I don’t like Icebreakers. You know, the “fun” activity at the beginning of a meeting when someone throws me a beach ball and I answer a random question about myself. No thank you. While I appreciate the energy and creativity that often go into these well-intentioned activities, I hope the meeting’s purpose is strong and important enough that spending 30 minutes hearing what animal people think is most like them is not really worth the time. If the meeting’s purpose is not that important, maybe it could have been an email.

However, and this is a big however, I do believe in the importance of a relational opener to a meeting. A relational opener is something to place us in the room, or the zoom, that centers us on our work together….

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