Ice breaker (or Icebreaker) is a term which describes an activity which reduces tension and anxiety in a group.
Thus, it is fitting that the first Toastmaster speech project is titled The Ice Breaker.
This article of the Toastmasters Speech Series examines the primary goals of this project, provides tips and techniques, and links to numerous sample speeches.
The Ice Breaker speech has three aims:
The Competent Communicator manual has a wealth of helpful advice. You can download a PDF version of the first project from the Toastmasters International website.
Here are a few other things which may help you:
“ Nobody expects you to be a world-class orator. Just do your best. ”
Although your broad topic is yourself, there are numerous angles to take, and several ways to organize your speech.
Don’t worry too much about the organization of the speech; later speech projects (especially #2 and #3) encourage you to focus more on that. However, having said that, one of these ideas may help you overcome writer’s block.
For many people, a series of chronological snapshots of their life is the easiest to write and deliver.
Example: Ravi Singal takes this approach with his Ice Breaker: Why Me? Try Me!
Example: Oleg Kagan starts at birth in his Ice Breaker speech.
Discuss a series of elements of your life to provide a “sampling” of your life. For example, you could open up by talking about your family, then discuss your career, and conclude with your hobbies.
Example: Bob Cain addresses his love of travel, then photography, and then his career/education in his Ice Breaker speech. (video)
Select a common thread that runs through your life, and share brief stories where this common element appears. It might be a signature phrase, a philosophy that guides you, or even something obscure like peanut butter. (i.e. imagine stories through your life where peanut butter played a role)
My own Ice Breaker speech followed this general structure. It was titled “Andrew of All Trades – Master of None” and touched on several examples where I have breadth, but not depth of knowledge.
Example: Steph Corwin provides a great example with her Ice Breaker titled Swimming Through Life.
Focus on one critical event which took your life in a completely different direction.
Example: Tanya Huang talks about moving continents in Made in Taiwan, Calibrated in Canada.
A combination of #1 and #4, explain the series of decisions or events that brought you “here”, where “here” might be the place you currently live, the job you currently have, the life you lead, or the decision to join Toastmasters.
Example: Tracy Buxton does this wonderfully in her Ice Breaker titled I used to be June Cleaver, but I’m not sure who I am now.
Example: Jill Williamson also demonstrates this approach in the aptly titled How I Came To Be Here. (video)
Here are a few more sample written and video speeches which may provide inspiration for you.
The next article in this series examines Speech 2: Organize Your Speech.
This is one of a number of articles related to Toastmasters featured on Six Minutes.
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Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.
Humor in ice-breakers is rare as speakers are anxious to get off the mark. And the fear, what if humor bombs ? However, some of the most memorable ice-breakers I have watched had a streak of self deprecating humor in them. Here are some samplers:
Title of an ice-breaker : “Past imperfect.Present tense”. Yet another speaker : “My attitude towards life is in my blood. B(e) Positive ! There was this girl Anisha Rasquinha who said ” Man of my dreams ? Nothing grand. I don’t expect him to come on a white horse. Just a BMW will do !”
I still remember these speeches simply because of the subtle humor.
Good point, CK. Toastmasters who approach their Icebreaker speech with significant fears are unlikely to attempt humor for fear it will not register. I like your examples of humorous speech titles. Since the title is said by someone else, there’s no fear of the humor bombing. If the audience doesn’t laugh, no problem. If they do laugh, then it is a great way to start your first speech… with the whole audience smiling already! I think I was into my 3rd speech before I made anyone laugh… and even then it was accidental. More on that in a future article.
madiha says: are all toastmasters speech that people give are uploaded on youtube?My personal favourite of a humorous speech opener in an ice breaker goes like this ” I feel the best way to break ice is to pour whisky over it. However, I will attempt a less exciting way for about six minutes !” He had the audience in splits right from the word go and needless to add we tried his method of ice breaking after the meeting !
Hi, I am VP-PR at Lagoon Toastmasters in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.
