Why you need to put out a red carpet for your collaboration session
(all about ice breakers)
Did you see actor Timothée Chalamet wearing a halter top on the red carpet at the Venice film festival? Or actor Daniel Craig wearing a pink velvet tuxedo jacket at a Bond film premiere? Vulnerability on the red carpet, believe it or not, is a useful idea for a collaboration session.
Whenever you’re bringing people together to collaborate using intentional techniques (as opposed to typical meetings), you’re asking people to step out of their routines. To step into a creative, productive experience.
For that reason, you want a strong start to the session. You want a red carpet. Then, you want your participants to walk this red carpet together. Does that sound more glamorous than an ice breaker? Yes, but it's the same idea.
Walking the metaphorical red carpet together, exposing themselves together, creates interaction and empathy. This connection, in turn, creates a common experience, a form of psychological safety and it prepares people to work together.
‘Ice breakers’ have a bad rap as being cringe-worthy or embarrassing. But, if the ice breaker does its job of engaging people emotionally and creating a shared vulnerability, then a small amount of unease is natural. Icebreakers/red carpets don’t have to be enjoyable to be effective. And you’re not asking them to wear halter tops, after all!
Despite people’s negative reactions, evidence shows that ice breakers work. For example, if people don’t speak in the first few minutes of a meeting, they are much less likely to speak at all. That’s especially true for women. Telling about an embarrassing moment, compared to sharing a moment of pride, ahead of a brainstorming session leads to more creativity, because people drop their inhibitions for more creativity (embarrassment is already out of the way).
Ice breakers get everyone participating quickly in a low stakes way. But you have to choose from among many possible ice breaker. Pick one that fits the available time and connects to the purpose of the session. With any ice breaker it’s important to give people time individually (usually between 2-5 minutes—with opportunity to jot down, or draw, responses on paper first) to prepare their red carpet moment.
Possible red carpets:
One word that sums up how you are feeling about the session
What’s one of your current hobbies or activities outside work?
What was your first job, and what did you learn from it?
What’s an item on your person (or with you) and what does it mean to you?
Draw your neighbour, show and explain one or two highlights
Make a personal ‘trading card’ with your picture and name, then trade cards a few times and have each person shows and read out the card they have
What dish would you cook for the group and why?
Have you tried putting out the red carpet for your collaboration participants? Comment on how it went.