Workshop Exercises: Ice-breakers
Personal Histories
Build trust between team members by letting them demonstrate vulnerability
Why: Boost collaboration and understanding by providing a safe opportunity to be vulnerable in a low-risk environment
When: When a lack of trust among team members potentially harms their performance
Instructions for running this play
- Introduce the exercise and explain its purpose of building trust among team members.
- Have each participant answer the following 3 questions in turns.
- Where did you grow up?
- How many siblings do you have and where do you fall in that order?
- Which was the hardest or the most important event or challenge that you overcame in my childhood?
- Debrief. Ask team members to share what they learned about one another that they didn’t already.
Tips to perfect this play
Master and adapt the play to fit your context and needs.
Tip
Do a toned down variation of the exercise if you are more comfortable doing so. The exercise can also be done in steps. However, the true magic comes from sharing personal events.
Tip: Builds trust
This exercise is a perfect warm up before embarking on exercises where trust is a prerequisite.
Tip: Pick theme
Choose specific themes like team values, project aspects, or skills to focus on during different radar sessions
Tip: Go anonymous
Provide an option for anonymous inputs to encourage honest feedback, particularly for sensitive topics
Every card deck includes workshop patterns, so your team can put the methods to work in your next session.
Running behavioral design workshops? The Persuasive Patterns Workshop Playbook (PDF) shows you how to design and run them.
Browse the card decksRelated plays
- Personal Histories Exercise
- Patrick Lencioni’s Personal Histories Exercise by Steve Simpson and Stef du Plessis