Top 3 ICEBREAKERS To Boost Creativity and Problem Solving

In this video, you're going to learn our top three ice breakers that we use to help people communicate and express their ideas visually. So, the objectives of these visual thinking icebreers, that's what we're calling them. Visual thinking is related to participants being able to express their ideas visually, basically. So, the objectives, as I said, number one is all based around creativity. So these ice breakers are going to help people get into this creative mindset that you need to be in when you're solving problems and coming up with multiple ideas to a challenge. The second objective is just normalizing visual thinking. Getting people into this frame of mind where their ability to draw, their artistic ability has absolutely nothing to do with their ability to communicate and express their ideas. We need to get people into that frame of mind when they're solving problems. And the third thing, and this is probably the most important objective of these icebreers, is to celebrate diverse perspectives in the room. So the whole point of a workshop, a meeting, a session, you're coming together and collaborating loads of different people who have multiple perspectives. Say you give them all the exact same prompt. You're guaranteed that they're all going to come out with something different. And this is really, really beautiful because it highlights the value of all of these different diverging perspectives in a room, which is going to help actually drive collaboration and innovation in a workshop. Okay, so let's get started. [Music] This is so cold. The very first icebreaker is called Scribble Animals. It's super fun and easy, so fast to run, and also gets everybody into that creative mindset that I keep talking about. That's so important. So, I've adapted this exercise, this icebreaker from the book Gamestorming. We absolutely love this book here. There's an exercise in here called Squiggle Birds. So yeah, I just changed it up and called it scribble animals because I just wanted the option to draw lots of different animals rather than just birds. This exercise is the perfect exercise to show people that creating clear visuals has absolutely nothing got to do with your ability to draw. You don't need to be good at drawing or good at art to be able to express your ideas with other people. My favorite thing about this exercise is that and it goes into bit sciency stuff you know that our brains are naturally pattern making machines. So once you just start scribbling, our brain does the rest of the work for us. It's actually fascinating when you start doing this exercise. All right, let me show you exactly how to run it. How much time do you need? Here's my timer. You need 5 minutes for this exercise. For the materials, super easy. You just need a pen and paper or just a Sharpie and some sticky notes for each participant. So this icebreer is perfect for any group size. Small, big, small, medium, big. So, the best thing about this exercise is that you can run it in two easy steps. Step number one, scribble. So, you're going to ask your participants to draw random squiggly little shapes on their paper. And that's it. That's the rules. You don't need to overthink it. Just get them drawing. Step number two, you're going to add features to your squiggles. So, you're going to turn whatever I've just drawn here into recognizable animals. So, you can add beaks, legs, tails, whatever you want. So, I'm going to actually attempt this. This kind of looks like a little fish, right? Maybe like bubbles here and a bit of a mouth. And this also looks like Oh, no. I don't know what that is. So, yeah, we have a fish and a new animal that I've created. That's the great thing about this exercise cuz I've just created a new creature. And that's it. The whole point of it is to get people warmed up and into this creative mindset and to also show this whole point that I was talking about that you give people a prompt and everybody comes up with something completely different. The second icebreaker is called draw a dot. And if you know anything about us here at AJSmart, you know how obsessed we are with this absolute gem of an icebreaker energizer warm-up. I'm using all of the terms right now cuz you know you as a facilitator can call it anything. Special shout out to David Finnean who's in our community facilitator club who showed us this amazing icebreaker. Thank you so much. I'm waiting for the love hearts to go off somewhere. Um >> actually I was I like I I wanted to draw like a really stressed out duck and then I thought like it looks like he has to poop really bad. >> Again, this icebreaker is fun. It's going to have everybody laughing and it's going to warm everybody up in no time. So, for this exercise, again, you'll be happy to know that it's a very quick one. 5 minutes on the timer is all you need. And again, for materials, just give each participant a stack of sticky notes and a Sharpie. This is the perfect icebreaker for any group size and is perfect for online and in-person workshops. So, let's get into the steps. Step one, hand out the supplies. You give each participant your stack of sticky notes and a Sharpie. So, step two, you set the timer to 60 seconds and you give people time to actually draw their duck. Quack. I'm quickly going to demonstrate drawing the duck. Oh my god, this is actually kind of good. [Music] So, step number three, you're going to ask people to think of a name for their duck and also a fun fact about their duck. It's easier when the fun fact is about a duck and not yourself. I'm actually gonna name my duck. And I named it before in a workshop and this name was a hit. Rebecca because my name is Rebecca and it's a duck. So step four, you're going to ask participants to showcase their ducks. It depends on the group size that you have again in the room, but make sure you just call upon some people. Get them up to the stage or get them up to the top of the room and get them to introduce their ducks and tell the group a fun fact about their duck. So for example, here's my duck. Her name is Rebecca. So, a really fun fact about this duck is that she is actually a recovering and she has an absolute severe addiction to No. And h yeah, she's now in her glow up era, looking fine, looking fresh, and she's ready to take on the world. This is her. Another really nice thing to do is to stick all of the ducks up on a whiteboard, whether that's virtually or in person, and just like create a little duck gallery for everybody to enjoy throughout the workshop. It's really fun. And if you want to do this online, we've put a link in the description below from