I recently saw a great Twitter thread on the best icebreakers for work — particularly to break into small groups on a virtual call — and I thought it would be a great discussion here. If you lead groups or manage new hires, do you employ icebreakers in any of your meetings or trainings? Have you ever been in a meeting where there was a memorable icebreaker, either great or awful?

The Best Icebreakers for Work

Some of the ones that came up in the Twitter thread included the following (my favorites from the list):

• Show off and explain your phone wallpaper.
• Tell us about a great sandwich you've had (the person who suggested noted that it led to a surprisingly wonderful conversation!)
• If you were invited as a guest on a podcast — unrelated to your profession — what would it be?
• What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever done for fun?
• What fictional universe would you most like to live in?
• You win the lotto, what first three things do you buy?
• When you were 5, what did you want to be when you grew up?
• Where is the most interesting/memorable place you have been in the shoes you are currently wearing?
• A former boss always liked to ask “What is a job you had that isn't on your resume?” You find out some really interesting things (said boss had taught Jazzercise to seniors!)
• If you were an action figure, what would your main accessory be?
• Which TV home would you live in and why?
• What skill do you bring to your team of survivors in the event of a zombie apocalypse?
• If you had to bring one dish to a potluck to tell people about yourself, what would it be?
• When your life story gets told, what medium should it be in?
• I ask everyone to share one good thing. It can be really small: Something they cooked that was great, got a stain out of a favorite shirt, planted their herbs for the summer, etc. When you do it every week, it turns into a really nice way to get to know people.
• What lingo/slang would you bring back if you could?
• What is your favorite way to eat potatoes?
• Would you rather be the best player on a losing team or the worst player on a winning team?
• What's your fave ice cream combination?
• Pick one fashion trend to disappear off the face of the earth and never make a comeback
• What place would you most like to travel to that you haven’t been? Or what’s your favorite place you’ve traveled to?
• In a box of assorted donuts, which one best describes you?
• If you were an action figure, what would your main accessory be?
• Tell us an unpopular opinion you have.
• Top karaoke song (and why)
• Last time you danced (and to what)
• What superpower would you like to have (flying, strength, invisibility, telekinesis, etc.)?
• What would you have on your concert rider?
• If you were going to die tomorrow, what would you eat this evening?
• What would you collect if money was no object?
• What's one thing you've done that would surprise your coworkers?
• What's your fight song?
• What's the craziest thing you saw in-person in the real world?
• What’s something you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it yet?
• What's your favorite condiment, and your least favorite condiment?
• If you go back to beginning of the panny, knowing what you know now, what one new personal skill would you develop?
• If you could have a “walk-up song” — your theme song that would play every time you entered anyplace — what would it be?

Some people described icebreakers that involved a lot of advance prep, such as asking people to provide the leader with a baby picture, and then everyone had to guess who was who at the meeting.

{related: how to steer conversation topics at work}

Another person noted that at one small meeting the leader literally brought out a block of ice and asked the team members to try to chip away at as much of it as possible. Other people suggested you have pictures of silly things that would cause disagreement, such as pictures of food that might be questionably a salad, soup, or sandwich, and ask people to make their case.

{related: how to become a leader: leadership resources for female executives}

For my $.02, I love the one about sandwiches — I think that would get a lot of amazing answers from travel experiences, childhood memories, and more — and would tell you a lot about the person answering, but without anything too too personal.

Some of my least favorite icebreakers are the ones that are a bit inane — what kind of powdered donut are you and why — or the ones that are just kind of boring, like showing a picture of a pet.

{related: party-appropriate conversation topics}

Readers, how about you? Which are your favorite icebreakers for work? What are your least favorite icebreakers for work?

(Readers have shared this list of icebreakers (via Museum Hack) in the past!)

Stock photo via Stencil.

The post The Best Icebreakers for Work appeared first on Corporette.com.

