Who Am I? (Warm-up game)

Photo: Essellee
(Creative Commons)

When groups get together for the first time, many group members ask themselves: who are these other people?  do I fit in here?  what will they think of me?  This game gets people mixing quickly and asking questions of each other yet allowing everyone to feel comfortable as the questions are not about them personally.  It’s an oldie but a goodie, and hence worth repeating here.

Props Needed

The props are simple.  The facilitator thinks of a list of known characters, fictional or non-fictional, dead or alive, male or female.  Some examples may be: Albert Einstein, Snow White, Barack Obama, Florence Nightingale etc.  There needs to be enough names generated for the number of people in the group.  These names are written on a piece of card.  Each card is then pinned to the back of a person in the group, without that person seeing the name written on the card.

Facilitation

Once every person has a name pinned to their back, the facilitator issues simple instructions:

• The objective for each person is to identify the character written on their back.
• Explain that the person on people’s backs are known characters and may be fictional or non-fictional, dead or alive, male or female.
• To do so people need to ask other people questions in order to obtain information about their character.
• Only three questions can be asked of any one person, before moving to another person.
• Questions are to be of the yes/no variety.  Examples may be; “am I alive?”; “am I female?”; “am I fictional?”
• At any stage the person may ask of another person “am I so-and-so?”  This counts as one of the three questions.  If the answer is “no” then the person continues on until such time as they have correctly identified their character.

Then leave people to it.  As the facilitator you may also answer questions for people, under the same circumstances as others (i.e. only three questions and ones that can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.”

Have fun with the names and the game.  Following this game I’ve found that people are more receptive and responsive to those who, up until then, have been strangers.


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