Top 10 Workshop Games of 2022 – Part #1
Mindsetters, Energizers, and Ice-Breakers are great workshop games to engage your participants. They keep up the energy, make people laugh, and create the right environment to be productive.
First, what’s the difference between the three terms?
Mindsetters
“Mindsetters” are short activities to get people in the zone for a longer working session. Usually, these workshop games come with a purpose and learning to be shared with participants. This learning or insight relates to the next working block and should prime people to act or think in certain, beneficial ways.
Ice Breakers
Compared to workshop games or mind setters, Ice Breakers are usually just short and fun games to break the ice between participants. They help people get to know each other and don’t serve a higher or productivity purpose. We normally use ice breakers in workshops where people don’t know each other well.
Energizers
Energizers are there to reenergize people after long working blocks or after having food. Those activities are there to rise blood circulation, wake people up, or lift their mood. They mostly don’t serve a higher educational purpose or get people to know each other, but are just about moving, jumping, singing, or whatever wakes people up.
Being clear about the terms, let’s go into our Top 10 Workshop Games of 2022 – Part #1. In this part, we look at great Energizers to wake up and reenergize workshop participants.
Download Top Workshop Games 2022 – Edition #1 with a detailed description of our favorite 6 energizers HERE.
#1 Grandma, Tiger, Samurai
People play scissor, paper, stone in a new and fun way against each other and support their team mates in the fights.
- Gather all present participants.
- Explain that we will play a special version of stone, scissor, paper which is called Grandma, Tiger, Samurai. Tiger eats Grandma, Samurai kills Tiger, Grandma scares Samurai because she is his mother.
- To play the game, people walk around the room and need to find an opponent. They play the game until 2 winning points by saying ‘1,2,3’ and then making the move of either grandma (with a stick), tiger (put hands like claws and roar) or samurai (put hand up with the imaginary sword).
- The loser goes along with the winner and has to cheer for the winner in the next fight. Then the two losers go with the winner, (so now he has 3 people to cheer him up) and so on until one overall winner is left.
This workshop game creates lots of fun, noise, and cheering. At the end, we will see cool and funny moves and have laughing and energized people ready for the day ahead.
#2 Helium Stick
Teams of participants need to jointly lay down a long stick on the ground while all touching it with their fingers.
- Gather all present participants and divide them into groups of 5-6 people.
- Give each team a stick (e.g. bambus, PV pipe, broom, anything straight around 2-3m long and light).
- Explain the game: All team members need to put their hands and index finger under the stick (see picture) and the team needs to lower the stick to the ground while everybody has to always touch the stick with both fingers all the time.
This game makes people move but also work as a team. The challenge sounds super simple but is surprisingly hard as the bar will always move to the top rather then to the bottom. So laughing is guaranteed. In the download, you will find the solution on how to do it best.
#3 Diamond Dance
People need to copy each others’ dance moves and the best moves go to the finals.
- Divide all participants into groups of around 7-10 people. Let those 7-10 stand in a circle.
- Turn on the music. One person starts to make a dance move (literally anything) and all others need to copy it.
- Do this until everybody in the circle has done 1 dance move.
- Have the group select the coolest, most fun dance move and go to a battle with the other circle(s).
- All participants then form a huge circle. Turn on the music and have the representatives do their circles’ best moves. Again everybody needs to do the move as well.
- After all “best moves” have been performed, have a NOISE voting for the best dance move and circle going one by one. The move and circle with the loudest NOISE (voting) wins.
Amazing game to energize people and have fun together. For sure, it brings many people not used to dancing out of their comfort zone, but the goal is not to be the best dancer but to make any move. Many times, the “uncoolest” moves become the best!
For warm-up games 4 and 5 download our free pdf Workshop Games Toolkit – Edition #2 HERE.
Do you like the workshop games and want to know more about the Pioneers corporate innovation services?
Book a short intro call with our workshop master @Michael Wlaschitz who will introduce you to the Pioneers offerings.
Just send a quick mail to michael.wlaschitz@pioneers.io
Michael Wlaschitz
Senior Venture Designer
