20 Team Building Activities Your Team Will Actually Love
20 Team Building Activities Your Team Will Actually Love
The human race has evolved over millions of years by sticking together, working in groups and teams. Living in groups has helped humankind survive on this planet and thrive better than any other species. Considerable credit goes to this particular nature of humans, i.e., living in teams. Therefore, team-building activities are a must for relieving the stress of employees.
Most jobs today — especially in tech, involve interacting with others, and often, these team members are not even in the same line of profession. So there has always been the need for dedicated, effective teamwork in any field — whether that means jobs in the business sector, science, or finance.
Steve Jobs revolutionized the entire pattern of living with his innovative and creative mind — but without his team of hard-working professionals and their abilities, his innovations would not have reached the hands of so many people worldwide.
All of the new world facts swirling around us makes it important to have effective ways to develop teams to obtain our best results. Here are 20 Team Building activities that can assure the development of professional bonds and coordination between team members:
20 Team Building Activities for Your Team
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Blind Drawing
Aim:
This activity aims to develop good quality communication and understanding between team members and understand how they think.
Activity:
First, divide everyone into pairs. Then with each pair/team, do the following:
Give a pen and paper to one of them and give a picture to the other. Now the one with the picture has to explain to the other what it is without actually telling what it is. With this explanation, the other person has to draw the picture within a given time limit.
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Virtual Peak
Aim:
This game helps to know your team members on a personal level.
Activity:
This is a virtual game and is great to play during times like the unfortunate pandemic — or anytime you have a large portion of the team working from home (like work-from-home-Friday). Each member has to make a short video of their homes and their favorite things about it and show it to everyone.
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The Egg Drop
Aim:
This fun activity works great to help team members bond with each other and design effective strategies for problem-solving.
Activity:
Firstly gather some eggs and make several teams of 3-5 people. Give each team some office supplies like tape, pencils, straws, plastic utensils, etc. The teams will have 20-30 mins to create a platform that’ll prevent their eggs from breaking when dropped from the 2nd floor.
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The MineField
Aim:
The activity is highly based on trust, communication, and effective listening, which are integral for any team.
Activity:
Find an open space and place obstacles on the floor like cones, bags, drink cups, water bottles, etc. Then, divide everyone into pairs and put a blindfold on one team member. The other team member must help the blindfolded member cross the obstacle course (without touching anything) by voice instructions.
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Coin Logo
Aim:
This activity promotes self and mutual awareness. It also helps team members understand each other on a personal level.
Activity:
Ask everyone to take coins out of their purses and wallets. The entire group is supposed to create a logo using these coins and other materials like notebooks, pens, etc. The logo should, in some way, represent their team/organization. At the end of 15 mins, ask everyone how that logo represents their department/organization or team.
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Classification Game
Aim:
The classification game is a great activity for an icebreaker session for team building or a company party.
Activity:
Create groups of 3-5. In front of their teams, each person in the group says three sentences about themselves with a like, dislike, and one dream. At the end of a quick discussion, each team has to develop a category to describe their entire team as one single group like sporty, night-owls, rain-lovers, etc..
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Picture Pieces Game
Aim:
This activity aims to state the importance of minor decisions that affect the entire team.
Activity:
The leader has to choose a picture of some cartoon character and cut it into several small pieces. Then, each person gets one of the pieces, and they have to draw the same piece five times bigger. In the end, all the larger drawings are joined to see who dis-coordinated with the team. This is fun to do with paint — (as you see above) with acrylic on poster board. You can use cheap brushes from a local craft store.
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Human Knot
Aim:
This activity aims to create good communication and team building.
Activity:
Make everyone stand in a circle facing each other. Then ask everyone to grab the hand of a random person on their right and left sides. After everyone is holding hands, ask them to untangle and form a circle without leaving any hand until they are in a tight knot — have a rule that they have to have someone step through (over hands) twice. Then have them untangle. (Yes, it is difficult to step backward over hands to untangle.)
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Scavenger Hunt
Aim:
Scavenger hunts test team-thinking and decision-making.
Activity:
Divide everyone into groups of 3-4. Leave clues at multiple points that lead to the final Prize. The team that reaches there first wins.
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Purpose Mingle
Aim:
This game improves meeting productivity and motivates everyone to work instead of trying to leave the meeting.
Activity:
Before starting a meeting, make everyone stand and share what they aim to contribute to the meeting. The team will ultimately decide who actually contributed to the meeting, the point they shared earlier. The winner gets a prize.
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Group Juggle
Aim:
Group juggle is a great icebreaker session for new teams.
