Posts tagged icebreaker
10 Questions To Ask Your Loved Ones In the New Year
10 Questions To Ask Your Loved Ones In the New Year

The “New Year Season” is one that can be rife with mixed emotions, reactions, and approaches. Some may feel excitement at the chance to start with a fresh slate, some may find themselves engaging in self-criticism as they set their new year’s resolutions, and others may disregard the idea of the time construct and the marker of a new year entirely. Engaging in discourse with loved ones about their viewpoints, emotions, and plans for the new year can be an incredible way to connect more deeply. You’ll learn more about them and their perspective on life while getting the chance to reflect on what you want this next year to look like together, and how you may support each other in that. Conversations about the new year can be triggering for some - so approaching these conversations with meaningful questions that omit judgment and leave space for a range of experiences and thoughts is of the utmost importance. Try out the questions below, and see how much more connected you feel to your loved one going into the new year!

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Ashley Kirsnericebreaker, icebreakers, icebreakers for friends, icebreakers for your friends, icebreakers for your family, icebreakers for your loved ones, icebreakers for new year, new year, 2023, new years, new year 2023, mental health, mindfulness, meaningful conversation, meaningful conversations, meaningful questions, connect with friends, connect with family, feel closer to friends Comment
Zoom Icebreakers
Zoom Icebreakers

We’ve fielded a lot of requests lately for Zoom icebreakers, virtual icebreakers, and online team icebreakers, so we thought we’d share some good icebreakers for Zoom office check-ins, virtual friend/family reunions, and pretty much any other online gathering of humans you may find yourself in. We hope you’ll discover at least an icebreaker or two that’s appropriate for whatever occasion has you logging onto a video chat!

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Ashley Kirsnerzoom icebreakers, fun icebreakers, icebreaker, icebreakers, team icebreakers, team icebreaker, good icebreakers, good icebreaker, best icebreakers, best icebreakerComment
Icebreakers that don't suck
Icebreakers that don't suck

Chances are, you have at least one memory of rolling your eyes at a forced “icebreaker activity,” or maybe you’ve led an icebreaker activity that led everyone in the room to emotionally “check out” for a bit. It can feel mortifying to be on either side of a poorly executed icebreaker activity, so whether you’ve been the eye-roller or the eye-rollee, it’s a totally common thing to happen, and you’re definitely not the first. It’s hard to come up with great icebreakers, and even harder to deliver them well! So here are some tips that’ll help you avoid that dreaded silence.

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Ashley Kirsnericebreaker questions, icebreaker for office, icebreakers for office, icebreakers that don't suck, icebreaker that doesn't suck, icebreakers, icebreaker, office icebreaker, office icebreakers Comment
Icebreaker questions you can use anywhere
Icebreaker questions you can use anywhere

Whether you need an icebreaker for a classroom, boardroom, or living room, we’ve got you covered. Here are some options that get people to open up without making them feel like they’ve been put on the spot.

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Ashley Kirsnericebreaker, icebreakers, icebreaker question, icebreaker questions, icebreaker questions for work, work, icebreaker questions for party, party, icebreaker questions for school, icebreaker questions for kids, get to know you questions, questions, questions to ask, questions to ask on mother's day, awkward silence, awward, awkward, socially awkward, social awkwardness, awkward silences Comment
10 Questions to ask your S.O. (or other loved ones) on Valentine's Day
10 Questions to ask your S.O. (or other loved ones) on Valentine's Day

As if figuring out what to do on Valentine’s Day isn’t hard enough, a lot of us have some additional pandemic-related parameters this year. So, we’ve come up with ideas for how to have a low-key but meaningful Valentine’s Day at home with your partner. (BONUS: If you’re not with a partner, you can absolutely pick and choose whatever pieces of this feel right to do with a friend or other loved one— we’ve even put together some adapted question prompts at the end of this to ask your friends, family, and other close people).

