The Who Am I icebreaker is a 15-minute training game where each participant has the name of a famous person placed on their forehead or back. They ask yes/no questions to work out who they are. It works well for management training, team-building workshops, and new group introductions.
Who Am I Icebreaker
Duration and Category
- Duration: 15 minutes is the ideal time frame for this training activity.
- FREE activity.
- Category: Team-Building Training Activities
Ice Breaker – perfect for breaking the ice between participants to get them talking and to know each other, at the start of the training session.
The ‘Who Am I’ is an easy game for trainers to organize and one of the most popular free team-building training games.
Number of Participants: This is a fun activity and game that gets participants to communicate and interact, and is a great ice breaker in that it gets people smiling and relaxes participants.
Intention: All participants will be given a piece of paper that will be taped to their forehead (or onto their back if needed because of headwear).
On each piece of paper will be written the name of a famous person, such as a sports star, movie star, TV celebrity, and so on.
The more famous the better so that as many participants as possible will recognize the name.
Including a photo of the celebrity on the paper is even better, given that some participants may recognize the photo and not the name.
Participants must walk around and ask each other questions to which ONLY a yes or no answer may be given.
By asking questions, each person should try to identify what celebrity they themselves are.
Allow fifteen minutes for this activity to conclude before asking each person to identify themselves.
Activity Instructions
1. Before the lesson, make sure you have a large number of pieces of paper with the names (and photos if you can) of famous celebrities.
Try to make sure the names are as mainstream as possible so that they are well-known.
Make an extra five more than the expected class number in case any names are considered too unknown by the participants.
2. Ensure you take tape with you to the training location.
3. At the beginning of the activity, explain the goal of the activity to all participants and the time frame (see information in the purpose section above).
4. Participants should NOT be able to see their own names. In order to achieve this, make sure that each person picks a name and then tapes it to another person’s forehead.
5. Allow 15 minutes for the activity to take place.
6. When the 15 minutes are over, ask participants to KEEP their name tags on and to return to their seats.
7. Each person must then say aloud who they believe they are.
Activity Benefits
This activity is a great one to use early on in any training program in order to get participants to relax, have fun, and meet the other participants.
Team building activities are proven to work, and they certainly, from our experience as corporate trainers, help to create better results in the training we deliver.
The Who Am I icebreaker game can also be a great game for including in team-building training sessions, given that it creates a level of interaction and involves each participant needing to help the other.
You can find a bunch more free training games for management training here, and also the 5-minute activities here, or 12 Problem-solving activities.
