Favorite Ice Breaker Game

I have a go-to icebreaker game I love to play with colleagues in a bar. There’s something about a table full of familiar faces, a round of drinks, and a game of questions that opens people up in ways a meeting room never could.

One of my go-tos was simple: everyone has to answer a question. It starts easy…“What is your dream job you never got the chance to do?” (Mine was always a voice actor or a pro wrestling manager. Think Paul Heyman…just a *bit* less obese)

As the night goes on, the questions get stranger. “If you could have a finger growing out of anywhere else except your hand, where would it be?” My answer: smack in the middle of my forehead, so I could nudge my glasses back up without using my hands. That’s the point because the walls come down by the second or third round. People laugh, surprise each other, and share things you’d never hear in a Monday morning team huddle. Of course, the questions and answers need to stay acceptable by corporate standards.

Connection doesn’t always come from strategy meetings or structured agendas. Sometimes it comes from a beer, a weird question, and simply listening to each other.

For those wondering about the picture, that’s related to a story from a night of playing the game in Beijing. We’re doing an impression of a “baby spa” I saw in Singapore, where infants float in a pool held up by a floating pillow put around their necks. As bizarre we we look in the photo, the real thing looks even weirder.

Here’s to the next roundtable!