Your resources are very useful for the aspiring Toastmaster. I will be pointing fellow members to your site regularly.
Keep up the good work! Regards, Sailesh.
Discover, Develop, Distinguish. http://www.lagoontoastmasters.com
Aha! So you, Andrew, are the author of all the icebreaker tips! Thanks for the help and encouragement. I think I’ll get a bit more sleep than I thought I would when I first became aware of the extent of my obligation. After sweating alot, I’ll do fine (and may live to tell about it). Thanks. Sue
jordan hardy says: this was very helpfulHi. I would just like to say that all these articles and videos have helped me. Wish me luck in my icebreaker.
Peter Evans says:Thanks for the great tips and examples! Had only 2 days to put my ice breaker together and your information was invaluable. I even won best speaker 🙂
Hello Andrew,
Great description, thank you. We’ve added a link to your page in one of our posts to help out future members get a better sense of this.
Regards,
Alex Chan
St-Lawrence Toastmasters (Montreal, Canada)
Hello, this is Monkey Sri. Thanks for linking to my blog! I’ve changed the URL, so you may want to update your link: http://thebioimp.blogspot.com/2008/06/words-have-power.html
Thanks!
Excellent idea to share these tips and samples! I hope you get a chance to finish the series.
It prodded me to post my own Ice Breaker (another example of “Common Thread”), along with other member contributions, on our club site:
http://www.chamberclub540.com/sharables.htm
Dear Sir , I used this site extensively for preparing my first speech for ToastMasters ,which I am going to deliver today . Thanks a ton for nice and very useful features on this site. Please keep up this work. Here is my first speech – http://hr-universe.blogspot.com/2009/09/toastmaster-speech-1-ice-breaker.html Regards
Santosh
I agree totally. The first few minutes in any speech are crucial. If you only just fumble your way through, the rest of your speech will not be particularly inspiring. Getting the levels of anxiety down at the beginning is key to getting a good start, and using an icebreaker to engage the audience helps them, and you. Just knowing you are an expert (“the” expert) is not enough to allay our fears, sadly. And reasoning (“I know my subject…they came here to listen to me,” etc) just doesn’t reduce our stress levels!
Hi, I love your perspective on ice-breaker speeches. It is great to hear ice-breaker speeches which give us more information on the speaker, his experiences, interests and events that moulded his personality to give it its present shape.
This article helped me deliver my “Public Speaking Triumph and Disaster Toastmasters Ice Breaker:” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55CPJ7rUd8U
Good luck to everyone!
Your articles are very helpful. But when I see those ice-breakers examples, I feel like the ice-breaker I have prepared is quite pale in comparison. I also think it’s hard to incorporate humour in it. This is asking a lot for a first speech.
Andrew Dlugan says:The examples are just that: examples. It doesn’t matter if your speech is different. Everyone will have a different ice breaker speech, and that’s fine.
Kathleen says:Can I bring props? It’s only my second meeting and I jumped in this both feet to do the ice breaker. A big part of who I am is a woodturner and would like to bring a 2 or 3 small pieces to have on the table to showcase what I do and answer questions.. Would that be appropriate?
Andrew Dlugan says:There’s no rule which says that you cannot bring props. If your Ice Breaker speech heavily focuses on your woodturning pursuits, then it may add value to bring in examples of this work. My advice for you would be to make sure that the speech is about yourself (where woodturning is one of your hobbies or passions) and avoid making the speech _about_ the woodturning pieces themselves (i.e. don’t make the speech about “how to turn Christmas tree ornaments”). You can certainly devote future speeches to focus on woodturning skills/examples, but the first speech should be about yourself. Make sense? Similarly, there’s no rule against Q&A for an Ice Breaker speech, however I would advise you not to design your speech in this way… this time. While handling a Q&A is an important skill for a complete speaker, it can also be a very time-consuming component in a presentation. It would be easy to speak for 2 minutes and take questions for 4 minutes, but this would not allow you to meet the objectives for this first TM project. Try filling your available time with your speech this time. Near your speech conclusion, you might say something like “If anyone has questions about the wood pieces I showed, I’d love to talk about it after the meeting with you.” Again, future speech projects can be designed with an included Q&A in mind, but I think you will gain the most value from “pure” speaking for the first speech.
