Team Building Games
Team Building Games
Team Building Games
LIST
AN
OF GREAT TEAM
BUILDING GAMES
by Rob Wormley
Created Economy
In the book Weslandia by Paul Fleischman, the young boy Wes creates his own language, culture, and
economy one summer. A new startup created a small economy and ended up having a great deal of fun
as well as learning about what motivated other team members.
Get your team together and decide if you want to create an economy or some mini-aspect of larger
society. Set up the rules you will abide by, leaving enough wiggle room to experience problems that need
group agreement to solve as the system is put into action.
PURPOSE
By creating a mini society, your team naturally creates problems and challenges that force them
to work together. There are rewards and penalties. Some team members will reveal themselves to
be rule-abiders and others as creative rule-benders. The team will quickly learn how others work,
solve, and think outside of the typical work-related realm. This will bring new understanding to
work-related projects that need solutions.
Common Book
This team-building exercise takes place not in one sitting, but over time. Make a large, blank journal or
scrapbook available in the break room or other common areas. The book may have prompts on each
page, asking questions or suggesting things to write or draw. Or, you may have guidelines printed and
displayed next to the book (i.e. no swearing, nothing offensive, no complaints, no scribbling out others
work, etc.).
Leave pens, markers, tape, and other items that your team can use to write and draw in the book.
Encourage them to write down quotes from things they are reading or from team members, to write
about a fun event that happened at work, tape or glue ephemera or anything that helps record the teams
culture. When the book is full, put it on the shelf and get a new one.
PURPOSE
This team exercise creates a kind of living history of your business that you can keep adding to.
It is somewhat similar to the Zappos culture book, but allows your team a chance to build it more
directly. It encourages creativity, collaboration, and recollection. It also gives you something
concrete to look at in the future to see where your team has been and how far theyve come.
Scavenger Hunt
Divide your team into equal sized groups, and send them out with a list of items to locate and bring back.
Whether they remain in the office or are to leave the building is up to you. The ultimate goal is to get back
first with the most items. You may want to set a time limit so that all groups are back in a reasonable time,
whether they found all items or not. A scavenger hut can be themed, and might involve a variety of clues
or other twists that force a team to get creative and work together.
One variation is to make it a digital scavenger hunt in which they must find examples and specific
information or web pages online. You may wish to restrict which search engines or methods they use to
complete the challenge.
PURPOSE
A scavenger hunt is a fun activity that forces people to work together as a team. It spurs creativity,
particularly if clues or riddles are involved.
Geocache Adventure
Much like a scavenger hunt, a geocache adventure relies on clues but has the added level of using
GPS coordinates to find an item. Each group will need to have a GPS device that will work for finding
geocaches. There are several apps available to use on smartphones that would suffice. You may wish to
have a set time in which all groups must return. The clues you hide in specific geographic locations could
be part of a larger riddle or message that you wish the teams to have revealed to them.
A variation of this might be to use QR codes placed around the office or neighborhood, mixing GPS
locations with other clues found in QR codes.
PURPOSE
This exercise helps team members work together to achieve a specific goal using a specific and
narrow process in which close enough is not good enough. It also promotes problem solving in a
creative way if riddles and puzzles are involved.
Organizational Jenga
Using wooden blocks or an actual Jenga game, mark blocks according to the hierarchies present in your
company. For example, you might have some blocks denoted as the IT department, and others as HR.
You might have particular shaped blocks marked as manager and block shapes as support staff. The
labeled blocks should reflect the composition of your office (e.g. if 10% of your staff is IT, so should 10% of
the blocks).
Divide your team into groups, giving them an equal number and kind of blocks. From here, either specify
the type of structure each team must build, or provide guidelines and allow them to build any structure
they want. When the time limit has been reached, each team, taking turns, must begin to remove a block
at a time without destroying their structure. Do not inform them ahead of time that you will be asking
them to do this.
If time allows, you may ask them to repeat the exercise. See if they find a way to build a structure that can
withstand removal of blocks.