What do you think are the best new skills to learn for your career, readers? Where do you think there are deficits in your general field (e.g., more lawyers should know X)? If you want to personally learn a new career-related skill, what is it and how are you going about it? (Is this a 2023 resolution for you?)

I saw an interesting interview a week ago with a TikToker who teaches Excel skills, which is a program I use frequently but know I only know at a surface level.

We've talked about how to learn some new career-related skills in the past, such as

• roundups of books on how to become a better leader and resources for managing people better
• online women's management training
• learn a language
• how to build your network — and maintain it
• newer tech apps for team collaboration like Slack, Trello, Asana, and more

Further reading from around the web:

• 20 Essential New Skills To Learn to Advance Your Career [Indeed]
• Most Valuable Career Skills for 2023 [Investopedia]
• The Top 10 Most In-Demand Skills For The Next 10 Years [Forbes]

Stock photo via 123rf.com/smshoot.

The post The Best New Skills to Learn for Your Career appeared first on Corporette.com.

Update: We still stand by this advice on how to become a better manager (and links have been updated below), but you may also want to check out our latest discussion on online women's management training. 

How do you become a boss and a more effective leader — whether you're new to management or you've supervised people for a while and want to improve?

In the past, we've discussed various management books for women before, but readers recently discussed their favorites, so we thought we'd round them up, as well as some additional online resources for honing your skills. (We've also discussed dressing like a manager, imposter syndrome, delegating work, and whether you should be friends with staffers.)

Becoming the Boss: New Rules for the Next Generation of Leaders by Lindsey Pollak (2014) — Written specifically for millennials, Pollak's book “helps you identify your next professional move and shows you how to succeed once you get there.” Lois P. Frankel, author of Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office — a Corporette favorite — gave it a positive review.

Growing Great Employees: Turning Ordinary People into Extraordinary Performers by Erika Andersen (2006) — Andersen's book emphasizes the importance of investing in people and taking care to manage them in the way they'd prefer to be managed, according to their personality types. A blurb claims that the guide will “help you create a dynamic workplace, where the efforts you make today will blossom into success for years to come.”

Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go: Career Conversations Employees Want by Beverly Kaye and Julie Winkle Giulioni (2012) — Kaye and Giulioni focus their advice on career development and having frequent conversations with your staff — “integrated seamlessly into the normal course of business” — to improve their performance and refine their goals.

Managing to Change the World: The Nonprofit Manager’s Guide to Getting Results by Alison Green (of Ask a Manager) and Jerry Hauser (2012) — Although the book was written for nonprofit managers, Green says “there’s little in here that I wouldn't recommend to any manager in any sector.” Green and Hauser review goal-setting and accountability, effective delegation of tasks, staff hiring and retention, and more.

Winning: The Ultimate Business How-To Book by Jack Welch with Suzy Welch (2009) — This book, meant to be a kind of business bible, garnered positive blurbs by the likes of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, and positive reviews as well; its starred review in Publishers Weekly stated, “It's difficult to think of anyone in business who wouldn't benefit from reading this savvy, engaging cubicle-to-boardroom guide to success.”

Work Happy: What Great Bosses Know by Jill Geisler (2012) — Geisler's book promises to improve your leadership skills whether you're an experienced manager or someone just starting to supervise others. The book aims to be “a workshop-in-a-book, designed to produce positive, immediate and lasting results.”

Websites and Newsletters

• Harvard Business Review — the recently revamped website offers free and paid subscriptions
• Business Insider's “Instant MBA” newsletter — free daily e-newsletter; the whole website is great for business advice
• Inc. magazine — probably about 1/3 of the content involves leadership; several free e-newsletters
• Fast Company — some content available online; may be easiest to sign up for a subscription; several free e-newsletters
• Little PINK Book — online magazine for professional women; free weekly e-newsletter
• The Glass Hammer — online community for women execs in financial services, law, and business; free weekly e-newsletter

Online Learning

• Lynda — leadership and management courses (offers four membership plans with tiered pricing)
• MIT OpenCourseWare — free access to course materials (lecture notes, etc.) for a number of MIT management courses
• The Open University (UK) — free courses on leadership and management
• Udemy — courses on leadership and other career topics, in a range of prices (some, but not many, are free)
• Women's Leadership Coaching — Emerging Women Leaders Webinar Series ($188 for six new webinars a year with access to 40 previous ones); free monthly e-newsletter

What kinds of resources have helped YOU become a better manager? 

