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Monday, May 2, 2011

Milli Vanilli, Goats and Hot-Dog truck drivers- corny or clever?




I swear I'd talk to a wall if it would talk back, so I rarely need an ice-breaker.  Sweaty palms and that "cat's got your tongue" feeling is unknown to me.  However, I do realize that we are all different, so at my first  Battle of the Burgers committee meeting, I decided to do an ice-breaker exercise at this meeting.  Now, these said ice-breakers usually annoy me for the first 10 min of most meetings, well, because they are usually really boring...and I never really felt anymore connected to "Hi, I am Jack and I am from Maryland".   So are 6 million other folks, Jack...wow, we have so much in common.  I have a nose too, Jack- does that makes us connected?  Maybe I am a bit harsh, but I just never did an ice-breaker that was beneficial.....until the other day...

I asked guest to state the usual...name, work, where they are from..and then, I asked them to recount one interesting and or embarrassing fact, keyword:interesting and/or embarrassing.

I then started strategically because I knew the first person to "go" would set the tone.  I praised that person for revealing that she was a professional "back-end fender bender", having back-ended a slew of cars in her days of driving.  This set the tone:  positive praise for embarrassing facts.

Other fun things I learned:
1. one girl drove a Oscar Meyer-like hot dog truck
2. someone lost 70lbs- very AMAZING
3. someone actually partied with MIlLI Vanilli!

So, moral of the story:  embarrassing/interesting facts bond us together... we all felt a bit connected through sharing laughs and smiles about how weird we all are.

PS- I had a pet goat named Sylvester when I was 7...and he ate dog food.

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