the LEGO Foundation where you can actually build a duck with Lego blocks, and it's so much fun. All right, let's go on to the next one. Icebreaker number three is called the 30 circles challenge. This is a quick, simple exercise to get the creative muscles warmed up, and it was created by Bob McKim, who's a Stanford professor, plus a very good friend of David Kelly from IDO. And also it's featured in our favorite book, Creative Confidence, the best book ever. If you haven't read it before, do it. It's all about unleashing the creative potential within us all. And you'll find this exercise hidden in here, nestled in here. I think it's page 130. The whole goal of this exercise is to push people to test their creativity by turning 30 circles into recognizable objects in a very short period of time. So, let me show you how to do it. So, first you have to set the timer to 3 minutes. There's a running theme here with the number three. So, the materials very easy. You give each participant a Sharpie. And also, you can do this a few ways. You can either look up online a template of the 30 circles and print them out and give each participant a template with the 30 circles. Or you can actually get the participants to draw out 30 circles on a page, which I just did basically right there. It's really easy. This is perfect for individuals or big groups. any group basically who needs to get into that creative headsp space that we were talking about. So, let me get into the steps. Step one, give every participant a Sharpie as I said and their template with the circles either printed out or get them to draw them out if you have lots of time. So, in the next step, you just ask participants to turn those circles that they've drawn into recognizable things. So, it can be like planets, donuts, you know, cow wheels, a bike, anything. You don't want to give them too many examples of what they can draw because the whole idea of this here is to get them thinking outside of the box and being creative. So before you set people off on the task, here are some tips that you can say to the participants beforehand. Make sure that you tell participants to play outside of the lines. There are absolutely no rules with this exercise. Encourage participants to let their minds wander. Look around the room and be inspired with what they're seeing. And finally, the most important thing to stop selfensoring. Stop judging yourself. Stop thinking about I can't draw. I can't do this. It's not about quality here. It's just about quantity. Just get all of these ideas out and draw whatever comes to mind. My favorite thing about this exercise is that it builds the habit of generating more ideas. So, you're getting people into that headsp space of just getting out all the ideas, not caring about the quality of them. Even if they seem silly at first, it doesn't matter. Just get them all out of your head. And this is perfect if you're running a workshop like a design thinking workshop or a workshop where there's a really big ideation phase or part of the session and where you just need to get people focused on the quantity of the ideas rather than the actual quality. And that's it. You should try this one. It's so much fun. But wait, there's more. We're not going to leave you like that. We're not going to just leave you hanging like that. We want to give you a little treat, a little bonus one to take away and to add to your facilitation toolkit. So the bonus icebreaker is called draw your neighbor. This icebreaker, this exercise, I don't know what I'm calling it at this stage. It's guaranteed to have everybody laughing properly laughing. Even if they don't know each other, that's actually even better. They're going to be laughing and having fun. For this exercise, it's so quick and so simple. You just need 2 minutes for it. Maybe give 3 minutes if you have a really big group. But yeah, the whole purpose of this is for it to be really short and snappy. So for the materials, all you need to give each participant is a Sharpie and one sheet of paper. That's it. We're really good with the materials here. You don't need really much for these exercises. For the participants, it's perfect for any group size. They're going to be working in pairs. So any group size, whether that's four, 100, whatever. So let's dive into how you actually run it. So, step one, hand out the materials. Really easy. Give everybody a Sharpie and a A4 sheet of paper. So, step two, set the timer to 45 seconds. The time needs to be a really short amount so that they can actually get in the flow. And ask people to draw a portrait of the person sitting next to them. Make sure that at this step you tell people to just have fun with it. There's no pressure on their artistic ability. Again, they just need to get something on the paper. And finally, the next step is you get people to share their portrait with their neighbor. And this is the part where you're gonna have everybody laughing. I guarantee it. One more thing that I like to do if it's an in-person workshop especially, is that I like to hang up all of the portraits in a gallery on a wall somewhere so that throughout the workshop, throughout the day, people can browse all of the portraits and yeah, have a little laugh and to figure out who's who in each portrait. My favorite thing about this particular exercise is that not only is it a perfect icebreaker warm-up exercise if people are after having a heavy lunch, but it's the perfect way to break down barriers if you have a group of people who don't know each other. Starting any session with laughter is the most powerful way to create a lasting memory of the experience for participants. They're going to remember it more than any of the exercises that you do with them in a workshop. And that's it. Those were our top four ice breakers that are going to help participants communicate their ideas visually. Let us know in the comments which one was your favorite and also let us know if you have any more exercises that are similar to this that we should add to our toolkit. One pro tip before I go. When we here at AJSmart run ice breakers with our clients, we don't ever call them ice breakers. And I advise you to not call them ice breakers as well. and instead just tell the team that you're working with that you're going to do an activity, that you're going to kick the day off with a simple activity, or if you're doing it after a break, just call it an activity. It's so much easier. It doesn't generate this anxiety that we all feel when we hear that word. So yeah, just call it an activity and everything will be fine. Okay, so that's it. I hope you liked it and I will see you all very very