(Pictured: A Clear Sign, originally uploaded to Flickr by Jen Waller.)

Picture below via: Amazon

The post Becoming a Better Manager: Books and Online Resources appeared first on Corporette.com.

Ladies, what are your best tips on how to become a leader? Reader S has a great question about how to grow her leadership skills as a young female executive…

I'm not sure if this has been discussed before, but I'm looking for recommendations–either from you or your readers–on some good leadership skills workshops/trainings/webinars. I've recently been promoted to the executive team at my company. While my initial reaction was excitement, I'm now starting to feel a bit out of place at times. The promotion was given to me as a “stretch” role, which the CEO defined as a bit of a leap of faith. He's confident that I'll be comfortable in the role and gain the skills necessary in short time, but ever the over-achiever, I want to quell my discomfort ASAP!

I'm finding myself acting a bit more assertive and, well, tough in the negative as opposed to assertive and confident. It's a natural “defend my right to the role” mentality whenever I'm questioned on anything. But, I know signs of a true leader are to emit the entitlement to the role through leadership and confidence.

On top of all this, I'm somewhat young (35–the youngest member of the exec team) and am a mom to 2 children (4yo and 18mo). I'm wondering if there are any good leads or advice from working women in similar situations?

Huge congrats — this sounds like a great accomplishment, and I applaud you for trying to stretch yourself to get to the next level. 

I think this is a great question, because it can be difficult to grow your leadership skills. Ultimately, I think Reader S needs to focus on a) what you think you're doing well (so you can play to your strengths), b) what you think you need to work on (so you know where to focus your reading) and c) who to ask for feedback (and when) so that you have someone else giving you some feedback also.

(Pictured: Follow the leader, originally uploaded to Flickr by jtu.)

Regarding outside publications, there are a number of publications you can sign up for to learn how to become a leader. Some of my favorites:

• The Harvard Business Review‘s newsletter (free)
• The Business Insider's “Instant MBA” newsletter (free) (you can sign up at the bottom of the page — really, the whole website is great for business advice)
• Inc. magazine (probably about 1/3 of their content talks about leadership — see also Fast Company) — some content available on the web but may be easiest to sign up for a subscription
• Ones I haven't focused on, but may be helpful to you:
  • Pink magazine (now online only; they have a free daily newsletter)
  • The Glass Hammer
• I've never taken a webinar through this group, but Women's Leadership Coaching has specific webinars for executive women
• Books that may be helpful to you :

Some must-read business books for women: one / two / three / four / five…

{related: become a better manager}

If you have a close mentor who's above you, maybe ask them to sit in on a meeting you're leading so you can get their feedback on how it's going. If you're particularly close with a subordinate (even your assistant), have him or her sit in on a meeting so that you can get his or her feedback also. Remember that about half of being a leader is in how you act — if you act competent and sure of yourself, people will respond to you in that way.

Finally, figure out if your hurdles are your own psychological ones, or if there are really external things you can/should be doing to improve your leadership style. You may want to read a bit about The Imposter Syndrome, which women suffer from much more than men — it's basically a feeling that you're a complete fraud and you've somehow duped everyone into thinking that you're competent and capable when REALLY you're about to lose it all at any minute. I remember reading about it for the first time when I was 25 and thinking, “by God, there's a NAME for that feeling?”

I'm curious to see what the readers say here in terms of how to become a leader. Readers, how have you grown your own leadership skills? Do you look for/appreciate advice specific to women, or do you prefer to hear the same advice men hear?

The post How to Become a Leader: Leadership Resources for Female Executives appeared first on Corporette.com.