“Hey Mom and Dad! Before we get started with dinner, what was your rose and thorn today? Mom, you start!”
Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? If your family is anything like mine, you might be met with blank stares if you said this over your pasta.
Since I started working at Swift Kick, my daily struggle is trying to use the awesome tactics student leaders use at meetings for my post-college life. How can I subtly get my family talking to each other? How can I get my friends to do something OTHER than hang out in the Starbucks parking lot? How can I get my introverted boyfriend to tell me random things? Trust me, the rate of success with ice-breakers is admittedly low outside campus walls, in my experience.
Last week, I went to my first Paint Nite with an old college friend and her ex-roommate. In-between the steps Instructor Jeremiah guided us through to create a colorful piece of art, there was plenty of time to talk and catch up. Rachel and I were on the board of a club together at Fordham, but I had only met her friend once. During one of the breaks between painting the orange triangle and the green triangle, Rachel said to me and her friend:
So, what are your highs and lows of this weekend?
And lo and behold, the three of us girls bonded over the highs and lows of boyfriends, work, and all the other things women our age chat about. Her confidence in asking the simple, almost corny, question worked. She wanted to know about our lives, and we respected that, and were happy to comply.
Now, maybe I reacted positively because of my own outlook on these things. But what I take away from this experience is that sometimes you have to fight through the awkward, be confident, and nudge everyone else to open up. Own the cheesiness, know your audience, and get them to engage. Even if they don’t answer the question, it will probably start another conversation.
Here are some ideas that might actually work with your friends and family:
* Roses & Thorns/Highs & Lows of the day. Who will be completely offended by asking about the best and worst parts of their day?
* ABC Gratitude. I have successfully done this with my family on Thanksgiving the past few years. Somebody starts by naming something that they are grateful for that starts with A; the next has B, etc., etc., around the car or table.
* What kind of [doughnut/cookie/food] would [someone else in the room] be? My dad’s friend did this with us while she was over for dinner once, and it was pretty fun. She would say, “Sabina, if your dad was a cookie, what kind of cookie would he be?” It’s like Buzzfeed quizzes, pre-internet era!
Got any more tried and true games to build the conversation in your personal communities? Please share!
