The wheel we spun to break the ice

You know that moment at a company event, right after the official welcome? Everyone’s standing around, holding a drink, and the small talk is starting to feel a little thin. I’ve been to enough of these to recognize the exact second when a room needs a nudge.

Someone had to go first

We’d set up a laptop with a big wheel on the screen, just off to the side of the main mingling area. It was meant to be a background thing, a gentle option. I gave it a spin, more to show it worked than anything else.The arrow landed on ‘Tell a story about your first job.’ I groaned a little, but I told mine—something about a summer washing dishes. The weird thing was, as I was talking, a few people drifted over.

The laughter that wasn’t in the plan

Then it was Sarah from marketing’s turn. She spun and got ‘Do your best impression of the CEO.’ The room went quiet for a second, then she did this spot-on impression of his signature hand gesture during presentations.The laughter was immediate and huge. It wasn’t mean-spirited at all, just this shared recognition. The CEO, who was actually standing nearby, laughed the hardest. That sound, that release of collective tension, is what I remember most.After that, the line for the wheel formed itself. The challenges were silly, but they gave people permission to be a little less polished. It stopped being about the tasks and started being about the reactions they sparked.

What it actually did

It didn’t feel like a forced ‘team-building exercise.’ It just gave us all a common, low-stakes thing to focus on, and the interaction flowed from there. People who’d never spoken before were suddenly cheering for each other’s terrible dance moves or obscure trivia knowledge.