Everything But Your Name
Introduce yourself completely. You may not say your name or your job.
Pairs introduce themselves for a minute without using their name or their job title, which removes the two things most people hide behind. What comes out instead is what they actually care about, and the room is noticeably different afterwards.
Find a partner. Introduce yourself for one minute. You can say anything at all except your name and what you do for a living. When the minute's up, swap.
A group who introduce themselves by job title need to meet each other as people, usually at the start of a longer programme.
Props: None
Run this when…
If none of these is your room, pick another.A leadership programme or cohort starting out
A room where everyone leads with their title
Any group who will work together for more than a day
How to run it
Written to be glanced at mid-room, not memorised.
- Pairs, sitting or standing, facing each other.
- One minute each. No name, no job title, no company.
- Call the swap yourself so nobody has to watch a clock.
- After both have gone, ask a few people to introduce their partner to the room — still without name or job.
- Only then let people say their names.
- Ask what they led with instead. That is the interesting part.
Running it well
Only the host sees these. Participants never do.
- The one-minute limit matters. Given two minutes people run out of things that are not their job and start describing it anyway.
- Introducing your partner to the room is what makes it stick — it means people actually listened rather than waiting for their turn.
- Letting names in only at the very end is deliberate. It makes the name land on a person you already know something about, which is why it gets remembered.
Watch out for
Space, safety and the traps worth knowing before you start.
- Nobody moves and nothing is physical.
- Talking about yourself without your job is genuinely hard for some people. Say up front that talking about what you do outside work counts, so nobody freezes.
Already seated
Nobody has to stand for this one.
It is already seated — turn to whoever is beside you.
On a video call
The cards work as they are. This is what changes about how you call it.
Round the gallery, one person at a time, sixty seconds each, everybody listening. Slower than pairs and better, because the whole room hears every answer instead of one partner. Ask people to rename themselves to something neutral first — on a call the job title under their face does the hiding for them.
Run it yourself
Free for thirty days, no card. Put it on the projector and step through it — nobody in the room needs a phone.
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- Where
- Remote or in person
- Props
- None
- Big screen
- Required
- Teams
- Individual only