Commonality
Summary: Commonality is an ice breaker game that helps people meet others with whom they have things in common.
Ages: From 14 to Adult
Recommended Number of Players: Between 6 and 30
Equipment:
Paper and pencil for each guest. It would be helpful to have all the guests names listed on the paper beforehand, but not mandatory.
Set Up:
No prior set-up required
How to Play:
Tell your guests that everyone has something in common with the other guests - it there job to find out what the commonality is. Encourage all the guests to talk to each other and find the one or two things they have in common. These cannot be things that are visible, such as "we ae both wearing jeans." They have to be intangible items such as "we have both ridden an elephant."
Winner:
The winner is the first person to find something in common with ALL the other guests.
Comments, Variations and Stories
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Best Advice from Dana Palmer
Many people come to this site looking for a couple specific games. When they find them, great, the job is done. But there is one thing I want ALL my guests to know regardless of how many or how few pages they read. Therefore, if you see this box again on a few more pages, skip it and move on to finding more games for your event.
But for those reading this for the first time, here is the best advice I can pass on from my many years of experience planning and executing large and small events. Read on…
“Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.” These are great words from A.A. Milne, the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh. I couldn’t agree more. And a solid foundation of organizing and planning is needed for most events. But I am here to tell you even with the BEST organization, no event is going to proceed EXACTLY as planned. You may even have a Plan B, C or D as a back-up. That’s fabulous! But trust me on this one; something will happen that you had no way of anticipating. So what now? Here is the trick. Pay close attention to this because it is the single most important piece of wisdom I can share with my readers.
Are you ready?
Learn to mentally let go of your perfect plans
the minute the party, event, game
or special occasion starts.
That’s it. I could write an entire page on how to “be in the moment” and “have fun at your own party.” But neither of those will happen if you don’t have the mindset that it’s alright to have things turn out differently than you imagined. The good news is that usually what you planned in your head that didn’t come through was never even missed by most.
So if you are going along, playing a game, or any other group activity, and it leads you down a road you didn’t foresee… Enjoy the ride.
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