Triangles

Great for demonstrating the power of self-organising teams

1. The Facilitator introduces the icebreaker as a short workshop where we’ll quickly see how collaborative we can be in a relatively short amount of time.
2. The Facilitator asks the Participants to spread themselves out randomly in a circle.
3. The Facilitator then asks the Participants to, without talking, pick two other people in the room and keep them in their heads.
4. The Facilitator then explains that the goal for each person is to now form an equilateral triangle between themselves and the two people they have chosen – no other rules apply other than not being able to talk (i.e. the Participants can put their arms out and point at the two people they’re trying to triangulate on).
5. The Facilitator then says go and starts the stopwatch.
6. Once the room has stopped moving the Facilitator stops the stopwatch and announces to the room how long the task took (normally about 1 minute).

The Facilitator then leads a discussion using questions like:

• How long would the same task have taken if I’d made one person responsible for putting you all in triangles?
• What do you think this teaches us about self-organizing groups?
• Is it important for us to always have someone in charge and how far should rules go in dictating how we collaborate?