Activity:
Make everyone stand in a circle facing each other and throw a ball at someone. The one who catches it has to say their name and throw it to someone else. The one who catches it has to do the same. After some time, throw another ball into the circle and continue the activity with more balls.
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Active Listener
Aim:
Improves meeting productivity and attentiveness.
Activity:
During routine meetings, say random things in the middle of the discussion topics and ask everyone about them at the end of the meeting to know who was listening. It can also be played as a team 1 vs. team 2 activity. You can also whisper an important point of a meeting in a person’s ear to the left and a different point to a person on the right. Then have them pass around the information around the circle. Finally, have the last two people who get the information tell what the information is.
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Game of Possibilities
Aim:
This team-building exercise inspires creativity and individual innovation.
Activity:
Divide everyone into groups and then share an object name with one member of each team in secrecy. They then have to explain what the object is, without saying anything but just with actions.
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Pair Up
Aim:
It is a great way to break the ice for new hires.
Activity:
Write several pairs on pieces of paper, like Mario on one and Luigi on others. Ernie and Bert. Paste these papers on the back of everyone and make them find their partners.
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Flip It Over
Aim:
The objective helps people work in groups and acquire problem-solving, creativity, and robust communication skills.
Activity:
Take a 2-meter long table cloth and make 4-5 people stand on it. The aim is to flip the cloth upside down, but the condition is that they can only use their feet to turn the cloth. Another way to do this is to have the team stand around the cloth and turn it over, never touching the ground.
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The Barter Puzzle
Aim:
This activity is based on leadership skills and problem-solving. In addition, it aims to improve the overall teamwork and coordination of team members.
Activity:
Make some teams of any but equal sizes and give each team a jigsaw puzzle of equal difficulty. The twist is that some of the pieces will be mixed in different teams. The missing pieces can hence be negotiated among the teams, but whatever happens, will happen as one decision of the entire team.
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Truth and Dare
Aim:
Truth and dare aim to develop honesty and interaction between team members.
Activity:
As simple as it is, truth and dare can be a very effective game to help your team know each other better and create stronger bonds based on honesty and interaction.
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Office trivia game
Aim:
This game improves problem-solving, knowledge about your office culture and is just also very fun to play.
Activity:
Create a list of trivia questions regarding your workplace and see which team gets the most correct answers. You can type a document of the questions leaving an area blank for the answers, or do a live quiz.
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Karaoke
Aim:
Apparently, singing is a great building exercise and allows everyone to bond with each other.
Activity:
Your team can all go out to a karaoke bar or sing karaoke in the office with the help of karaoke games like SingStar. Our team has had great fun dividing into teams and picking songs at a karaoke bar, then trying to outdo each other and vote who picked the best song, had the best singers, did the best harmony, etc.
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Count to 20
Aim:
It aims to develop coordination
Activity:
Make everyone stand in a circle with their heads down and eyes closed. Then they have to start counting to 20, but only one person can speak a single number at a time. If more than 1 person is speaking at the same time, they start at one again.
Conclusion
There are numerous ways to build the team spirit of your company. We also play ping-pong, bocce ball, spike ball, various versions of volleyball (even without a net), and baseball (softball) when we can get to the field. By performing team-building activities, one can ensure a stronger bond together. The spirit of becoming the best team and achieving a collective goal helps boost confidence and further build trusting bonds.
If you have employees who have a great connection and trust; you are already halfway through the success door.
In the end, what matters is how happy your employee are. If they have a good time working at your organization, you will find a great coworking space. Let them mingle and choose your business as the best learning platform to which they have come up.
At the same time, engage them with skills and development programs to improve their skills, or they can take them as their hobbies like photography, public speaking, or some basic technical skills like dedicated WordPress hosting based web development which is quick and easy to learn.
What We Have Found
We feel that if you are using team-building activities — your team is much more likely to ask questions of each other when they don’t know a piece of technology — and they are happier to help each other with project issues.
The teams are more likely to work together to solve personal (work) problems rather than “tell” the boss/leadership that someone isn’t doing their job. They remind each other and are kinder and less harsh or judgemental to each other.
It is easier to engage your employees to do extra projects. The employees are more likely to keep themselves motivated to work towards your goal — This allows them to carry on with their side hobbies and learning. We have also found that our team building work has brought good results to our company in the end.
Nobody wants to keep changing jobs or avoid work until they are enjoying work with disciplined freedom. But, unfortunately, it seems that nowadays, everyone thinks it’s the responsibility of the HR Team to create better workplaces and cultures — but as a manager and leadership — you don’t always need HR to take care of everything — you can do it yourself.
I hope you build stronger teams with these team-building activities.
Incidentally: these games are great with kids, families, and family reunions, and large parties.
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