---
title: Warm-ups that work in a room of strangers
date: 2025-01-21
description: Three-minute openers I use when I facilitate a workshop with people who have never met.
tags: [facilitation, meetings]
---

The first five minutes of a workshop decide whether people will talk in the next two hours. I have run about thirty of them, and I have tried perhaps twenty different openers. Most were forgettable. These four stayed.

- **Two truths about this morning.** Everyone says one thing that went well and one thing that was annoying before they arrived. It is small enough that nobody feels exposed, and the train delays always get a laugh.
- **Draw your commute.** Ninety seconds, pencil, no talent required. People hold up the drawings and the room loosens, because everyone's is equally bad.
- **Name the worst version.** Ask the group to describe the worst possible version of the thing you are designing. They are quick and funny about it, and the list is a decent set of constraints by the end.
- **Silent start.** Two minutes of writing before any speaking. This is the one I use with senior-heavy rooms.

## What to avoid

I stopped doing icebreakers that require standing in a line sorted by birthday. They take eight minutes in a group of 20, and the people who dislike physical activity are visibly counting the seconds. I also stopped asking for "fun facts", because the answers are rehearsed and tell me nothing.

## A note on timing

Keep the warm-up under ten percent of the session. At Hana's workshop in March, the opener took 25 minutes of a 90-minute slot, and we never reached the second exercise. Afterwards she said the opener was lovely. It was, and it cost us the part of the day that mattered.