Moving Beyond Icebreakers: An Innovative Approach to Group Facilitation, Learning, and Action

I am finding Moving Beyond Icebreakers to be an outstanding resource for running meetings at my medium-sized company where I'm a Project Manager. The book is unique in how it provides explanations on when to use different icebreaker activities - and more importantly, how to de-brief them afterwards. The title is accurate in that it does go way beyond simply being a list of icebreakers.The book is extremely effective in a few different ways. There are the hundreds of icebreakers listed with clear explanations on how, when, and why to use them. But, Moving Beyond Icebreakers also really helps improve your entire approach and confidence level when it comes to meeting facilitation. And, the techniques for then using the icebreakers as the springboard into the substantive work you are trying to accomplish are perfect and easy to follow.I have actually noticed an immediate improvement in the group dynamics with the staff on all of our projects - and our productivity has improved as a result of using these interactive exercises.The book is well written, well organized with helpful illustrations and diagrams. You will find it to be a resource that you use all the time in planning and preparing for your company meetings.

This is a fantastic tool! I have been to the live workshops for Moving Beyond Icebreakers, led by the organization Teen Empowerment (which are very hands on, practical and informative) but even without attending the workshops you will get so much from using this book. It is sorted by style, group size, purpose/goal, and various other criteria, which is key- you can find things for a professional setting group of 6 where your goal is to inspire collaboration and open up lines of communication OR you can just as easily find exercises to help lead a large group of 75 youth camp counselors where your goal is to energize and help establish camaraderie. A few of the exercises are typical and slightly cheesy (what you would normally expect with ice breakers), however, the vast majority are interesting and innovative. Buy it-and support this awesome organization with your purchase!

I work in large hospital, taking care of the wellbeing of the staff. I find this a great book to use in my training and group facilitation. It is well catagorised

Excellent book for learning and conducting interactive training sessions. I particularly like the way the activities are divided by topic so that you can quickly find an activity for the topic you are training.

Very wordy. Difficult read and hard to pick appropriate activities. Not for your average meeting. More for Licensed professionals.

Go to book for running group activities.

This is an amazing book for Facilitators. It defines and cross-indexes over 300 interactives that can be used in groups from 3 to 300 (or more) people. The book is a very good tutorial and great reference guide. The index is extremely useful. Look up your concern (trust, communication, leadership) and the index sends you the interactives that best apply for group work on that issue. The tools found here are extremely useful and effective. If you coach Agile teams and organizations, buy this book.

I use the techniques in this book at meetings, workshops and teaching college courses. I find these activities link well together and the book shows you ways to link the ice breaker to the topics of the meeting or class. Highly recommended!

A must have book!