The Wheel We Spun

You know that moment when a new group settles in, and the silence is just a little too polite? Someone always suggests an icebreaker, and half the room tenses up. That’s where this wheel came in for us.

When the pointer landed

It was just a simple digital spinner on the screen, a circle of silly little games. The facilitator gave it a click, and we all watched it whirl. There’s something about that shared focus, everyone waiting to see where it stops, that cuts through the formality.I remember the quiet guy in the corner leaning forward, just a bit. The person who’d been checking their phone actually looked up. It wasn’t about the game itself, really. It was the collective breath we all took, waiting to see what we’d do together.

The mix of reactions

It landed on ‘Two Truths and a Lie’ once. A few people groaned playfully, but I saw one woman’s shoulders relax. She later told me she hated improv games, but this felt like a structure she could handle. The groaners ended up having the most fun, of course, telling outrageous fake facts.Another time it picked ‘Build a Story,’ where each person adds a sentence. The competitive guy in the group got really into it, trying to steer the plot, while the creative types kept throwing in absurd twists. The dynamic shifted from ‘awkward strangers’ to ‘people trying to make each other laugh’ in about thirty seconds.You never know who will light up or who will just enjoy watching. But everyone has a reaction. That’s the point. It gives the quiet ones a role and the eager ones a harmless outlet, all under the guise of ‘the wheel chose it.’

What was on our wheel

Just a bunch of simple, low-stakes ideas that felt more like prompts than performances.