Library of facilitation techniques

Energizers and Ice Breaker Games

Energizers, energizer games, and ice breaker activities to bring energy into the room. Get people moving, have fun, and ensure your group's energy level is up and everyone is ready to have a productive workshop or meeting with great energizer activities.

Featured Author – International Association of Facilitators

IAF is a worldwide community of facilitators promoting excellence in the use of professional group process facilitation to create engagement and impact.

IAF International Association of Facilitators
Learn more Learn more
81 results
Tina Puc

Consensus

Consensus is a fast social-negotiation game that turns group decision-making into a spectator sport. Each round puts one opinionated question on every phone with four options and a pot of points — but an option only passes on a strict majority, and if the room can't agree, nobody scores. Every player is secretly paid to steer the group toward a different option, so the room has to actually talk, bargain and build coalitions to score at all.

Tina Puc

Robo Word Finder

Robo Word Finder sits your team around a giant letter board where little robots walk the tiles, hunting hidden words together. Everyone draws from a single shared pool of letter picks, so nobody can sweep the board alone — someone spots a word, someone walks it, and the team decides together whether it's worth the picks. Quick to teach and easy to drop in, it's a short, collaborative break for a remote team, with boards in nine languages.

James Smart

Make it Rhyme!

Even with established teams, it’s important to get people into the holiday mood and encourage creativity and collaboration.

Assign people into pairs or triads and each pair/triad needs to write one pair of rhyme for the music of a popular song. In this holiday-themed version, we'll ask participants to create a version of Jingle bells.

Whatever the occasion or song, it's a nice twist if they incorporate something in the lyrics that is related to your own company and culture.

Heike Roettgers

Equilateral Triangles Collaboration

Equilateral Triangles Collaboration is an excellent conference icebreaker that highlights how large self-organizing groups can successfully collaborate without the need for stringent rules, regulations and leadership.

As an icebreaker in a workshop or conference that has ‘collaboration’ or 'self-organization' as a key theme.

Moritz  Gekeler

Rock, Paper, Scissors (Tournament)

This is a fun and loud energiser based on the well-known “Rock, Paper, Scissor” game - with a twist: the losing players become the fan of the winners as the winner advances to the next round. This goes on until a final showdown with two large cheering crowds!

It can be played with adults of all levels as well as kids and it always works! 

7