Setting it up:

This little energizer is a great way to introduce people to each other, but also a great way to move from one topic to the next – depending on the angle you put on it.

First have people write down the beginning of a sentence. If you go with this as an icebreaker it could be personal things such as:

• I’m the best at…
• The worst food I ever ate was…
• The best job I’ve occupied is…
• My biggest dream is…
• If I could change one thing in this world it would be…
• Nothing makes me more furious than…
• The TV show I like the most is…
• The most daring thing I’ve tried is…

You get the idea. You can say these out loud for inspiration. But encourage people to write down things they really want to know about people. Once they have 3-5 different statements, instruct them to move around, meeting different people, ask them the questions.

If you use this as an introduction to get to know each other, you’ll have people walk around the room and complete each other’s sentences.

A good (and fun) way to do this as an icebreaker, is to instruct people to start their meeting with the stranger by shaking hands, the one with the longest hair start by saying, “Hi my name is X, what can I tell you about myself?” Then the other person asks the questions and get the answers. Afterwards the roles are reversed. Once both have answered, they shake hands again and say, “What a pleasure to meet you!”

This way everyone will know really odd, interesting and funny things about each other really quick.

Facilitation:
If you want to use this as to move from one topic to the next, you’ll instruct the participants in a couple of leading questions related to the topic you wish to discuss. If for instance you want to talk about values in the company, you would give examples such as:

• I think values in a company are important because…
• To me “Trust” (assuming that’s a value) is an interesting value since…
• Without “Honesty” (assuming that’s a value) my workday would be…
• To me “Competitive” (assuming that’s a value) means…
• Without “Responsibility” the company would be…

Make sure you inspire the group, so they have a chance to create meaningful and worthwhile questions for the rest of the group to respond to. Otherwise it won’t make any sense at all.

Once everyone has spent time asking people left and right, pick a couple of your participants to reveal what they learned about the others. You can do this completely anonymous. Once they’ve revealed their learnings, it’s quite alright to ask them, “Why did you pick this particular question?” Maybe it’s really important to them and interesting to discover why that is. Facilitate it with the rest of the group. Does he/she have a good point? Why is this important? What are the consequences of not being aligned with this?

Facilitation notes:

It doesn’t matter if it’s values, strategy, performance, goals, vision etc. that you engage your group in. Just be sure to inspire them with ideas to questions they can ask. Not everyone is super inventive, so they need help with it comes to specifics. Asking personal questions is easy. Asking questions which are work related is much harder and requires a bit more from you as facilitator.