The Big Book of Icebreakers: Quick, Fun Activities for Energizing Meetings and Workshops [Paperback]

Edie West (Author)

Book Description

Series: Big Book Series | Publication Date: October 1, 1999

Leading a meeting? giving a presentation? Heading a workshop? Icebreakers are great for lightening up the atmosphere at the beginning of a meeting or event, and encouraging everyone to participate fully. This collection of 50 icebreakers is organized around common business situations and is designed to help leaders start every session, meeting, presentation, or workshop with a burst of energy and fun. Includes icebreakers for sales meetings, team building, complete strangers, introducing a topic, staff meetings, groups over 20, outdoor settings, and more. this latest book in the popular Big Book of Business Games series is the most fun yet!

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Get meetings off to a great start! Icebreakers are a great way to warm up to large groups, encourage shy individuals to participate more fully, add color to boring staff meetings, and bring together people who are complete strangers. In fact, icebreakers are effective in just about any group situation. The trick is in knowing which ones are best for a given situation. That's where this book can help. It contains 65 proven and effective icebreakers that participants will enjoy and respond to, while at the same time matching each activity to the appropriate occassion. Discover stimulating ways to: generate interest in a presentation or training topic; inject enthusiasm into sales meetings; bring cohesiveness and a shared sense of purpose to large groups; break down barriers between strangers; re-energize groups on the brink of boredom; stimulate creative team thinking. No matter what the challenge or how tough the audience, this book will enable you to create the atmosphere you need to get the job done!

About the Author

Edie West (Fairfax Station, VA) is a trainer and speaker. She also creates and markets products for speakers, teachers, facilitators, and trainers that engage the audience in listening and learning. Edie is the author of 201 Icebreakers.

Product Details

• Paperback: 227 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (October 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071349847
• ISBN-13: 978-0071349840
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #83,203 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #67 in Books > Business & Investing > Management & Leadership > Training
  • #87 in Books > Business & Investing > Skills > Running Meetings & Presentations

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars reveiw by hands-on trainer, September 8, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Big Book of Icebreakers: Quick, Fun Activities for Energizing Meetings and Workshops (Paperback)

This book is packed with icebreakers, but I personally wouldn't use most of them. They border on the "touchy-feely" side, and will only work if your audience is open to that type of activity.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Inventive but is it practical?, July 21, 2003

By 

John Harpur (Trim, Meath, IRELAND) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Big Book of Icebreakers: Quick, Fun Activities for Energizing Meetings and Workshops (Paperback)

My first observation on this book is that it is focused on the large group not the small group. However, the rationale for some of the large group focus seems to flow entirely from a preoccupation with dividing large groups into smaller groups and then applying tasks or games to these subgroups. If you have never thought about working with groups this book may be of some use, but by and large I judged many of the examples were impractical in terms of the time and resources needed to get deploy them.

My key reservation about these icebreaker books is that they are written more to help the presenter break the ice rather than any presumed intra-audience barriers.

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hot Icebreakers, March 29, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Big Book of Icebreakers: Quick, Fun Activities for Energizing Meetings and Workshops (Paperback)

There are so many great ways to get a group started with this book. It's perfect for the people who are inactive and very active. From get-to-know-games to every-day-fun. This book covers business meetings, weekly meetings, workshops, and almost every other type of get-together. The groups sizes go from small to huge. I would definitly recommend this book for any coordinator or leader. Enjoy and have fun!