Large Group Icebreaker – Let’s get to know each other

The background for this activity is that my Agile Tribe was doubling in size. We were going from 4 squads (40 people) up to 8 squads (80 people) and I was asked to create an icebreaker that allowed the people in existing squads to get to know people new to the Tribe.

Initially I was thinking of running 2 Truths and a Lie but it was not scalable with 80 people and did not achieve the result that I wanted. You can use the below as PowerPoint slides if you run this exercise.

Phase 1

In this phase ask the participants to seek out someone they do not know, or someone they do not know that well. Then interview each other with questions. The questions do not really matter but I tried to choose questions that I thought people would have no problem talking about to help the conversation – name, job, proud and hobbies.

Phase 2

Phase 2 is different – no longer are we interviewing each other we are introducing people to other people. This really gets the conversation going. State it is ok to forget, and the person being introduced can prompt the right answer.

Phase 3

Rince and repeat the introductions in larger groups.

Phase 4

Last stage is back to interviewing – ask the participants to seek out someone they do not know yet.

Wrap up

This activity worked a lot better than I had ever imagined it would. There was constant conversation and laughter and got great feedback from the participants afterwards.

I was lucky that I had a bell to signal an end to a phase or it would have been hard to control.

BTW: Megatron, Steg, Treeter and Traquash were suggested names my 4-year son wanted to call his unborn brother 🙂