One thing I hate are workshops that start with the moderator saying,
“Let’s all tell each other something unique about yourself?”
It might not be exactly that, but it is some equally inane statement.
Look, I get it … it’s an attempt to get the group to bond by revealing a vulnerability about yourself, but the reality is it ends up being an ego fest or some massive humble brag.
Occasionally you get someone who misreads the room and responds with a statement so embarrassing that the room drops 10 degrees in the blink of an eye, but more usually, it’s an endless stream of people trying to be humble, humorous or bigging themselves up.
For years I’ve answered this question with the contempt it deserves.
A while back a friend asked if I could attend a meeting because he wanted my involvement in a project he was part of. I was happy to do that until the moderator asked us all, “What’s your go-to karaoke song?”.
I’m not joking. They really asked that … to which I was subjected to a stream of people awkwardly revealing their lack of musical taste to which we had the rest of the audience clapping wildly with each announcement.
When it came to me, I answered with ‘Killing in the Name Of by Rage Against The Machine’.
Silence.
Pin drop.
Awkward, nervous laughter before someone asked me why that song?.
I replied, “Because I love singing, ‘Fuck you, I won’t do as you tell me”.
Silence.
Pin drop.
End of the introductions.
Anyway, recently my friend if I would attend another workshop. Because I’m a glutton for punishment and he promised it was a different moderator, I said yes.
So I go there and within the first 5 minutes we were asked to write down ‘who our most important relationships are with and why?’ on a piece of paper to which they would be collated and then they’d be picked out of a hat and read to the audience for them to guess who wrote it.
OK, so it is less inane than revealing your favourite TV show as a kid or your favourite breakfast cereal, but it’s still rubbish and – quite frankly – none of anyone’s business.
Why should my personal life be used for breaking the ice with others?
I’m all for sharing openly, but not for the benefit of a moderator.
So I wrote down my answer.
It’s the picture at the top of the page.
Suffice to say, people quickly understood my goal was to get to great work rather than agreeable and cosy outcomes … something the great Richard Huntingdon rightfully said, was the opposite of what most workshops are about.