PURPOSE
This exercise is meant to show how each department and the various managers and staff positions
are necessary to complete the task, and that without everyone in place, things fall apart.The second
round reveals what blocks the team sees as unnecessary as they conceive of a way to deconstruct
their structure without destroying it.
Blind Drawing
Divide your team into groups of two each. Have each person sit with their back to the other. One person
will have a picture. The other person will have a blank sheet of paper and a pen. The team member with
the picture must not show the other person the image. Instead, the are to describe the image without
using words that give it away, while the other team member is to draw what is being described.
For example, the picture might be of an elephant standing on a ball. The description cannot be draw
an elephant on the ball but instead must use other adjectives and directions. After a set time limit, the
drawing time ends and both team members view the original picture and the drawing.
PURPOSE
This is an exercise that focuses on communication and language. While the final drawing will
seldom look like the picture, it is revealing to participants to see how different the interpretation of
instructions can be even when they are supposedly talking about the same thing.
Whats My Name?
On name tags or similar labels, write down the name of a famous person, or write down people types
(e.g. doctor, athlete, nerd, disabled, wealthy, homeless, etc.). Place these nametags on a team members
back so that they cannot see what they are, but the rest of the group can.
For a set amount of time, the entire group should mingle, and ask and answer questions. They should
treat each other according to the stereotypical way based on what kind of person they have been
labeled. Each team member can use that treatment, as well as the answers to questions, to figure out
what the label is. As each team member figures out who they are, they can exit the game and let the rest
continue.
PURPOSE
By confronting stereotypes in both how people treat us and in the questions and answers used, the
team can get a better sense of how we mistakenly see people as well as how it feels to be so narrowly
defined. This is also a good ice-breaker activity if you have team members that do not know each
other yet.
Group Timeline
On a bulletin board or other surface which accepts thumbtacks, create a blank timeline. The timeline
should start as far back as the oldest member on your team was born or when the company was
founded, whichever came first. Mark each year on the timeline. Then, using narrow strips of paper, write
down important dates for the company (e.g. founded, merged, changed names, incorporated, new
product) and pin it to the correct spot on the timeline.
Give your team members four slips of paper, and ask them to mark down four important moments in
their life. Let them pin them to the timeline.
PURPOSE
This exercise helps show, in a visual way, the different generations and experiences of your team. It
leads well into talking about cultural and generational differences and the effects that has on how
people work and communicate. It is also an opportunity for team members to learn more about each
other.
Classify This
Collect a variety of objects and put them in the center of a table. The broader the variety, the better (e.g.
office supplies, dinnerware, jewelry, toys, game pieces, etc.), Aim for at least 20 different objects. The goal
is to collect items that, at first glance, have no apparent connection.
Break the team into groups, giving each group a sheet of paper and pen. Make sure they have a clear view
of all the objects. Instruct them to classify the objects into four groups, writing down the groupings on
their sheet of paper. They should not let the team groups hear what they are doing. When the time is up,
have a spokesperson for each group reveal how they classified the objects, and why. Reasons might vary,
from the function of the object to how it looks, or the material it is made of.
PURPOSE
This exercise promotes teamwork and creative thinking, but it also encourages your team to rethink
how they view everyday objects. They are forced to look for commonalities in otherwise unconnected
objects. This leads to a discussion on how to work outside the box for solutions to problems that
seem wholly unrelated.
Active Listening
Bring your team in for what they think is just another staff meeting. Have a long document filled with
mind-numbing but coherent jargon-filled speech that talks vaguely about sales and marketing goals.
Sprinkled in the document are sentences which say something else entirely. These sentences should
contain instructions or information that they will be quizzed on after you are finished.
Begin reading it to your team in monotone. The goal is to get them to tune you out. Do not overemphasize the real sentences. When you are finished, hand out paper to each team member. Then,
ask them to write down what they thought you talked about. If your real sentences contained random
information, quiz them on that. Discuss who heard what, and see who was able to actively listen.
