Part II of the Mixer

As I told you, Thursday I was on my way out the door to go to a graduation networking event for our newest graduates of the Certified Networker(CN) training here is NW Ohio. The members of the CN Board of Action are the ones who coordinate and run this event. They have decided that one way to make this event friendlier for our guests is to have some sort of icebreaker in which everyone can participate. At our November event, it was just before the big Ohio State/Michigan football game. Being almost equal distance from each school, there is lots of rivalry when that Saturday approaches. Accordingly, each person was given a ribbon to wear that signified who they would be rooting for. It got the buzz happening!

Leasa Maxx, of Maxx Grafx, was in charge of the icebreaker for this graduation. There were many possibilities proposed, some of which were declined because they weren't so appropriate for polite audiences. Those suggestions did gives us a few giggles though! To keep it clean, Leasa decided to use two questions from Scott Ginsberg's book, The Power of approachability. The two were: "When driving, do you listen to CDs, tapes, the radio or nothing?" and/or "When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?" To make it easy for people, Leasa had these put on business card sized pieces of paper which each person received as they registered.

When the formal part of the celebration began, Leasa asked for volunteers from the audience to share what the questions had done for them. Rebecca Booth, Imagine That!, delightfully shared what she had learned from several people including the fact that Phil Bollin, a financial planner from Modern Portfolio Management, told her that he had wanted to be a starting quarterback with a professional football team. She said, "Having those two questions helped me to really get to know people and learn something about them that I probably wouldn't have if the question prop hadn't been there for me to use."


So fill us in, what did you want to be when you were growing up?