradition when new people are hired in my department to ask this particular question when they are introduced to the group during our weekly check-ins! It's quirky and unexpected, but not silly or pointless. And it's very interesting to hear why people choose one or the other! It always sparks some sort of semi-philosophical discussion.

Personally, I LOVE odd numbers. I try to align everything in odd numbers: volume on the tv, pieces of fruit or other stuff you cut, pencils in a drawer, you name it. When I walk in stairs, I even skip the evenly numbered steps (counting 1,3,5,7,9 and repeating)!

I love them because I believe odd numbers provide true balance on some sort of abstract conceptual level; I consider triangles more balanced than squares, for instance. I think it's because there's no center in even numbers – and with no center, there can be no balance. At least in my quirky mind.

What do you prefer?

@Rachel Haha, you think I do math?? I'm TERRIBLE with math… 

Yeah I know what they are. What I mean is I rarely use "established" icemelterbreakers. Most often I just improvise.

Cool topic @Rachel! My favorite ice melter 🥶 is the Emotions Wheel “Icebreaker” Miroverse template. I think it’s a terrific tool to set the tone in a meeting. Whether cursors are on or off, it tells participants that they can come to the session as they are. I like cursors off because it tells people they can own however they’re feeling in the moment while upholding personal boundaries and privacy in the ways that make them most comfortable. However, if you have a group with enough trust, cursors on reinforces that trust and allows people to really be themselves. 

@Rachel Thank you for awaking this discussion on “ice melter’s” :) It made me revisit the intuitive routine of setting the ground for the relation to open. I do share the logic of looking for the reason of the opening - building the safety routine in by weekly meetings with my students we do co-create and opening moments and shift responsibility for them. But that is possible while the relationship is build up over time. While in ad hock workshop situation I find Priya Parker (The art of Gathering) logic of asking yourself why we are gathering useful. Look for “the meaningful reason for being there and now” and look for the way to make the transition from the “other world” into the realm of the “here and now” ore effective. Designing these transition moments seem to have its importance on the quality of the gathering. Balancing the powers, forming common ground, opening dialog on the purpose allowing participants to share what they come with if we gathered to share, listen, create, question, change… there are so many good reasons to meet Fred Dust in “Making conversations” proposed 7 steps or essential components of the creative conversations: commitments, creative listening, clarity, context, constraints, change and creation. I believe designing purposeful ice-melters moment can help build a shared commitment of the group meeting here and now and allow to make sure the other steps are made by the whole group together leading to desired change / allowing the cocreation to happen. Thank you all for sharing your thoughts and Miro resources!  Stay safe.

I love a good ‘ice melter.’ I truly believe that starting the meeting off with something fun and creative fosters a better meeting environment. I’ve had so many clients tell me at the end of workshops that they thought it would be boring and ended up really enjoying the session, and I think starting with an ice melter really helps with that.

Food is a big part of our company culture so we tend to gravitate towards the ice melters that have a food component in Miro (make a breakfast, select what you’d bring to a picnic, etc). We do a lot of recipe sharing as well at the beginning of meetings. We’ll sometimes tailor our ice melters to the client though - for example we recently kicked off a project with a music company and our ice melter was to name the first concert you ever went to. Some of the answers were hilarious!

@Colleen Curtis Unsurprisingly, I love this challenge! And the winning prize is sort of obvious: the winning suggestion will be used as ice melter in the first Lean-Agile Evangelists event and the person suggesting it will be credited throughout the session!

I really like the Zoom Illustrations exercise suggested by @Ethel 'E' Salter. And the Gif Challenge from Workshop and Meeting Energizers by @Maira (this week's TOTW!)

Will definitely think about creating an ice melter template with the odd/even numbers exercise.

@Colleen Curtis I love the ‘Love Bomb’ I used it to inspire one of my own ice breakers we used at a team huddle on Valentines Day! 

I’ve also done a variation of ‘Design a Mug!” so awesome that we key in on the same ones

@Rachel @Alexis Luscutoff One way could be to combine it with a similar exercise. I'm thinking of the one where you place stickers with different emotions written on them in a bowl, the participants pick one (blindly of course), and then have to describe a  scenario relevant to their job role in the emotion they picked. The other participants then try to figure out which emotion is being described.

In this case, I'm thinking that the emotions will be the ones that participants identify on the Emotions Wheel. And the combined exercise doesn't have to be that complex of course. Could just be that the participants pick a sticker from the “jar” and describe a job scenario where they've felt that emotion, without the guessing part.

I chose This or That because it’s not that hard of an exercise. It allows me to use contrasting words that might influence my design process. I can gauge just how receptive they may be to a radical idea or something uber traditional. So far, my clients love the dog cards. They get to choose their own dog, which is always fun to hear them do. Then, they make jokes about themselves related to the words on the scale as they read through them. 

Welcome @mrjankeck! Well you seem to have started a trend with the term Ice Melters -- look at that!

We are so happy to have you here. Can you maybe share with us your favorite Ice Melter?!