WHEN LIFE EMULATES AN ICEBREAKER
“We should be rigorous in judging ourselves and gracious in judging others.”―
“Authority is supposedly grounded in wisdom, but I could see from a very early age that authority was only a system of control and it didn’t have any inherent wisdom. I quickly realised that you either became a power or you were crushed.”
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Several years ago I attended a training for one of those things that I’ve been trained in over the last several years. The training kicked off with an “icebreaker.”
The room was divided into teams of 8. Each was given a bag of 6 items – maybe a piece of yarn, a marble, 2 spaghetti sticks, and a rubber band. Other bags may have a rubber ball instead of a marble, or two straws instead of the spaghetti sticks. Each group was tasked with using the items in their bag to find a solution to a common challenge in under 20 minutes.
After being given their assignment and the slimmest of details, teams lept into action. Some pursued creative efforts, while others went a more practical route. Some were focused and created highly detailed plans and some came up with the barest of plans and were content to spend most of the allotted time socializing. Some of the groups worked together as if they had been at this forever, while some were dominated by two people, or they disintegrated into a mass of disagreement – bickering at fighting among themselves.
The facilitators meanwhile walked the room, observing the participants at each table – on occasion throwing in a comment or two, an eye always on the stopwatch. Every so often they’d give a cry out, “You’ve got 12 minutes left.”
“Just so you are aware, you’ve got 5 minutes!”
After 20 minutes, time expired. Each team was asked to present their solutions. Most every team had arrived at some kind of operable solution, some more executable than others. We oohed and aahed over the good ones, and quickly dismissed the poor ones. The overseers of the challenge CONTINUE READING: WHEN LIFE EMULATES AN ICEBREAKER – Dad Gone Wild