Hot take: what if we never use the word "icebreaker" again, and instead replace it with "party game?"
I'd much rather kick off an event with a party game than an icebreaker!
Here's my top 5 favorite party games to get people laughing and connecting:
RoShamBo War. Everyone pairs up and plays a game of Rock Paper Scissors and the loser cheers on the winner to their next opponent. The winner then looks for another winner to play. The loser cheers on the winner. And so on until the entire room has erupted in cheering for the final grand champion. This experience adds such a fun energy to the beginning of the meeting that you sure as heck had better have a fun rest of the day planned!
Nuts and Bolts. Are you willing to get a little risque? With a variety of sizes and shapes of bolts and nuts, every attendee grabs one random one and all attendees must navigate the room attempting to find their match! SO MUCH LAUGHTER in this one!
Speed dating. It's very 2000s, but it still works! Two rows of chairs facing each other. Participants in one row move one way and the other move the opposite direction. Each person gets 90 seconds to say their name, company, and one problem they're trying to solve while they're at the event and one thing they are an expert at. After the full 3 minutes, each person shifts chairs for the next round. This is awesome to kick an event off because it gets to the heart of everyone's main networking goal for the event.
Crowdsourcing. Invite participants to grab a marker and large post-it note and write a challenge they are currently trying to solve. Then invite everyone to look at the "wall of woes" and if they've solved that problem, write their name on it. Leave this wall up as long as you can during the event to help people connect over solutions. Much like Speed Dating, this gets everyone to share what problem they're trying to solve and connects them with the people who can solve it.
Birthday parties. Participants must find all the people born in their same birth month and form parties (groups) for their month. People LOVE finding their birthday twins! Bonus: if you believe in horoscopes, now you can size everyone up. :-D
And my 5 least favorite:
Two truths and a lie. I don't get this game. It's dumb and no fun.
Human scavenger hunt. These are too transactional and not helpful for networking. Cool, you found another person born in October. So now what?
Questions on name badges. It's awkward, feels uncomfortable and forced.
Would you rather. My daughter asks me these questions all the time and they are impossible scenarios! I don't know how this could possibly be useful as an icebreaker.
Guess who. Participants write an obscure fact and people have to guess who it belongs to. This can be fun, but it can be very uncomfortable for people who don't wish to share personal information about themselves.
What's your favorite party game to kick off an event?
As to the "Ice..." word that shall not be spoken: We've successfully used a trading-card game at our Welcome Party. Each attendee receives an envelope with 12 to 18 trading cards inside – all the same. If they want to collect the entire set (and surprisingly our guests do), they have to trade with others who have different cards. For our 18th anniversary, we did a "Class of 2009" alumni theme, and the images on the cards were high-school graduation photos of well-known people in our field. The backs of the cards offered clues as to who the person might be. And each of these people were in the room with a Sharpee; they signed hundreds of autographs. We've used…