Monday, August 10, 2009

Great ice breaker ideas start with three words

Can you sum up your job description in three words or less? Think you could describe yourself or your personality in only three words?

Give it a try the next time you’re preparing for job interviews, recommends UK management advisor Colin Beveridge (via Human Race Horses). You may find the exercise to be a powerful self-evaluation tool, he says.

But if you’re not interviewing anytime soon, try the idea out as a quick ice breaker idea at your next meeting or event. We’ll call it the Three-Word Challenge, even shorter than the six-word ice breakers we shared late last year.

Simply start off your meeting by asking everyone to describe their job, what makes them happy, or even an interesting, unknown fact about themselves. Give them a few minutes to mull it over, then go around the room and have everyone share.

Be prepared to give good examples to get them started. Michael VanDervort at Human Race Horses recently shared these great three word self evaluations:

  • Help people think (Beveridge)
  • Make information useful (VanDervort)
  • I think differently
  • Evaluate, encourage & execute


The possibilities are endless. Try the Three-Word Challenge as an ice breaker and let us know how it goes.

How would you describe your job in three words?

2 comments:

Michael said...

Using that idea as a training icebreaker is another good idea, although it won't generate the self-evaluation in the way Beveridge suggest is very powerful.

THanks for picking up the thought and taking it further!

Michael said...

Incidentally, Human Race Horses has a new self hosted site for the blog. It can now be found at http://TheHumanRaceHorses.com

Thanks,

Michael


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