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About Diversity Icebreaker

Self report questionnaire 

Perfect to use in seminars

Diversity Icebreaker™ is a  1 page self report questionnaire. 
During the seminar process people become aware of the effect of categorization on perception, interaction and group dynamics. 

Normally consultants use between 1 and 1,5 hours with a group to introduce the questionnaire and create shared understanding of the concepts and how it can be relevant for the participants and the organisation. The method is most often used with groups from 9 to 150 participants.

Only 10 minutes to answer

There are 42 items with 3 dimensions, called Red, Blue and Green. Participants answer the questionnaire and score the results themselves in about 10 minutes.  

Easy to understand for participants

In the process the participants learn the concepts, adopt them and develop a positive and shared understanding on how the concepts can be applied

Easy to use for consultants - No certification needed
In order to use the Diversity Icebreaker™ concep you do not need a certification seminar, as long as you have some general competence in running seminars. Experienced facilitators will through the User Manual delivered with the questionnaires be able to run the seminar. A DVD showing the sequences in an authentic seminar is also available.

Scientifically valid and reliable
The concepts are basically constructed from an categorisation of communicative behavior and not broad personality description. The focus is just as well on flexibility in roles due to social dynamics, tasks and personal decisions to act. The concept has been normed and validated in Norway 2004-5. Internal reliability is between 0.75 – 0.82. Global trials of seminars and cross-cultural validation of the questionnaire is ongoing. 

19 languages available:
English (US), English (UK), Italian, Spanish, German, Dutch, French, Russian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Japanese, Chinese , Hebrew, Arabic, Serbian, Bulgarian and Portoguese.

Diversity Icebreaker™ is developed by Bjørn Z. Ekelund (the Managing Director of Human Factors), starting in 1995. Ekelund was awarded the prize: “Consultant of the year 2008” for his international breakthrough with this instrument.

Radical different from traditional psychologial assessment

Diversity Icebreaker creates a safe psychological climate to share ideas between people, cultures and organizational units. The concept of Diversity Icebreaker is radical different from traditional psychologial assessment. A normal test procedure is to reveal individual qualities most precisely. In Diversity Icebreaker the questionnaire functions as a starting point. The process in the seminar invites people to fill in with shared understanding on the question of ”What does Red really mean?”

People with a dominant Red preference give an answer from ”within”. Then the other groups are invited to give their view from ”outside”. This creates a shared understanding of the social meaning of these labels. This process builds relevant meaning to the labels, and psychological expert knowledge is not so relevant anymore.

This process creates positive ownership to the labels and we think this is important for the continual use of the concepts following the seminars.

Creates synergy out of diversity

Through collective reflection at the end of the seminar, there are possibilities to develop a shared understanding of the group dynamics in the process, the effect of labeling, the understanding of the social construction of concepts like Red, Blue and Green, the need of being salient on diversity in order to create synergy out of diversity, the need of a positive acknowledgemenet both individually and collectively of the diversity – and what diversity is relevant for the team and organization to address in order to be more functional.

This collective reflection is the momentum that is important to promote being used in teams and organizations when they shal act with empowerment and autonomy.
           

What do consultants experienced in using Diversity Icebreaker say?

”It is a way of doing this that is playful. It is an icebreaker, and it gives us a good starting point, especially when one is to build trust within a group. It speeds up a process where people can be more open”

"It’s personal without being private”
“Gets down the defences towards the other groups.”
 

And the participants:
”The team has never been the same, since”

”When I understood he was Green, then it was no problem anymore.”

The group exercises used in conjunction with Diversity Icebreaker bring out lots of humour, which promotes openness and a learning mode in groups.

The positive experience for all participants make it easy to use the seminar and its concepts as a platform for further success. Customers often mention that these dimensions have become integrated concepts in the organisation. They become shared concepts for understanding individual differences and promote self-correcting group processes.

 
The 3 dimensions of Red, Blue and Green can be linked pedagogically to different objectives: 

• Personality differences
• Team roles
• Preferred communication styles
• Categorisation of self and others, prejudices
• In-group and out-group processes
• Taking social positions in opposition to others
• Different contributions in different stages of business processes
• Creating a psychologically safe climate of openness and learning
• Not least, collective reflection regarding language used in groups and organisations 

It is most often used in:

• Training of relevance for team, projects, communication and negotiations

• Starting off seminars where openness, feedback and learning is important

• Before learning groups are established in personal development programs

• Cross-cultural training

The group exercises used in conjunction with Diversity Icebreaker promotes openness and a learning mode. They become shared concepts for understanding individual differences and promote self-correcting group processes.