Sarah Lowe says:I have just joined toastmasters and am not very good at speeches. Your information has helped me A LOT.
thanx!
I’ll be starting my Icebreaker session very soon. And I’m glad I found your blog! Thank you. All the contents here are very useful.
My icebreaker theme was ‘Challenge and Response’ – My life has been a series of challenges and responses. Please visit http://www.lagoontoastmasters.com for the complete script of my icebreaker speech which had won best speaker award
Thanks for the super helpful articles on each speech. Definitely helped me with my first speech entitled, “Becoming a Technical Evangelist” http://bit.ly/aliceTMicebreaker
very nice post. Quite helpful for a me as I’ve to deliver an ice breaking speech in a couple of days. Thanks for sharing
Linda says:I’m wondering if there’s any chance I could access those video or article line which be shown as good example …really eager to see how did they perform this role…as I still hesitate to do my first ice break presentation…
Carol says:I went to my first toastmasters meeting last night. I’m curious about the contents of the basic books that are used and was pleasantly surprised to find your link.
Thanks so much Andrew for these tips, very helpful. I recorded my experience of doing my Icebreaker and my speech transcript here (http://bit.ly/TQ8I5f), and have linked to this post as it’s so useful.
This site will really help my icebreaker coz its my firsttime to deliver a speech for our oral and communication subject! Thank you!
Hi, these are good tips but lots of your links no longer work. If your still updating this blog it would be great if these were fixed as its a useful resource (and one of the first that comes up in a google search for icebreaker tips)
camie says:Going to school to be a alcohol and drug counselor had my first mock group today and pretty much mind went blank I need to get over this fear of public speaking and have more confidence in myself will toastmaster help me with this fear .and does it cost to go to your meetings thanks for taking time to read.
Yunus S Pathan says:Hello Mr. Andrew Dlugan,
Good Day!
Two months before I joined Toastmaster in Kuwait and attended couple of meetings.
This is really good platform for learning and gain knowledge how to stand and deliver and 100’s of audience.
I shall be glad if you can send me regularly your good speeches so that I can ready and learn and pass ahead to others.
Looking forward to hear from you
Thanks
Yunus
Hi Andrew,
I am giving my icebreaker speech tomorrow and can only thank you for your insight and experience sharing this for me. I am using humor and a variation of the ‘imagine your audience naked’ joke to open and close my speech. Looking forward to it.
Thanks
Bren
I so enjoy this website. Thank you so much for publishing it. Often refer new Toastmasters to your website. Regards, Margy Sneeden
South Africa
I am a new member to the Toastmaster community and needed some guidance for preparing my talks. I found this website and am discovering it has rich, rich resources. The Comments below are one of the incredible sources of encouragement, wisdom and guidance.
Thank you for this website, it’s invaluable!
Good day
I would like to become part of the toast masters south Africa currently living in Soweto south of Johannesburg, Kindly send me details on how to join the close toast master group around. Have a brilliant day, Kind regards Martin
Hello Martin, Not sure if you found a club yet. Just in case, here is the link that should take you to the clubs close by you:
http://www.toastmasters.org/Find-a-Club?q=Soweto%2C%20Gauteng%2C%20South%20Africa&radius=150 Regards, Marvin Wiley Jr.
Hello there,i need to get started with the course but don’t know how i should do it. BTW i live in Iran. Can somebody help me plz? Thnx
Dear Andrew Today is my first speech an ice breaker at toastmaster event. One of my best friend had advised me to come forward at he event since he is already a toastmaster for quite some time. I am not a good orator or a speaker at functions kindly advise me how to present a good speech in front of audience. What things have to be keep in mind while give a speech.
