Sociometric Introduction

Sociometric Introduction

See also the page on the |KS Toolkit An icebreaker that is useful for many sized groups.People have a first opportunity to talk, to connect, to discover diversity and more. Everybody is involved and is in constant movement. You can do that with groups between 15-500 persons (not everybody needs to talk) and always takes abou 30-45 minutes.

Detailed Description

I prepare 3-4 sets of 4 signs. Each set contains 4 possible answers to a question. Eg.:

Question 1: What do you expect from this workshop? Answer 1a: I want to learn new things about xyz Answer 1b: I want to share my own experience on xyz Answer 1c: I want to meet like-minded people who work on similar issues Answer 1d: I want to have an interesting week away from my work place

Question 2: How do you feel in this moment? I am critical, sceptical I am curious, expectant I am cautious, neutral I am excited, fascinated

Obviously there are countless possibilities, adapted to the situation and the task.

Now you put 4 persons in the 4 corners of the room with the first set of answers, you ask the question and ask persons to position themselves next to the answer that applies most to them (they can obviously also stand in between). Then you go as a facilitator to each group and just pick 2-3 persons per group who quickly introduce themselves and then explain why they have chosen this answer. You repeat this with 3-4 rounds of questions and each time ask other persons, who in some way talk "on behalf" of the group they stand in.

There are other possibilities, for example once we had 6 pictures of different ships, from a race sailing boat to a container ship, from a tug to a fishing boat - and we asked to stand next to the picture that best represents their organisation.

Examples in Application

[One or a few practical examples and references that illustrate the topic or show how it is done in practice]

Related FAQs

• Icebreakers
• See also human spectrogram/Land and Sea activity

[1]

Original Author and Subsequent Contributors of this FAQ

From a post by Marc Steinlin

Nancy White

Dates of First Creation and Further Revisions

October 24, 2008

FAQ KM4Dev Source Materials

Cheers, -marc