What is the Agree or Disagree icebreaker?
Agree or Disagree is an icebreaker to help a group of people feel comfortable with expressing their opinion to each other. The group is presented with a set of statements or positions that they can agree or disagree with. This is a useful exercise to run at the beginning of a workshop or meeting where you need varied input from everyone in the group in order to make decisions.
By participating in this icebreaker, participants practice putting forward their opinion, hearing other people’s opinions, and understanding that differences in opinion are common and expected.
As it is a warm up activity, you should use topics that people can debate lightly, but are not too controversial for the group.
How to run the Agree or Disagree exercise
- Set up the exercise with the statements you want to use. Add more questions if desired.
- Introduce the exercise to the team and get each person to choose their color tokens.
- The participants place a token on each scale, to show whether they agree or disagree with the statement. It is optional to add a sticky note with a reason.
- Once the statements are completed, review them with the team and discuss.
- If you’re the team facilitator or coach, make note of the team’s personalities and comfort with expressing themselves.
Agree or Disagree Examples
You can use these examples in your template, or come up with your own:
- Ice cream is better than chocolate
- I would survive a zombie apocalypse
- Working remotely is better than working in an office
- Fruit are a superior food to vegetables
- Being famous is better than being rich
- I am a night owl
- Emojis are over-used
- I am the best karaoke singer on the team
- I have the nerdiest hobby
- Dogs > Cats
- Superman vs Batman
- Invisibility vs Flight
- I love Christmas
- Summer is better than Winter
Agree or Disagree Tips
This is most commonly used as an icebreaker, but you can also use the format for the data-gathering stage of a retrospective. Put a set of statements about the sprint in front of the team, collect their opinions, and discuss the results.
