That's more or less it to be honest! It is just about what a good start looks like, whether it's an icebreaker in and of itself or another exercise, hence the repurposing of them as energisers. We work with a lot of academics who are brilliant at what they do, but they're not trained facilitators. When you're an expert on something it can be easy to talk instead of involve.
I suppose what I’m advocating is effective event design in both a pro-active and reactive sense. Pro-active in that we can’t possibly create a one-size fits all learning experience, so how can we enable facilitators to run an effective session based on a pre-planned structure? And reactive in the sense that a good facilitator will need to tweak the event based on what they learn.
I really like the liberating structures and gamestorming stuff. Lots of great tools in there for moving away from a hierarchical structure. I’ve blogged on this before in case it’s of interest.
You’re completely right that an icebreaker is only one such game, and as with anything, you have to guard against it becoming an end in and of itself.
Anyway, that’s a long rambling response! Cheers for taking the time to comment - you’ve got me thinking about how I tweak this to convey a broader message on good facilitation practice to our associates. Thank you and hope this clarifies things a bit!
