I don't like ice-breakers

TLDR: They're an irrelevant waste of time

Snowman, by Terry Freedman

One of the more unfortunate effects of lockdown and its concomitant requirement of online learning was the application of different kinds of ice-breaker. To be fair, most ice-breaker activities leave me cold at the best of times, but I was subjected to one in a training course recently which, as far as I was concerned, encouraged me to clam up rather than open up.

So what was this awful activity? We were asked to show an object on screen that meant something to us, and then tell the group what it was and why it was so special.

How I Sabotaged The Ice-Breaking Activity

Not so bad in itself, I grant you. But I’m a very private person, and I don’t like sharing things about myself with complete strangers. I don’t even like sharing the fact that I don’t like sharing things. That’s why I didn’t refuse to take part or raise any objections. I simply sabotaged the activity in such a way that only I knew it had been sabotaged. It was, one might say, a silent protest. It was my equivalent of the FAB — folded arms brigade. I didn’t do anything terrible; I just didn’t select an object that I cherished on a deep level.

The first time I had to take part in this so-called ice-breaker (with the same tutor) I grabbed a mug, as that was the nearest thing to me. I waxed lyrical about it for a minute or two, and for some reason nobody seemed very interested in it. Oh boy, was I emotionally traumatised because of that⸮¹

The most recent time I shared an object I once again grabbed the nearest thing to me, which was a pen. I’ve had this pen for several decades, and I’d be upset if I lost it — but it’s a pen: I won’t disintegrate emotionally if it disappears from my life.

Another Objection

I do actually have a more serious objection to this kind of ice-breaker: it takes so much time. By the time you’ve shared an object and listened to everyone else talk about their object, 45 minutes have elapsed. Even working in pairs, the whole thing from start to finish, which includes explaining the activity, giving people time to find an object, sharing it, and then holding a mini-plenary at the end, would take nearly an hour if you’re lucky. In the group I was in, there were two of us plus the tutor. For some reason the tutor spent ten minutes explaining the rules, then allowed us five minutes to select a cherished possession, and then gave us five minutes each to wax lyrical about our selected object. Then we had a discussion about each object. The whole thing took 45 minutes.

Also, what does it have to do with anything? You don’t know anything about the person at the end of it, you just know that they like a particular object, and you also know something about the object. But so what?

Are ANY Ice-Breakers Useful?

People come up with all sorts of weird and wonderful ways of breaking the ice, but do these activities actually achieve anything useful? When I have to take part in one of those where you have to introduce your partner to the rest of the class, two things happen. One, they almost invariably get things wrong about me. Two, I’m so focused on not making a mistake that although I usually manage to accurately reproduce the information they’ve given me, I don’t remember any of it. Basically, nothing goes in.

The most interesting kind of ice-breaker I’ve experienced is the one where you have to tell the class three things about yourself, one of which is untrue. Even there, though, the last time I took part in one the only thing I managed to remember was the name of one person, out of a group of 15 people.

Why Do People Take Courses?

As far as I’m concerned, people don’t go on coursers to share objects or listen to other people share objects, or to learn something that isn’t true about a perfect stranger. They go to learn something, to socialise, and to have a good time. Therefore my ice-breaker activity is to get everyone to tell the group why they have enrolled on the course. This takes up quite a bit of time if it’s a large group, even though I’m pretty strict about timing, but it has certain advantages:

• Everyone gets to know a bit about everyone else, and why they are there. Last year, when I ran my course “in real life”, it afforded people the opportunity to connect with like-minded people over the lunch and coffee breaks.

• It gives me the chance to get to know a bit more about them and what they hope to gain from the course. That means I can tweak the course a bit if necessary in order to accommodate their (legitimate) needs. (By “legitimate”, I mean reasonable. last year someone said that they thought the course would teach them how to use Wordpress, despite the fact that this was mentioned nowhere in the course description and we were in a classroom with no computers.)

In Conclusion

It seems to me that people’s time is valuable. Spending it on exchanging stories about objects in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with the content of the course, and doesn’t even help you get to know the other people much, is to be avoided.

You may be certain that the course I’m running soon, Creative Writing with Constraints, will have no time-wasting ice-breakers. I intend to ask each person in the group to introduce themselves to the rest of the class in 30 seconds or less. Then we’ll get on with the course. If you think about it, that makes sense, given that the course is about constraints.

1. This is a reverse question mark, invented by Henry Denham in the 16th century for the purpose of indicating a rhetorical or ironic question. My own first use of it was in my letter to

Rebecca Holden