INNERGISE!

What importance do you place on first impressions?

When we meet someone for the first time we all develop a first impression that has a real bearing on how we perceive that person from then on. What about when you go to a meeting or to a conference; does your first impression influence the rest of the day?

Many of us regularly attend meetings, workshops and conferences that bore us at the start, and because we are not engaged at the beginning they just seem to get worse as they go on!

As a speaker or presenter at one of those events, effective use of icebreakers can really help you to get off to a good start, or can be effective at other times in your event when people are not mentally prepared or not ready to fully engage and absorb (e.g. immediately after lunch).

So, what constitutes an effective icebreaker?
To answer this it is helpful to consider their intended purpose, which could include:

• To settle the audience
• To grab their attention
• As an introduction to the main topic
• To get people’s minds off their daily routines
• To establish your own credibility

I’m sure that you can all think of ways of achieving each objective in isolation, but an effective icebreaker will achieve all.

The trick is to design an icebreaker that grabs their attention, forces them to concentrate fully on what you are saying, but that is relevant to the topic on which you will be speaking.
Some simple tips for doing this are:

1. Make the theme of your icebreaker the same as the topic of your presentation. For instance, if your presentation is about planning, then your icebreaker should ideally relate (in some way) to planning; if your main presentation is about teambuilding, then it makes sense for your icebreaker to relate to teambuilding. Try to avoid using an icebreaker that could well grab their attention but that has no bearing on your main topic.
2. Think about what parallels could exist in peoples’ lives outside of a work context. Using our earlier example, if your icebreaker theme is “planning” (because your main presentation topic is planning) consider what instances of planning can most people relate easily to. Most people plan their holidays, they plan a day’s shopping, they plan weddings, and so on. These are day-to-day activities that everyone can easily relate to and if you build an interactive icebreaker around familiar activities, people will quickly and easily engage. A topic that people are familiar with leaves little room for confusion or misunderstanding, so people should all be “on the same page” and fully absorbed.
3. You can be as creative and adventurous as you like with your icebreaker if it is based on a topic that everyone is familiar with. You could be gentle and get delegates discussing the different approaches that each applies, what works and what doesn’t; or you could get adventurous and get them doing some role plays or simulations. You could even divide the room into groups and get each group doing something different, or competing! In general, fast paced and highly interactive icebreakers work best.
4. No matter how creative you have been, if your icebreaker theme relates directly to your main topic, the “bridge” into the serious business is a simple and logical one. A “bridge” that works well is if you summarise the key things that people did or the things that they learned from the icebreaker and (coincidentally!) these are the same key messages that your main presentation will be making!

So you’ve broken the ice and set high expectations – it’s up to you not to let them down from there on!