At team meetings I very often like to start with an ice breaker.
As well as it literally helping to ‘break the ice’ and make people feel more comfortable and relaxed and willing to participate, there is usually a serious point to it.
At one particular meeting I started it off by talking about the Winnie the Pooh books.
I genuinely find these books to be full of good advice, great self-esteem building and some wonderful one liners.
Example: Winnie the Pooh’s response to Piglet when Piglet asks how to spell ‘love.’
“You don’t spell love, you feel it.”
After we had had a light hearted discussion on the characters and their personality traits, I went round the room and asked them to say what they considered themselves to be:
An Eeyore or a Tigger.
As one of the words in my team mantra is FUN, I was of course hoping for 100% Tiggers.
All was going well with everyone entering into the spirit of the exercise, until we came to one particular person where the response came:
“I’m not playing your silly games Mo!”
I think at that point we knew the answer to the question!