Maestro! An Icebreaker, Please!

Transcription

1 Maestro! An Icebreaker, Please! I was recently asked to facilitate a fun and energizing one-hour icebreaker for a weekend meeting retreat with 60 participants. While I had used HRDQ s Maestro with several small groups in the past, I had never delivered it to such a large audience. But with some minor modifications, the game was a big success! Participants thoroughly enjoyed the activity, and many of them made comments afterwards, such as I ve never laughed so hard and I got to know everyone very quickly. Maestro was a huge hit for my audience, bar none. Here s how you can adapt it for your training. by Gary Turner

2 Materials: Preparation: Maestro: The Team Performance Game 1 name tag per participant 1 table per team (recommend 4-8 people per team) Table sign for each table 1 table for the bells Score cards for 3 judges, numbered 1-10 Flip chart One week before the meeting, secretly recruit three participants to serve as judges on the day of the activity. Choose them based on their potential to be good sports and play along. Explain to them that they will be judges in an American Idol or Dancing with the Stars type of game, and their task is to give teams feedback after their musical performances. The catch? They must make funny, sarcastic, and outrageous comments - similar to what someone like Simon Cowell might say. Give each judge a list of participants as well as the song titles so that they have time prepare some comments in advance of the activity. In addition to the three judges, also choose an assistant to help you during the exercise.

3 Room Set-Up: One round table for each team. Use signs to number each table or leave them blank and allow teams to create a name for their ensemble. One rectangular table at the head of the room for the bells and the baton. This is where teams will perform in front of the audience. One Leader Board scoreboard on a flipchart. Create a table showing the number or name of each ensemble (team) down the side and Performance 1, Performance 2, and Total across the top. Three sets of judge s scorecards, numbered Getting Started: Give each person a name tag, especially if the participants have never met. Start the activity by choosing an assistant and three judges from the audience. These are the same participants who were quietly selected and notified the week before the meeting, and they will know to play along. Divide the audience into equal teams of 4-8 participants each. Introduce the activity, explaining that each team will be asked to perform a song in front of the audience using only sheet music, a set of bells, and their own creative talents. They will have time to practice with sheet music before the performance, but they won t have access to the bells until that time.

4 Round 1 Performance Give each team one sheet of music (included with the Maestro game kit.) Tell them that they must choose a maestro to conduct the ensemble and that they have only five minutes to prepare for their performance. At the end of the five minutes, have the assistant collect the sheet music and ask the teams to be silent. Starting with Team # 1, ask each ensemble to come to the front of the room, where the bells are located, and give the maestro the baton. Ask the participants to introduce themselves and encourage applause to build excitement. Give the team 15 seconds to warm up. Now each team has 15 seconds to perform their song. Follow the same routine for the remaining teams, offering a healthy dose of enthusiastic applause following each performance. If teams were unable to play their songs correctly (many won t), turn to the judges and ask them to sing it if they recognize the tune. (They will already know the songs because they ve had time to review the sheet music in advance.) The audience will be amazed at how easily the judges identify the song and this will create a lot of laughter and excitement in the room. Judging After each performance, ask the judges to give their feedback to the team and to shout out the score. Make sure the judges are intentionally inconsistent with their ratings. For instance, one judge should rate the performance a 2, another should give it a 10, and so forth. Add the scores together and post them on the Leader Board under Performance 1. The audience will find it confusing and funny! Note: Give the last team the highest score so they are the leader going into Round #2. This is intentional and important to the second performance.

5 Round 2 Performance Ask the assistant to distribute a new song sheet to each team. Repeat the same steps from Round #1. You ll probably notice that the teams have a lot more fun this time, adding all sorts fun embellishments and humor to their presentations. Judging Again, ask the judges to give their feedback to each team and to be boisterous with the scoring. But This time there is a catch, and only you and the judges will know about it in advance. The scores are planned. The last team should enter Round #2 as the leaders. But at this point, all of the other teams should be tied when the scores from Rounds 1 and 2 are combined. This will create a lot of suspense, and the teams will begin to wonder how this has happened. As the host of the game, make a big deal that the teams are tied but also note that it won t be difficult for the last team to win given their initial lead. Regardless of the quality of their performance, ask the judges to score the last team very low. They can make up stories to justify why they didn t award more points, such as breaking the rules or other convincing stories, etc. In the end, the last team should lose the contest by just one or two points. The audience will be shocked and it creates a lot of chitter-chatter.

6 Observations Results and Feedback The audience was relatively quiet during Round 1 until the judges offered their feedback on the performances. Participants started to have a lot of fun with their Round 2 performances. For instance, one gentleman pretended to play while dancing and making funny facial expressions. Everyone expected the last team to win because they were in the lead going into Round 2, and the close loss created a lot of discussion amongst the audience. With a little creativity, a sense of humor, and HRDQ s Maestro game, I was able to facilitate an effective training exercise. I could tell from the energy in the room that the icebreaker was a success, and many people made comments, such as: I ve never laughed so hard. I got to know everyone very quickly. It was more fun than anything we could have done. I highly recommend trying this approach as a large group icebreaker. Let go and have fun! Gary Turner Turner Consulting An award-winning trainer and consultant, Gary Turner has over 30 years of professional experience with major corporations such as M&M Mars, Aramark, and AT&T. He has been a requested speaker at conventions of ASTD, Association for Quality and Participation, College and University Personnel Association, the International Collaborative Organizations Conference, and at annual meetings for companies around the world. Gary holds two Master s degrees, one in Communication from the University of Nebraska and another in History from Abilene Christian University. He earned his Bachelor s degree from Harding University. Among his awards and distinctions, he has been a judge for the International Team Excellence Award since 1997, and was the leader of the Veterans Administration project team that won the first Reinventing Government Hammer Award. Make Maestro part of your training!