At a workplace meeting last week, my colleagues talked about how she recently took her son, 17-year-old, to Kim Deal at Brooklyn Paramount. She blows his mind and was so excited to showcase the magic of live music that she discovered at age 15 when she first went to a rock show. Imagine her son, “What was the first band to see live?” he replied that he went with his mom to see rock icons like Deal, bassist and indisputable hip band The Pixies and The Breeders. This made everyone at the conference reveal the band they first saw at the concert.
I think this is probably more appealing than any other personal trivia. You will learn about music teen preferences. If their parents take them, you will learn something about their childhood. (“Yeah, he had a parent who took his six-year-old to see Steely Dan!”) My colleague’s first concert was impressive: Duran Duran, Rem on the “Monster” tour. The mine was a 15-year-old British rock band Squeeze, Madison Square Garden.
And people love to tell you about their first concert. It is a jewel box of questions, an invitation to reveal something unique about yourself, telling a well-practised personal story. They can tell you as much about your preferences as you feel comfortable with. It is the perfect specimen of the icebreaker, the most mature form of knowledgeable activity in the enterprise.
I have been doing a completely convincing study of my friends’ feelings about icebreakers over the past few days, albeit unscientific. They all hate them to people. Understood. In their faces, any kind of team building exercise should be treated with suspicion. Icebreakers are intended to loosen people. How lax and wisely you may wonder, is it appropriate to get a job? We go round the table to make our favorite breakfast cereal look harmless enough, but we don’t want to reveal anything more intimate than the entire marketing department.
But as cheap as they can be in the context of their work (Is there anything more humiliating than trying to recall “fun facts about yourself”?), I protect a good icebreaker as a fun shortcut of measured intimacy. In my past job, which held weekly staff meetings, I started each meeting on an icebreaker. A significant portion of my team was remote before remote work became normal, and it seemed impossible to be comfortable with each other without some kind of keratin intervention. I might be avoiding myself, but when team members get to know each other a little, icebreakers become a fun parlor game, a way to get closer, and even in the workplace matrix, reminding us that we are interesting and dynamic people.
Looking back at the icebreakers from weekly meetings, there are questions in my notes that I don’t know how the people closest to me will answer. Some of these questions I came up with, some from author Rob Walkers’ newsletter, The Art of Noticing, and some from the team. “What was the first thing you bought with your money?” “What were you doing at age 23?” “What are you good at? “What is the most common thing people say when you tell them your hometown?”
It may feel awkward or artificial to ask these questions in the middle of a regular conversation, but it can be fun to knowingly ask a family icebreaker or a group of friends or spouses at dinner time. For those of us who understand the usefulness of a small story, but lament the slow, inefficient on-ramp of knowledgeable questions – where did you come from, what do you do? – Icebreakers do only what they insist. You can wait for the ice to melt. Or you can shatter it with questions that actually reach something a little interesting and a bit more revealing. And you don’t need to call them icebreakers. Outside the corporate framework, icebreakers are nothing more than a manifestation of curiosity. Do you really want to know about the person you’re talking to? Why don’t you ask them?
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Politics
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Culture Calendar
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Earl Grey Tea Cake
For a weekly nonsweet dessert, there is a soft Earl Grey tea cake with Samantha Seneviratne’s damp, soft Earl Grey tea cake with dark chocolate and orange rind. Its subtle floral scent comes from loose tea leaves stirred up into buttery cake batters. Thick wedges are served after dinner or for an afternoon snack with a pot of Earl Grey Tea.
real estate
Hunting: A couple with a budget of $350,000 searched for a beach house. Which boat did they choose? Play our game.
At Home: See inside the spacious Potomac, home to a couple of film producers.
What you get for $55,000: Queen Unrevival House, Harper’s Ferry, WV. A condo in a 1840 home in Charleston, South Carolina. or shingles in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Mortgage: Trump administration officials are reinforcing stories of privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This means for home buyers.
Click here to read T’s The New York Times Style Magazine this weekend.
living
Painful knees? This exercise is useful.
Wirecutter’s advice
How to become a birder without bird watching
If you’re called to immerse yourself in the joys of spring, birdwatching, but don’t have time to camp out and spy patiently, consider setting up a smart bird feeder. Our favorite looks like a regular feeder, but it is equipped with a camera that captures high quality, approaching shots of bird visitors. Send smartphone alerts when birds arrive and record escape videos and photos. Perfect for causing joy in group chats. We also found deals for both top pick feeders as part of our spring sales this weekend. – Britney Ho
This week’s game
Notre Dame vs. TCU, Women’s NCAA Tournament: The last three seasons of Notre Dame have concluded with the Sweet 16 round. Can we avoid the same fate this year? Ireland’s defense was fantastic thanks to Hannah Hidalgo, the ACC Player of the Year. But the TCU offense may be difficult to stop when Haley Van Lis gets a pick-and-roll game with Sedona Prince. Today, ESPN’s Eastern 1pm
