Whether you’re organizing a presentation, meeting, lecture or other type of gathering, there’s a universal underlying goal: Engage your audience. You want people to tune into whatever is happening, so they connect to the content at hand and retain key takeaways. This is true whether you’re delivering a biology lecture to a class of 300 college students or a keynote speech for thousands at a technology conference. It’s also true if you’re facilitating a more modest meeting for your department at work. The bottom line is that the success of your event depends heavily on the level of participant engagement.
Starting your event with icebreaker questions will help kick things off in a spirit of collaboration and active participation. Here are six reasons why this strategy works:
#1: Introduce Strangers to One Another
Some events bring literal strangers together for a shared experience. Ideally, you want people to leave the room feeling more connected to other participants than when they entered it. In this sense, icebreakers are great for, well, breaking the ice.
Here’s what one expert writes for The Balance Careers, “When participants are strangers, an icebreaker is a comfortable, simple way to make introductions, help people start communicating and sharing thoughts, and generally, warm up the room.” These activities give people a common focus from which they can strike up conversations and build genuine connections with those around them.
#2: Strengthen Existing Relationships
Even if attendees have been introduced before, it never hurts to brush up those connections—and give participants the chance to learn something new about their acquaintances. Team-building is not something that occurs once; human bonds require strengthening over time. Kicking off a meeting, class session or conference with an icebreaker helps people feel like part of the group and view the people around them in a novel way.
#3: Engage Your Audience
Icebreaker questions, like these from Poll Everywhere, are naturally engaging. People typically enjoy contributing their unique points of view. Using interactive audience response technology allows participants to instantly see the similarities and differences between themselves and other people. There’s also the engaging nature of using a mobile device to answer, then getting to watch the results update in real time. An icebreaker gives event attendees an active role to play, which helps them focus more readily on the tasks at hand.
#4: Transition Between Topics/Sessions
Have you ever eaten a meal that contained a palate cleanser? Foods like sorbet, pickled ginger, fruit, creamy liquids, plain breads, etc. help diners transition between strong flavors, preparing them for the bite ahead. Well, icebreakers can function in a similar manner, providing a quick mental reset to help audience members move from one activity into the next.
#5: Think Outside the Box
The icebreaker questions you choose can be as straightforward or as zany as you want them to be. It’s a great chance to get creative, asking people questions they wouldn’t usually encounter. This helps audience members think outside the box, serving as a great warm-up for whatever activity comes next.
As one PR professional notes, imaginative icebreakers to segue into a brainstorming session “help refocus the group from the hectic demands of their workday to a calm, mind-expanding setting where ideas can take root and thrive.” Icebreakers get people thinking differently, in a good way.
#6: Have Fun
As you’re putting together your presentation, event or lecture, don’t forget to leave some room for fun. Bringing people together with good conversation and laughter isn’t a diversion; it really strengthens the overall impactfulness of your efforts.
These six reasons illustrate the myriad benefits of starting an event with icebreaker questions rather than launching right into the “meat” of your session.
