Team-building activities are a great way to boost morale and encourage your team to bond. Activities that help your team members connect and help them learn how to work together, such as solving a puzzle, completing a treasure hunt or playing a game can strengthen professional rapport and inspire trust in one another.
HiCounselor has put together 10 team-building activities that your co-workers will absolutely love. These activities will help build enduring bonds, strengthen team spirit in a group and bring your valued professionals closer together, all while having fun.
Team-Building Activities
1. Blind Drawing
This activity helps develop communication, interpretation and leadership skills.
HOW TO PLAY: Pair people into groups of two and have them sit back-to-back. Provide one individual with a picture and the other with paper and a pen. Ask the person with the picture to describe it to their partner without actually saying what's in the picture.
2. Flip It Over
This activity helps acquire problem-solving, creativity and strong communication skills.
HOW TO PLAY: Ask a group of 6-10 people to huddle around and stand on top of a tarp. The challenge is that they have to flip the tarp, standing on the other side of the cloth. The only condition is that they can only use their feet! They can't get off the fabric or let their feet touch the ground.
3. Winner/Loser
This activity urges team members to look at things from a positive angle and turn it into a learning experience.
HOW TO PLAY: Divide employees into groups of two. One of the team members shares a negative life experience with their partner. Then the other team member retells the same story by highlighting the positive aspects of the experience. Let the group members switch roles after talking about each issue.
4. Mystery Dinner
This activity lets employees get out of their comfort zone and work as a team.
HOW TO PLAY: On a single night, invite a group of people from different teams to dinner at a restaurant or someone's place. The mystery lies in the fact that before the dinner, employees are only informed about the date and time of dinner. On the day of the dinner, an email is sent to everyone with the restaurant's name and who they'll be going out with.
5. Minefield
This activity helps build trust and collaboration among team members while focusing on developing communication and active listening skills.
HOW TO PLAY: In an open space, place random objects or "mines" across the floor. Divide people into groups of two and put the blindfold on one of them. The other person has to direct his partner to go from one side of the space to the other without stepping on any object. The person executing can only give verbal directions, and the blindfolded one cannot speak at all.
6. Sneak a Peek
This activity helps develop problem-solving and strategizing skills and also aids in sharpening memory.
HOW TO PLAY: Before the activity begins, build a sculpture using blocks and hide it from all the teams. Divide the teams into groups of 2-8 each and provide them with equal but enough building material. Ask one member from each team to come and "sneak a peek" at the sculpture for about 10 seconds. Then they go back to their teams and get 25 seconds to instruct their teams on how to rebuild the same statue. After 25 seconds, another member from each team is sent to sneak a peek at the sculpture. The process continues until one of the teams successfully builds a replica of the original statue.
7. Human Knot
This is one of the best team-building activities that urge employees to communicate and cooperate.
HOW TO PLAY: Divide employees into groups of 6-12. Ask them to form a circle facing each other. Tell them to put their right hand in the air and grab someone’s hand from across the circle. After that, ask everyone to put out their left hand and grab someone's hand from the circle. Set a timer for them and ask them to untangle the "knot" within the specified time. The first one to unravel wins.
8. Scavenger Hunt
This activity helps build a sense of teamwork and camaraderie among employees.
HOW TO PLAY: Divide employees into groups of 4 or more. Assign groups with a fun list of items with different point values assigned for each task. Set a time limit to complete them. These activities can range from taking selfies with strangers, quiz questions about the company, preparing a dish with ingredients available in the break room. You can also design a treasure hunt that you can space around the area near your office.
9. Birthday Line Up
This activity instills qualities like leadership, communication, collaboration, and problem-solving.
HOW TO PLAY: Pair participants into teams of 8-12 and ask them to stand side-by-side. Now ask them to stand in order of their birthdays (month and day). The catch to this simple game is that employees have to complete the entire task without talking to each other. They must use signs and symbols to get into order.
10. What's My Name
This activity gets employees to interact with colleagues they haven’t met before.
HOW TO PLAY: Write the names of famous personalities (celebrities), characters (comics, cartoons) or professions (football, swimming, golf) on sticky or post-it notes. Place the note on each person’s forehead but don’t tell them who they’ll represent. After this, ask them to go around the room and mingle with people to ask and answer questions. They have to treat each other stereotypically based on the label that they have been tagged with.
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