The Icebreaker in Business
Meetings are dry and repetitive. Conference presentations too rehearsed. Business development pitches tense. Then there are townhalls, webinars, company milestones, retreats, workshops and charity events. All can be helped with a strong start rather than, “How ‘bout this weather?” or “Thanks for having me” and “Good to see you!”
Icebreakers are meant to loosen up the speaker and the audience. They help create the right atmosphere. When relevant, they warm up listeners’ brains and prepare them to receive your message. The reward can be great or you may hear the air leave the room and never recover.
THE REWARD
Experienced presenters and public speakers have learned that rapport can make a potentially average interaction fruitful. A well-received icebreaker is like money in the bank. If you falter a bit along the way, you have equity with the audience.
Rapport helps persuade and convince. It connects you with the “room” by sharing similarities of experience, opinions, and values. Self-deprecation is often effective because it disarms. Of course, it has to be authentic or it will land flat.
Thanks so much for having me. Before coming on stage, I asked my colleagues for any tips or last minute advice, to a person they said, “Don’t try to be too charming, too witty or too intellectual, just be yourself.’”
Brevity is wise when it comes to an icebreaker, “Nothing ruins a Friday more than realizing it’s Tuesday.” That is short, fun and safe.
THE RISK
It’s not stand-up and it’s not about being a comedian. It is creating connection. If you don’t feel comfortable telling it to your partner or a colleague, don’t do it because many are risky and can be risqué. They tell much about the teller. Which can be good and bad.
Canned jokes are often groaners or “dad jokes” like, “Apparently, you can’t use beef stew as a computer password. It’s just not stroganoff.” That may work or it may work to roll eyes.
Too many presenters try to be Jerry Seinfeld. I saw a person at a marketing conference take the mike and ask, “Does refusing to go to the gym count as resistance training?” This question hung out there and the presenter went straight into the topic. There was no connective tissue and it was uncomfortable. The line on its own was fine but needed to fit.
So much can be found offensive because it is or due to interpretation. An icebreaker requires more than common sense given many speakers still stray into topics of gender, religion, politics, mental health and physical disease, and crime. Common sense is not so common.
Often speakers crack fun at their family and share stories of raising kids which is ownable, relatable and largely safe. A smart choice is choosing an ice breaker about public speaking. I once heard a fellow marketer choose this path.
“Public speaking is a great way to face your fears. Unless like me, your fear is public speaking, then you’re out of luck. Seriously, I’m not a great public speaker, but I’m really good at pretending I know what I’m talking about. Don’t worry I’m not going to picture you naked, I already did four times and it didn’t help. If you see my legs shaking, it’s not nervousness, I’m just practicing my interpretive dance moves.”
He delivered this so well that his actual talk was glossed over.
OTHER WAYS TO BREAK THE ICE
Icebreakers do not have to be jokes. Sharing an interesting statistic can work. They could be topic relevant or simply interesting. The idea is to get the audience warm to receiving content, “Did you know that there are more plastic flamingos in America than real ones?” This can be expanded upon, “When it comes to the real variety, few people know but flamingos actually fly and when traveling long distances, fly at night.”
Let’s say, the topic is corporate reorganization. This is not happy subject much of the time. By using a quote, it establishes credibility and provides a thought-provoking viewpoint, “Lou Gerstner turned IBM around and had an insight, “Reorganization to me is shuffling boxes, moving boxes around. Transformation means that you’re really fundamentally changing the way the organization thinks, the way it responds, the way it leads. It’s a lot more than just playing with boxes.””
Or you can simply be provocative and quote Mark Twain to kick off any business talk, “Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.” Why not mix joke and quote?, “Will Rogers once said, “Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.””
Lastly, you can choose to research and share what happened on that day in history. “Today in history was Disneyland’s opening day.” It is easy to run with this and provide associated facts, “The theme park was a victim of its own success, it ran out of food and drinks, counterfeit tickets led to unexpectedly large crowds, and shoes even got stuck in freshly laid asphalt in 100-degree California heat.”
THE LAST LINE(S)
Any icebreaker has to be natural. It says so much about the presenter. That is why I write my own. Here are three that met with success at conferences.
“The organizers of this event promised me a great deal to appear. Fantastic facilities, smart fellow speakers, and an audience of esteemed professionals from leading organizations. But they had me at the free buffet.”
“If I repeat myself throughout this presentation (handsome), it is because I learned that audiences must hear a thing (handsome) three times before they remember it (handsome). And if you want them to believe it, repeat it a few more times (handsome, handsome, handsome).”
“I’ve had the pleasure and challenge of presenting at over 100 conferences. These have taken place all over the world and only two went poorly. There was the one about five years ago and this one. Well, now that I’ve set your expectations, let’s begin.”
