A well-chosen selection of fun leadership games, team-building exercises, and icebreakers that get high school leaders up and moving is an invaluable part of any activity director’s arsenal.  The right activity can break up the monotony of your class, work as a topic lead-in for your important leadership lessons, and create meaningful bonds among your student government.  However, even the best group games depend on the skill of the game leader.

After 17 years, being involved with youth leadership conferences and classes,  I’ve discovered what it takes to make a group game work and am excited to pass it on to you.  Just use these simple secrets and you’ll be leading games like a pro!

Safety First!!       

Keep your games safe!  Just since it sounded fun on the internet, doesn’t mean that it’s the right game for your group.   Use your common sense and be safety minded.  NEVER introduce an icebreaker game that will make others uncomfortable – physically or mentally.

Play With A Purpose

Get to know me games are a great way to ease students through the discomfort that comes with getting to know strangers.  However, don’t miss the opportunity to include valuable lessons into your fun.   Pick games that purposefully demonstrate communication skills, team-building, empathy, and other student leadership qualities instead of letting those teachable moments pass you by.

Make Your Explanations Clear

Keep your games simple!  Every rule you add is just one more obstacle between you and the success of your games.  When giving the instructions, don’t assume they understand you.  If possible, write them down for clarity, give an example, or bring a couple of students up to do a demonstration.

Keep Things Moving 

Don’t spend too much time on any one game.  Icebreakers that take longer than 15-minutes quickly lose their momentum!  Advancing through two or three shorter high-action games related to your teaching topic is best.  Pay attention to the participants to make sure that they’re having fun.  If your game just isn’t working – move on to another.

Involve Everyone

Don’t force people to participate.  However, both students and adults should be encouraged to join in the activities, or at least show respect by paying attention.  Advisors and student helpers socializing or texting during your session will quickly kill the team-building energy you’re trying to create.   Casually enlist your inattentive lurkers to partner up in for next game expressing that you could really use their help.

Follow Up With Discussion

At the end of your games, gather your student leaders for a discussion on the leadership skills that were just demonstrated through their play.  Don’t expect your students to get ‘the lesson’ just by playing the game without an explanation as to how it relates to your topic.     Have questions ready to act as a guide, but let your student leaders take the lead and talk about their “Aha!” moments.

• • • •

That’s it!   Over the next several days I will be adding an online collection of my favorite quick yet effective leadership games complete with directions and follow-up discussion questions.  Look for them under the blog category Play With Purpose.   Let me know if you like ’em and I’ll keep adding.  If you have any favorite energizer that you think readers would enjoy, additional discussion questions, or requests, please send them along to me.

Oh one last tip:  Remember, they’re just games… so have fun!

Do you remember going to an event where you never left your seat or exited the event without getting to know the name of the person sitting in front of you? If yes, then the event planners may have not paid enough heed to the icebreakers!

An effective and engaging way to start a public speaking event, training sessions, and team-building activities; icebreakers are the ‘hook’ to grip an audience. Not only do they push the event off to a great start, but icebreakers also prove instrumental in getting the audience to know each other, to get acquainted with the objectives of the event, to keep them captivated throughout the proceedings and encourage their participation to the purpose of the event, which contributes to a successful outcome.

When should icebreakers be used?

Just as the name suggests, they should be used whenever you need to “break the ice” within the audience at an event or a meeting. An icebreaker is often used when people from different professional or cultural backgrounds, who may possibly not know each other at all, meet for a common purpose. The icebreaking activities should aim to quickly bond the people towards the event goal, uplift the comfort levels in a newly formed team, throw hints about the upcoming topics of the session, and get the facilitator, or the speaker, and the participants to know each other better.

What to use and where?

An icebreaker activity designed to kick start a high school motivational talk, would be certainly different from one targeted at a professional audience. Make sure to design the activity that is appropriate to the target audience and pertinent to the objective of the meeting. While a Human Bingo may offer a mighty kick off to a student’s networking event; beginning with a short quiz or by stating some relevant news or facts may be more suitable for professional environments. Some popular and effective icebreakers include:

A ‘Raise Your Hand’ round:

This versatile activity works well for any event, corporate or casual, and stimulates the energy level as the audience raises their hands in response to different questions or audience polls.

The Hook:

Start a story but don’t finish it! As your audience gets captivated by the events, stop by saying, “I’ll get back to this towards the end.” This will keep them engaged till the end of the session.

Two Truths, One Lie:

An interactive activity for introduction, this generally works well with smaller groups but can also be effectively employed by selecting random participants to discreetly tell three facts about themselves, of which two should be true and one a lie. The audience keeps guessing the lie in a poll until the participant reveals it.

Brainstorm and Problem Solving:

Tried and tested, these universal icebreakers can either be used to start an event or in the middle, to boost the energy level and creativity of the participants. Get the group organized into smaller teams and assign a simple problem scenario for them to brainstorm and work out in a short time. Each group should then be asked to present their solutions to the other teams. This activity can be used to potentially go through multiple topics in a short span of time.

When designing your icebreaker, it is important to remember that while a good icebreaker can make a successful event, a poor one can break the entire tempo. While activities may always come in handy to mobilize the audience and keep them keyed up, starting off with a joke or an interesting quote may also work as an effective icebreaker to give your audience a promising impression of the event.