 Most times when people hear the word icebreaker they cringe or they might feel super anxious about taking part in one. And yes icebreakers can make you feel awkward initially but they're proven to actually enhance relationships and boost creativity. In this video I'm going to show you how to run our top three favorite icebreakers. Icebreakers are quick fun activities that you use at the very beginning of a workshop or a meeting to warm up participants. Icebreakers actually set the tone for workshops and they help participants understand how a workshop actually works. And what I mean by that is that in an icebreaker activity you might be encouraging participants to write on sticky notes, place them up on the wall, come up with different ideas and this is exactly how you want to start every workshop. So when you're planning your next workshop make sure to have a few icebreakers in your back pocket. Okay now I'm going to show you our top three favorite icebreakers. The first icebreaker on our list is a personal favorite of ours here at AJ & Smart and it's called my first job. It's simple yet effective and it doesn't take any time or effort to set up. All you need for this icebreaker is a block of rectangular sticky notes and a sharpie for each participant. Let's get into how it works. Step one ask every participant to write down their name, their first job and what they learned from that job. So for example my name is Rebecca, my very first job is that I was Mrs. Claus, yes Mrs. Claus, Santa Claus's wife and what I learned from that job is that I really loved working with children which led me to be a school teacher which then led me to facilitation. Step two after everyone has written down these three things you go around the group and ask people to read out theirs. So if Ellie or camera man for example was participating in this icebreaker he would introduce himself and say hi my name is Ellie, my first job I was a catering waiter and what I learned from that is that people can be more rude when they get things for free. This is a chance for the group to get to know each other, learn something new about each other without getting too personal. It's also a great warm-up because it doesn't require too much thinking straight off the bat. If you want to add a bit of mystery to this icebreaker or if you have a group that already knows each other what you can do is ask everyone to write down their first job and what they've learned from it but leave out the names, get a hat or a bowl and get every participant to fold up their post-it and drop it in the hat or the bowl anonymously. And then you as the facilitator will read out each post-it and the group has to guess which job belongs to which member of the group. The second icebreaker is called pointless questions. We call this one pointless questions simply because the questions bear no relation to the actual workshop topic itself but this icebreaker itself is far from pointless. By asking fun non-work-related questions you're going to ease the group into a natural conversation and prime them for creative thinking. All you'll need for this activity is absolutely nothing but you. Step one, prepare at least three questions ahead of the workshop. Here are some tips for coming up with some good icebreaker questions. Keep your icebreaker questions light-hearted and inclusive and make sure everyone can answer these questions. Make sure to steer clear of topics that are too specific or which might not be relevant to everyone such as certain TV shows or music genres. Here are some ideas to get you started. If you could invite any celebrity over for dinner who would it be and why? The next one is what is your most prized possession and why? The next one I'm going to ask actually or cameraman Ellie. You can have an unlimited supply of one thing for the rest of your life. What do you choose? I choose water. Why? Because I think in the near future we're going to have a shortage of water and it will be great to have an unlimited supply of water. I like that. It's very thought out. Okay well done. Might need be kinder eggs. If you're looking for more inspiration or more questions we have a list of over 200 icebreaker questions in the description below. Step two, set a timer and ask everyone in the room to write their response to the first pointless question on their post-it with their Sharpie. Step three, go around the room and ask everyone to read out their answers. Step four, depending on how much time you have in the workshop or meeting you can do another round or two using the other questions that you've prepared. Icebreaker three is called Pictionary and Pictionary is not just for games night, it also serves as an amazing icebreaker for any workshop or meeting. We love this icebreaker here at AJ and Smart because it's a really simple and effective way to inject a bit of fun into your workshop from the very very beginning. Another benefit of this icebreaker is that it helps with visualizing ideas for later on in the workshop by showing people that their ability to draw doesn't actually matter at all. All you're going to need for this icebreaker is a whiteboard or a surface to draw on. So how does this icebreaker actually work? How you run this icebreaker really depends on the group size that you're working with but let's pretend you're running a workshop for seven people. Step one, prepare some prompts ahead of the workshop. You can do this really easily by just writing some prompts on some card or some paper like I've done here. I've just wrote some prompts on some sticky notes so I have star, frog, dog, you get what I mean. It's really really easy or you can use a Pictionary Generator which we've linked in the description below and basically what this does is it generates prompts for you. Step two, write everyone's name on a piece of paper and put them in a hat or a bowl or a bucket. Once you're running this exercise, pick a name out of the hat and then that's the person who's going to be drawing. Step three, give the person a prompt and allow them 30 seconds to draw the picture on the board. And while the person is sketching, the group has to guess the word. So let's do a live example. Ellie, the cameraman is going to give me a prompt and I'm going to try draw it and it's up to you to try guess what it is. Okay, put 30 seconds on the clock and I'm going to get drawing. Make sure that everyone gets a chance to draw a prompt on the white board. We absolutely love using this icebreaker because it gets the creative juices flowing but it also really raises the energy in the room at the very start of a workshop. Also, it's a party game that lots of people are already familiar with. So it's a really great way to get people relaxed and comfortable from the beginning. And for our final bonus icebreaker, this icebreaker is called draw a duck and it's as simple as it sounds. Step one, give everyone some post-its and a sharpie. Step two, set the timer to one minute and let people draw a duck. Step three, get everyone to place their ducks on the white board. And step four, briefly review your ducks, like introduce what their name is, tell us something interesting about your duck. This exercise fulfills the exact same purpose as Pictionary because it helps people realize that you don't have to be an artist to do a simple sketch. This exercise was shared by a community member in our facilitator club and it's so exciting to see the different ducks being added to the common section. If you're interested in learning more about icebreakers or if you want to see more content like this, make sure to check out the facilitator club in the description below. So there you have it. Now you have four new icebreakers to add to your facilitator toolkit. If you want to learn more about facilitation and if you'd like to see more videos like this, make sure to subscribe and hit the bell. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time. See you later. That's enough, no?