Icebreaker

In the past, icebreakers at work were easy. "Say your name, your department, and one interesting thing about you --" and boom, born with an extra thumb, on to the next person. 

Ice breakers are harder now, because we have zoom meetings every day, and the extra thumb has very little impact after the first time, so we have fifteen minute debate topics.

Cake or pie? (Pie won by a slim margin.)

Thanksgiving: Buy or bake? (Fifty-fifty.)

Nina or Pirate? (There was no debate, we were all Ninjas.)

Given that the daily meetings are only 30 minutes long, I thought it was odd they devoted half the given time to Would You Rather Fly a Dragon or Be A Dragon (fly), and I was initially impatient.

After six months, it dawned on me that it was actually beneficial to begin the day arguing. If I start the day telling Joe he's a fool for preferring cake, it's much easier to say "I think you are also wrong about the placement of the copyright on that PDF" at the end of the day. 

Are they doing this on purpose? I don't know. I suspect they are. Perhaps we could debate that when we are all back from Thanksgiving break.

Comments

[KC]

Yeeeep. I would bet that's a sneaky trick to improve work and team function (also possibly morale and human connection more generally). A good sneaky trick, I would note, since it's not saying it's something else, not the bad kind of sneaky trick.

(group dynamics - and what improves them or tanks them for a specific set of humans: fascinating stuff! But most "how to do this" books for managers or leaders assume that all humans are baaasically interchangeable cogs, which both doesn't work out in practice and defeats the purpose [because, unsurprisingly, most people do worse if managers start thinking of them as interchangeable cogs])

Hard to think of any positives that pirates have over ninjas, really, except maybe for people who like rum and aren't night owls... sometimes the clothes are appealing, I guess?

[TheQueen]

KC - they did mention team-building. I'm probably giving them credit for an unintended consequence.

[KC]

Well, I mean, finding it easier to communicate with each other as necessary, whether or not it feels "nice" to say something that needs to be said, *is* a positive team thing that should be built where lacking (and suppressed where it is overabundant, I suspect)...

[TheQueen]

KC - there's been a shift in our area - all things are to be said out out loud now. Works for me.

[KC]

*All* things is maybe a bit much, but yes, it's healthier than a culture of exclusively having implications and silent frustrations but no statements... although it also works better for some people than others, and I am glad it at least works for you.

[TheQueen]

KC - many people are not comfortable with it.

[KC]

The thing is, what we're comfortable with is not always the same as what actually works (see also: surgery, etc.); I'm more comfortable with Avoiding Conflict in general, but that bites you hard later, so... yeah. Uncomfortable outspoken honesty is the way to go. Some of the time, anyway; sometimes "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" is actually the more functional option. But if not-saying-things is meaning that things are ending up hidden under a rug or otherwise stuffed in an unsustainable location: time to say things, Probably.

But having to deal with both ends of abrupt plain speaking is really scary for many people, so there is that. But: under a rug: no good.

[TheQueen]

KC - our company claims to speak with candor and respect, but we've been leaving too hard on respect. Not me, of course, I had to take a class to learn to be candid and respectful at the same time.

[KC]

Hard to hit both of those, yes. We like to swing one way or the other.