Topical Ice Breaker on NATO for a Meeting this week

How to Engage Your Team at The First team Meeting of the Year

Getting back to work after a long Christmas break is quite a struggle.  So when you first get your team back together to plan the year ahead why not start with a few ice breakers to smooth the way and get people engaged and looking forward to the team meeting. Nothing is worse than ploughing straight in  where you left off in 2013!

Get the coffee out and get everyone seated in a circle or horseshoe - no tables - much more conducive to getting a good response. Ask people to spend a few minutes thinking about the following:

• What personal New Year's resolution have they set that they would be willing to share with the team?
• Think of a personal New Year's resolution for the workplace
• Think of a new year's resolution that the whole team could sign up to for 2014

Share Some New Year's Resolutions

Starting with yourself reveal your personal new year's resolution (NYR). Then, using a ball or some soft object throw it to one of your team and ask that person to share their NYR . Remember not to force people to share! If you have sufficient trust within the team it will be done willingly. If not you have some trust issues and need to work on those on another day. Once they have revealed their NYR ask then to throw the ball to another member and so on until everyone has had a go.

Onto round 2 and repeat starting with yourself and asking everyone what personal NYR they have for the workplace ie. one thing they will personally do for the better at work.

Round 3 - you may wish to break into small discussion groups for this - what NYR could the whole team sign up to ? Each small group to come back to the whole group with ideas for a whole team NYR. Hopefully the chosen team NYR is unanimous

You may realise that to do this session properly with care and thought it will take a fair amount of time depending on the size of the team. You could easily give over a good half day for this.

It's a good idea to record people's NYR's for commitment and achievement purposes. You could list them on flipchart and pin on the wall; you could make a really nice poster out of them and frame  and then give each person a copy. You could even get people to write on a postcard and post them back to people in 3/4 months! Whatever you do don't forget to follow up on them in the next few meetings to check how people are getting on.

For more ice breaker ideas for team meetings check out our web-site ice-breaker-ideas.com

Just had a big thumbs up from one of our clients for an ice breaker she received from me this week.

It's a really easy game tht I've mentioned before called SNOWBALLS. Very apt for this time of year.

Just to remind you:

• Get everyone to sit in a circle and give everyone a pen and a sheet of paper
• Ask people to write an interesting thing about themselves on the paper
• Ask them to screw up the paper and throw the “snowball” into the middle
• Mix all the snowballs up and ask each person to take a snowball
• Taking turns, each person introduces themselves and then reads out what is  contained in the snowball.
• They then have 3 guesses to try and work out who the owner is.
• Continue round the circle until all snowballs have been matched to owners.

It’s a really simple way of finding out a bit more about each other. For a more advanced and riskier version ask participants to write down the most interesting thing about themselves! For tons more ice breaker games for your next meeting or event visit the ice breaker ideas web-site

Here's a different approach to an introductory ice breaker presented by Cathy Sork.  Rather than each person usually offering information about themselves get each person instead to write "ask me about........ " on a post-it note and use it as a name tag. Each person's keyword could be something they know a lot about or an experience they had or something they simply want to share. Or you could give the group a theme. The group informally mingles around and asks each other about the topic. This is a great conversation starter.

via Ice Breaker Ideas!.