Posts Tagged ‘leadership icebreakers’

An interesting way to start a leadership program with delegates who don't know each other would be to run an ice breaker game to help people get to know each other quickly and spark a few discussions. Try to find an ice breaker that has a leadership theme as a lead-in to the topic of the day. The following leadership ice breaker idea would serve to generate enthusiasm and opinions about the topic:

You will need to prepare beforehand a set of speeches from world class leaders. This can be easily done on the internet. You will need a speech and the name of the famous leader.

When your group have assembled give each one a few lines of the speech and another the name of the leader. Ask people to mingle and find the person with whom the speech matches. Once they have paired up famous leader and famous speech they should spend a few minutes sharing a bit about themselves to each other and their thoughts on this particular leader.

When everyone has paired up ask the group to come back together and then ask pairs to introduce each other. Ask them to read out a few lines of the speech and see if anyone else can guess who the leader is. Once the leader is identifed by the rest of the group the pair can then share a few thoughts on the leadership style of the leader. Carry on around the circle.

• This exercise can be quite difficult unless well know leaders and speeches are picked.
• The ice breaker can be quite lengthy with discussions of various leaders. With this in mind it's a great lead-in to leadership styles. However if this is not required at this moment in time you can omit this stage or keep it brief.

Martin Luther King

"I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood."

Queen Elizabeth I

"I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; butI have the heart and stomach of a king"

George Washington

"A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils."

Charles de Gaulle

"The flame of French resistance must not and shall not die"

John F Kennedy

"Ask not what your country can do  for you; ask what you can do for your country"

Nelson Mandela

"I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which i hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is aAn ideal for which I am prepared to die"

Ronald Reagan

"Mr Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall"

Barack Obama

"America is a place where all things are possible"

Famous Quotes

At some point during your leaderhip training programme you will no doubt be discussing famous leaders; their traits and personalities. Why not turn this into an interesting leadership icebreaker game or energizer?

Make a list of famous leaders and their quotes. Print 2 lists; 1 is your master copy and the other is cut up into strips giving each person a quote or the name of a famous leader. Their job is to match the quote to the leader and hopefully have some meaningful discussions about leadership along the way.

Here's a list of quotes you might like to use:

• Steve Jobs  "Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower."
• Peter F. Drucker   "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."
• Theodore Roosevelt   "The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it." 
• Kenneth Blanchard     "The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority."
• "Eleanor Roosevelt     "A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader, a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves"
• Nelson Mandela      "When you let your own light shine, you unconsciously give others permission to do the same."  
• Winston Churchill     "Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war."
• Thomas Jefferson   "I'm a great believer in luck, and I find that the harder I work, the more I have of it." 

This could be quite a difficult task unless you choose famous quotes, but can be a great lead-in to a discussion and reflection on famous leadership styles. Once the game is over take time to really try and understand the meaning behind the words.

Leadership icebreakers are a brilliant way to start your leadership programs. They can be used as energizers too to break up the session and engage your participants.

Sharon Naylor is passionate about ice breaker games for training, meetings, away days, team building and conferences.  A quick ice breaker at the start of a meeting or event helps people relax,  injects a sense of fun into gatherings and speeds up that getting to know you stage, and ready to face the rest of the event with high energy and expectation. 

Tons more fantastic leadership icebreakers for warming-up groups  can be found on the ice-breaker-ideas web-site.

If you are running a leadership training programme or seminar you must include this fun-filled leadership icebreaker!

Ask participants to sit in a circle and choose one person to go out of the room. This person is the detective.

Appoint a leader and have everyone follow the leader. The leader might start with a hand clap, and everyone joins in in unison. The leader might then stamp feet or snap fingers or choose a different rhythm of clapping. The goal is to follow the leader seamlessly so the detective when they come into the room does not know who the leader is and their job is to work out who it is.

The team can get really good at this with practise. The key is for everyone to follow the leader without giving the game away and by staring directly at the leader. The team could wait for a ripple effect instead.. so waiting for their neighbours to change action before they do. The leader should also change movements slowly so as not to give the game away, and make movement changes when the detective is looking elsewhere.

A more advanced variation can include a change of leader by an agreed signal eg. a wink at another person.

The detective has 1 guess only. Once they have guessed another person takes on the role of detective.

You can review this exercise by:

•  Examining what made the game successful or unsucessful.
• What qualities of a leader were needed to make it happen?

Leadership icebreakers are a fun and novel way to start your leadership programs. They can be used as energizers too to break up the session and engage your participants.

Sharon Naylor is passionate about ice breaker games for work, play, parties, meetings, groups and clubs. A quick ice breaker at the start of a meeting or event helps people relax,  injects a sense of fun into gatherings, speed up that getting to know you stage and gets people ready to face the rest of the event with high energy and expectation. 

Tons more fantastic leadership icebreakers for warming-up groups and can be found on the ice-breaker-ideas web-site.

Getting some great leadership notes and quotes from the programme just recently:

• Of the world's 100 biggest economies - 63 are companies
• There's a shortage of talent and management in the world
• "The world belongs to the fast and not to the big"
• "Management keeps the car on the road and leadership tells you which road to drive down."
• Leadership - influencing others to willingly follow" 

What's your definition of "leadership?"

Check-out our Ice breaker ideas web-site for amazing ways to kick-start your leadership programs

What's a good ice breaker I'm always being asked?

 First we find out who the ice breaker is for; is it  a corporate ice breaker or for a work group? Or is it for a party, youth group or family reunion? Is it for a group who do not know each other at all or a group that know each other a bit?

This is useful to know as you can take more risks with with a group that know each other and even more with groups that know each other well. Play safe with groups that don't know each other at all. An ice breaker is meant to help people relax and get to know each other and should never make people feel uncomfortable.

Once we know about the group we then look at what we're trying to achieve with the ice breaker. You might be looking for quick and easy fun introductions or something related to the topic of the day or something that will not forget!

You will find after a few goes of using ice breakers that they will become second nature and you will soon develop favourites. Particularly ice breakers are ones that can be used for many different types of groups.

A word of warning though; you should never trial your ice breakers on a group without carefully thinking them through. Better still, try them out on your family and friends first!

A good ice breaker therefore, carefully matches your target group, is non-threatening and allows people to have fun together.

A good ice breaker that we use a lot with corporate groups is "Speed Dating" - arrange 2 long row of chairs according to the number of people attending. Have them facing each other so people can sit face to face and get everyone to sit down. Announce that you have a minute each to introduce yourselves. Blow a whistle after each minute and then after each couple have introduced themselves, instruct all participants to move to the seat to the right. Each person will get a new partner to talk to. Carry for as long as you have time or until all introductions have been made.

Learn how to play this fun, fast, ice breaker and hundreds more at ice-breaker-ideas.com

Don't have just an ordinary event - make it memorable with ice breaker games.!

A journalist attended the launch party of the Business Club, where I had run a very successful ice breaker just recently. The organizers had said she had been amazed at the impact of this simple ice breaker to get the party started.

Expecting the usual stuffy business meeting with drinks, canapés and a speech and over in about an hour, with a short peice to follow in the local paper; this time she had been amazed.

She was drawn in by the ice breaker game which ended with people sitting in tables with 5 new friends and they eventually had to throw her out with the rest of the group 3 hours later. What followed was a peice eulogizing the benefits of the Club.

So your simple ice breaker game can be a powerful and influential tool. Learn how to run a great ice breaker and you will influence more people than you can imagine...

Find out more at ice-breaker-ideas.com