Warm-ups that work in a room of strangers

The first five minutes of a workshop decide whether people will talk in the next two hours. I have run about thirty of them, and I have tried perhaps twenty different openers. Most were forgettable. These four stayed.

• Two truths about this morning. Everyone says one thing that went well and one thing that was annoying before they arrived. It is small enough that nobody feels exposed, and the train delays always get a laugh.
• Draw your commute. Ninety seconds, pencil, no talent required. People hold up the drawings and the room loosens, because everyone’s is equally bad.
• Name the worst version. Ask the group to describe the worst possible version of the thing you are designing. They are quick and funny about it, and the list is a decent set of constraints by the end.
• Silent start. Two minutes of writing before any speaking. This is the one I use with senior-heavy rooms.

What to avoid

I stopped doing icebreakers that require standing in a line sorted by birthday. They take eight minutes in a group of 20, and the people who dislike physical activity are visibly counting the seconds. I also stopped asking for “fun facts”, because the answers are rehearsed and tell me nothing.

A note on timing

Keep the warm-up under ten percent of the session. At Hana’s workshop in March, the opener took 25 minutes of a 90-minute slot, and we never reached the second exercise. Afterwards she said the opener was lovely. It was, and it cost us the part of the day that mattered.