Meeting Ice Breakers
Having a little fun with Math

Good leadership skills always include having a few ice breakers up your sleeve to loosen things up a little. It is also a very effective leadership management training tool that can be used at any time to ease the tension of a situation. I have used the below meeting ice breaker in almost every subject matter. The only items you will need are a white board or flip chart - and a sense of humor.

Although you can use any example - I use myself.

Ice Breaker - Step #1

I start out by telling people that when I applied for my position as Human Resources Director they were looking for someone with good leadership skills. They went on to tell me that effective leadership must include math skills. Therefore as the final part of the interview I was going to have to complete 9 math problems. The score of this math test was going to be weighted very heavily in their decision.

So they handed me the test.

1 X 9 =

2 X 9 =

3 X 9 =

4 X 9 =

5 X 9 =

6 X 9 =

7 X 9 =

8 X 9 =

9 = 9 =

Now I will admit that I was not great at math - but everyone knows what 1 X 9 is - so I marked my answer down.

1 X 9 = 9

2 X 9 =

3 X 9 =

4 X 9 =

5 X 9 =

6 X 9 =

7 X 9 =

8 X 9 =

9 X 9 =

Meeting Ice Breaker - Running into a little problem with math...

But after getting the first one so quickly - I was frustrated at not knowing any of the others. I went up and down the problems trying to figure them out - but was just unable. I must have struggled with them for fifteen minutes or more.

Now I know that in my good leadership skills tool box - they always told me to assess the situation. So I thought I better count up how many I missed. So I did by placing a number by each problem as I went down the list starting with 2 X 9 =.

1 X 9 = 9

2 X 9 = 1

3 X 9 = 2

4 X 9 = 3

5 X 9 = 4

6 X 9 = 5

7 X 9 = 6

8 X 9 = 7

9 X 9 = 8

I couldn't believe it - I had missed eight. There was no way I was going to get this job now. This just couldn't be possible. I had good leadership skills - how could this be that a simple math test was going to keep me from this great job that I have now. So I decided that I better count them again.

This time I counted from the bottom up placing a number next to the number I used in my first count.

9 X 9 = 81

8 X 9 = 72

7 X 9 = 63

6 X 9 = 54

5 X 9 = 45

4 X 9 = 36

3 X 9 = 27

2 X 9 = 18

1 X 9 = 9

Meeting Ice Breakers - I got the job...

I guess it was true I had missed eight. I knew my chances for this job were over at that point so I just handed in the test. To my surprise I was hired - and here I am today as living proof.

Have some fun with this meeting ice breaker - as I would initially go over the test I would pretend to struggle - giving those faces that people make when struggling.

Please visit other pages on my site as well for some good laughs as well as some great stories that will hopefully help you.

Good Luck and May God Bless You!

Related Topics


*    Ice Breakers #2

*    Ice Breakers #3

*    Ice Breakers #4

*    Ice Breakers #5

*    Ice Breakers #6

*    Ice Breakers #7

*    Ice Breakers #8

*    Ice Breakers #9

*    Ice Breakers #10

*    Ice Breakers #12

Thank you for visiting my page on Meeting Ice Breakers - click here to Return to my Home Page