If you ask managers, what’s the most hectic process in an organization? Their answer would be: team building. Team building is no doubt the most tiresome process in any organization. It takes a lot to build a team that delivers.
Keeping this in mind, managers can try some fun and creative team-building activities while working on team building. These games are proven to be useful and “low-hanging fruit” for any team.
WHY are team-building games necessary?
One might want to ask, why are these team-building games necessary for any team? Well, these games have been proven by science as best for improving problem-solving capabilities and decision-making in a team. Here are some key benefits of these games:
- Problem-solving and decision making in agile system
- Promotes a collaborative work culture
- Promotes meaningful communication
- Boost morale
- Sparks creativity among team members
- Pushes members to think out of the box
- Enhances productivity
- Eventually better performance
Here are the top 5 team building games that you should be playing with your team:
First things first, you need to break the ice, and for that, Icebreaking exercises are really important for a team in any organization. Below are a few Icreabreakers that teams should practice for better results while working together.
1. Community Service
Purpose: Ice Breakers, Team Building
Community service is really helpful in creating empathy among team members. If you take your team to community service like cleaning up a beach or a particular park or maybe go with something that reflects your company’s values. What do you get out of this activity? Well, your team gets to know each other well while you get a chance to be out of the office. It helps in breaking the ice and also bringing people together. This way, the team can work closely and empathize with each other.
2. Guess Who’s Office?
Purpose: Team Bonding
This interesting activity takes nothing but just an internet connection and a file-sharing tool. That’s it. Also, it’s very relatable amid the global pandemic. How to play this game? Well, it revolves around the home offices of your colleagues. You take a picture and send it to the manager or maybe the person who would want to lead this game. After that, a person shares their home office pictures with that manager. These pictures will be later shared with the team, in a Slack group, or using any other tool. The team has to guess who’s office is based on the look of the office. So, if you know your colleague well, it’s more likely that you’ll win.
3. Circle Talk
Purpose: Team Communication & Coordination
This game involves communication and team coordination, hence, making it challenging. It tests leadership and trust within the group. The team members are divided into groups and are asked to stand in a circle, formed by a string tied at the ends. There are several difficulty levels in this game where members are asked to be blindfolded and repeat. Some other challenges include muting random team members during the game. The main challenge in the game is to create shapes using the string with which the whole team is connected. They have to create a square, figure 8, rectangle, triangle, and other shapes.
4. Two sides of a coin:
Purpose: Team Bong & Understanding
I’ve found this one the most interesting game out of all these activities. The reason is self-explanatory once you know how the game works.
This game is all about building trust among team members. Two people named X and Y will have to share experiences from either their past or current situations. These experiences can be personal or professional, but either way must be true.
So, person X shares a negative experience from a past memory with Y, keeping in mind that the memory is authentic and not made up. Person X, again, shares a positive memory from past experiences; again, the experience must be real. After sharing, Person Y would shed some light on the negative experience, and this goes on. In this activity, person X and Y switch roles in storytelling, sharing both stories at their ends. This activity helps bring them together by getting in their shoes. Team members can relate more and know each other more by doing this.
5. Egg Drop
Purpose: Problem Solving & Collaboration
This activity will require a lot of eggs, depending on the size of your team. In addition, you would need newspapers, tape, plastic wraps, rubber bands, balloons, straws, popsicle sticks, a parking lot, a drop cloth or tarp, etc.
Make sure NO egg gets hurt during this activity! Just kidding. Of course, this activity will be lethal to those eggs you just bought from the supermarket. But in the end, your team would learn a lot, like how to solve problems creatively by collaborating with other teammates.
Start by making groups of the team members. Each team should get twenty to thirty minutes, and the goal is to keep the effs safe from a two-story drop. Don’t worry. Two-story drop is not necessary; you can determine the suitable height that you want, it’s not a big deal. The purpose is to have an activity that helps the team learn collaboration and problem-solving.
Conclusion
These were the top 5 creative team-building games and activities that you can perform at your organization to keep your team at the top of their game. Work can get hectic, and sometimes, it can be hard to collaborate with the team when you’re new. These activities will help bring them closer and resolve their issues by collaborating on the floor. Hopefully, these activities will prove useful and fun for your team at the same time. Keep thriving!