PURPOSE
This exercise touches on conflict resolution with the idea that many conflicts arise because team
members dont really listen. It shows the importance of listening to verbal communication, but also
non-verbal communication. They can discuss why they tuned you out, and what you could have
done to keep them tuned in.
Company Concentration
Most of us played the game concentration as a child, where youd have pairs of cards randomly mixed
and turned over, and youd take turns flipping over two at a time. The goal was to collect as many pairs as
possible, remembering what youd seen.
Create a card deck that has images or words related to your company or brand. It might be logos,
products, photos of your team, and so on. Whatever route you go, keep the images related. For example,
use all photos of your team, or all photos of your products.
Divide up into teams and see which team can match the most pairs in the least amount of time. You
might set additional rules, such as requiring the name of the person to be said aloud when the card is
flipped over, or some other related bit of information connected to the image on the card.
PURPOSE
To learn the names, information, and visuals associated with your company. This is particularly
effective if you have a lot of new team members and you want everyone to learn their name and
something about them.
Hello My Name Is
Create a list of adjectives that describe peoples attitudes (e.g. grumpy, happy, negative, fearful,
encourager, discourager, positive, joker, etc.). Have enough adjectives for every member of your team, and
write each adjective on a self-adhesive Hello My Name Is sticker. Place the name stickers in a container,
and have each team member draw a name sticker out without being able to see the adjective. Have them
stick the name tag on their shirt and wear it for a specific period of time, instructing them that all of their
responses and interaction for that time must reflect the adjective on their name tag.
You can use this in several ways. Your team could wear them during a typical meeting or brainstorming
session to show how good and bad attitudes affect outcomes. They could wear them for a typical work
day and then discuss how they felt. Or, you could have them wear a name tag half of the day, and switch
with someone for the second half.
PURPOSE
To show that assigning an attitude or telling someone they are acting grumpy can actually affect
how they view themselves and how they act during the day. If they switch name tags, they will see
how behavior and action often defines feeling, and not the other way around.
Telephone, On Paper
Give each team member a piece of paper. Have them draw a simple drawing on the paper, without talking
to anyone else. Each person then passes the paper to their right. Each team member looks at the drawing
they now have, fold the paper in half, and write at the top what they think the picture is of. The paper is
passed to the right again. Each person reads the description, folds the paper over to hide the words, and
draws a picture of that.
This continues, where each pass alternates between determining what the picture was and drawing what
was described. It is important that each turn only reveals the words or picture from the previous round.
Separate sheets or pads of paper may be used if that is easier than one sheet of paper, but they should be
passed together.
When the paper is back to the original owner, each member reveals what was written and drawn.
PURPOSE
This activity tends to create a lot of laughter and is an excellent ice-breaker at parties or before
long meetings where you want people to be comfortable with each other. The drawings and
interpretations tend to bring out discussion and jokes.
Do The Math
Create tasks that are assigned different values. For example, you might have Climb Mt. Everest and
give it a value of 35, while Give the dog a bath has a value of 3.
Give each member of your team three cards with the same number on them so that every team member
has a set of numbers different from every other player. One person will have all 1s, while another might
have all 10s. The goal is to accomplish the tasks in a set amount of time so that whoever is left will get a
prize based on the total value of the tasks completed.
However, in order to do the task, they must get people together whose numbered cards add up to the
value on the task. Once a card is used, it cant be used again. And once a team member has used up all
their cards, they are taken out of the game and out of the running for the prize.
Ideally, there are more tasks and values than can be fulfilled by the cards your team possesses. They must
determine which tasks to do, and which cards to use up. Ultimately, not every task can be completed, and
not everyone can be a winner. The goal is to get the highest total task value (for the best prize), and work
together to achieve it knowing that in order to do so, some will miss out.
PURPOSE
This rather painful game helps your team work together, understanding both strategy and selfsacrifice. Hopefully, once the game is over youll see that everyone has some kind of prize or reward,
but its best to allow the team to not know that during game play.