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Ashley Kirsnericebreaker, icebreakers, icebreaker questions, icebreaker prompts, Valentine's, Day, Valentine's Day, S.O., relationships, relationship advice, relationship tips, cheap Valentine's Day, easy Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day ideas, Quarantine Valentine's Day ideas, Quarantine Valentine's Day, Pandemic, pandemic, pandemic Valentine's Day ideas, questions to ask your boyfriend, questions to ask your girlfriend, questions to ask your partner, what should i do on Valentine's Day, cheap Valentine's Day ideas, easy Valentine's Day ideas, love, date ideas, date idea, what to do on Valentine's Day, questions for Valentine's Day, icebreakers for Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day icebreakers, Valentine's Day friends, friends, friend, what to do on Valentine's Day with a friend, how to spend Valentine's Day with a friend, spending Valentine's Day with a friend, Casper ter Kuile, ritual, rituals, Skip the Small TAlk, Skip the Small Talk, skip the small talk, blog, blog post, skip the small talk blog post, skip the small talk blog, questions, question prompts, dating questions, questions to ask on a date, questions to ask your wife, questions to ask your husband, questions to ask your firends, questions to ask your friends, questions to ask your husband on valentine's day, questions to ask your wife on valentine's day, questions to ask your husband for valentine's day, questions to your wife for valentine's day, questions to ask your friends on valentine's day, questions to as your friends for valentine's day, questions to ask on valentine's day, valentine's day icebreakers, icebreakers for valentine's day Comment
10 questions to ask your mom on Mother's Day
10 questions to ask your mom on Mother's Day

Mother’s Day can be a great excuse to connect with a woman who helped raise you. Of course, everyone has a different relationship with their mother (we’d love to take this opportunity to remind you of our article on metaconversations in case you think it’d be helpful to tweak something in your relationship with your mom), but for those of you who want to take the chance to get closer to the matriarch in your life, we’ve put together some questions to help create meaningful conversations that you might not have had with her before. Feel free to pick and choose the questions that feel right-- we recommend going with your intuition about what questions would work best for the kind of relationship you have with your mom.

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BlogAshley Kirsnermom, mother's day, icebreaker, icebreaker questions, question, questions, questions to ask, questions to ask your mom, questions to ask on mother's day, moms, 10 questions to ask, 10 questions to ask your mom, 10 questions to ask your mom on mother's day, mother's, day, mothers, relationships, relationship, icebreakers, icebreaker question, mother's day questions, metaconversation, metaconversations Comments
Five Thanksgiving icebreakers that don't suck
Five Thanksgiving icebreakers that don't suck

Ah, the holidays: A time when we hope our lives will look like those wholesome cartoon specials we watched as children, but also a time when anxieties about getting stuck in conversation with people who hold different political and moral ideologies might keep you from doing that happy dance from A Charlie Brown Christmas.


This Thanksgiving, we encourage you to take some time to connect with others in ways that feel authentic without feeling emotionally exhausting. To help the conversation flow, we offer you some ice-breakers that will get others to share about themselves while subtly nudging everyone’s mood in a positive direction. So if you do end up having the “here’s why racism is bad” conversation with Uncle Joe, you’ll have a buffer of positive experience--and perhaps some common ground--that’ll make it easier for you to communicate with one another.
 

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Ashley KirsnerThanksgiving, icebreaker, icebreakers, icebreaker questions, icebreaker question, gratitude, mood, good mood, positive, Thanksgiving icebreakers, questions to ask at Thanksgiving, how are you, how are you really, grateful, meaningful conversations, talk big, big talk, Skip the Small Talk, skip the small talk, no small talk, no small talk questions, how to skip the small talk, how to have conversations, conversation, conversations, meaningful conversation, deep conversation, deep conversations, family, how to talk to family, how to talk to people, how to get to know someone, how to meet people, communication, communication skills, healthy communication, self-disclosure, Christmas, holidays, Hanukkah, ChanukkahComment
If you have trouble skipping the small talk, this might explain why
If you have trouble skipping the small talk, this might explain why

I recently found myself in two almost identical social situations with one small difference that changed everything about the way the interaction went down.

 

A few months ago, I had some new friends over my house when one of my friends took advantage of a brief silence:

 

“Can I ask you all a weird question?”

 

We all nodded and leaned forward a tiny bit in our chairs.

 

“Is a hamburger a sandwich?”

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Ashley Kirsnerhamburger, sandwich, is a hamburger a sandwich, questions, skip the small talk, skipping the small talk, buy-in, consent, awkward, awkward situations, leadership, good leadership, going deeper, how to go deeper, deep conversations, how to have deep conversations, boundary, boundaries, how to skip the small talk, STST, Skip the Small Talk, how do I skip the small talk, talk big, talk big not small, how to get people to open up, how to get closer to, how to get closer to people, how can I get closer to, hamburgers vs. sandwiches, hamburger vs. sandwich, conversations, how to have better conversations, how to get better at communicating, communication, communicating, how to improve communication, communication problems, having communication problems, how to get people talking, icebreaker, icebreakers, how to be less awkward, socially awkward, healthy relationship, healthy relationships, relationship, relationships, managing relationships, conversation starters, how not to be awkward, social awkwardnessComment