Simple teamwork games

Example situations include babysitting, leading the company, or being married. Say the leader chose to go with a marriage situation.

That means each person in a two-person team would come up with one question that would help them discover whether or not their partner was suitable to be married to them. If the topic was babysitting, each team member would have to come up with just one question whose answer would help them determine whether or not the person was suitable to babysit their child. This icebreaking activity can also get mixed up by issuing one situation for the entire group or allocating a different situation to each team member or pair to work on.

This activity can be very fun while also helping your colleagues to develop their communication and questioning skills. The classification game can be a quick icebreaker or a more complex activity. For the purposes of this example, we will treat this activity as a quick icebreaker.

It should be made clear that this type of classification is subjective and unhelpfully judgmental. Instruct the participants to introduce themselves to those in their team and quickly discuss some of their likes and dislikes. After the introductions, reveal to the teams that it will be their job to discover how they should classify themselves — as a team — into two or three subgroups by using criteria that contains no negative, prejudicial, or discriminatory judgments.

Examples of these subgroups can include night owls and morning people, pineapple pizza lovers and sushi lovers, etc. This activity encourages coworkers to get to know each other better and enables them to consider the interests of their colleagues.

This problem solving activity requires that the leader choose a well known picture or cartoon that is full of detail. The picture needs to be cut into as many equal squares as there are participants in the activity. Each participant should be given one of the "puzzle pieces" and instructed to create an exact copy of their piece of the puzzle five times bigger than its original size.

They are posed with the problem of not knowing why or how their own work affects the larger picture. The leader can pass out pencils, markers, paper, and rulers in order to make the process simpler and run more smoothly.

Stick a post-it note with a famous person, or city written on it, on the head of a team member and get them to ask the other members of the team questions about this person or place that allows them to guess what it is.

The employees pretty much do as the name entails; each member must introduce themselves by saying their name backwards, and the other employees must guess what the person is saying their name is. Once they have done this, place all the ideas into a treasure chest or something similar and pull out the pieces of paper one by one.

Between the group, everyone should discuss how the person could reach these things that they want in life. An old school classic which you more probably played as a child, but will definitely still work on an adult work team to aid conversation and get employees to know each other, is would you rather.

When someone catches the ball they have five-seconds to name a movie that no one else has named before. This encourages employees to think on the spot; and, you can learn a lot about people from the movies they watch. Give each team member a penny and ask them to remember something that happened in the year that penny was made. Another activity that will enhance communication and be fun for all employees to play is 20 questions.

Another activity, often used in interviews, but can also be used as a team building activity is the island analogy. To do this, sit all your team members in a circle and get them all to stare at each other for as long as possible without smiling; the last person to smile wins.

The aim of this fun game is that someone who is sitting in the outer circle must grab the treasure from underneath the chair without the person who is sat on top of it noticing. Finally, the paper towel is a quick, easy and fun team building exercise that teaches employees planning, timing and organisation.

Give each employee an A4 sheet of paper, and give them five minutes to create the tallest free-standing structure possible. Whoever is the tallest, wins! These meaningful activities all improve time management, team bonding, decision making, communication skills, learning outcomes in smaller teams.

It has been shown that trust is related to team effectiveness, so if you want effective teams, including remote employees and in-office ones, it is really important that your employees trust both you and each other. Research has shown that when members within a team trust each other that team believes they perform better, feel less stressed, are more committed and are more satisfied.

This is especially important in virtual teams. Other studies have also supported this, finding that teams with more trust were more committed and satisfied. Also, if your employees feel that they are trusted and that they can trust you, they are more satisfied so are less likely to leave your team, or company; which saves you money and increases your team's effectiveness and cohesiveness! These activities are good to do on the first day of a new team working together, in a conference room, and should engage the rest of the group or entire team.

There are things other than team building activities that can be used to increase team effectiveness. This planning exercise also requires that the participants have paper, pens, and a map. The map can be of the state the participants are in, of the whole country, or of a specific area.

Instruct the teams to plan a vacation, which must be planned within certain parameters. Each group should be given a list of what they have for their trip, how much money they can use, what kind of car they will have, the size of its gas tank, m. Each group should write down their travel plans and any group that runs out of money or gas will be disqualified.

Awards can be given to the team that saw and did the most with what they had or for the most exhausting trip, the most relaxing, etc. The goal of team building exercises like this is to get coworkers working together as team with the common purpose of planning this trip in 30 minutes.

This planning game is ideal for small groups and only requires drinking straws and some paper. The group leader needs to draw a large circle on a large piece of paper with concentric circles within it. Then, each circle must be assigned a score, with the biggest score being saved for the smallest, middle circle. This paper is taped onto the middle of a large desk. Then, each participant must gather around the table and be given a drinking straw. The group leader will make dime-sized balls by wadding up bits of paper.

It is up to the group leader how many balls will be in play. The participants must blow into their drinking straws to push the balls around. It sounds easy, but as more balls come into play, the participants must plan with their coworkers how they will push balls into high-scoring sections without moving balls that are already in place.

These simple team building exercises helps coworkers work together to create and follow through with a plan and it also encourages them to communicate. This trust exercise requires some setting up before it can be executed. It also requires a large, open area such as a room without furniture or an empty parking lot.

The leader must distribute "mines," which they place haphazardly around the area. This exercise gives coworkers a chance to work on their relationships and trust issues, which is why they are paired into teams of two. One team member will be blindfolded and cannot talk and the other can see and talk, but cannot enter the field or touch their blindfolded teammate. 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.

Gather your team in a circle, and have them sit down. Each team member should then put on a provided blindfold. Leave the circle.

Instruct them to form a perfect square out of the rope without removing their blindfolds. You can introduce variations into this game. For example, you might, at random, instruct a team member to not speak. One by one, members of the group are muted, making communication more challenging. Or, let the team come up with a plan before putting on the blindfold, but once they cannot see, they also cannot talk.

Purpose: This exercise deals with both communication and leadership styles. There will inevitably be team members who want to take charge, and others who want to be given direction. The team will have to work together to create the square, and find a way to communicate without being able to see. On name tags or similar labels, write down the name of a famous person, or write down people types e. 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. Using masking tape, create a large polygonal shape on the floor.

It should be about 12 feet long by 6 feet wide, at least. Mark the start and stopping points. Make the shape a bit convoluted, choosing a shape that is elongated with the idea that people must make their way from one end to the other. Place a few squeaky dog toys inside the shape, and twice as many full sheets of paper with a large X on them inside the shape. The paper is the mines. At least two at a time, each person on your team must make their way from start to finish blindfolded.

They cannot step outside of the boundary, nor can they step on a mine. If they do, they are frozen. They can only be unfrozen if someone else inside the shape steps on a squeak toy.

Their only guidance is the vocal commands of those outside the shape who are not blindfolded. Purpose: This game is about communication, and trusting each other. Players learn to be observant of multiple action as well as give clear and timely advice. 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. 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. Have each team member bring one item from their desk to the exercise. Then, tell them that this item is going to be their new product, and that they must come up with a name, logo, slogan, and marketing plan for that object.

Give them a set amount of time. This could be done individually, or in small groups if desired. Discuss, as a group, which products were successfully sold and why. Purpose: For marketing and design teams, this exercise presents the challenge of seeing old things in a new light. When combined with groups working together to sell a common object, you introduce teamwork and crunch-time brainstorming.

It promotes creativity and problem solving, too. Come up with several scenarios in which a person would be chosen to do something. For example, it might be a new job hire, marriage, leading an organization, or commanding an army. Have each team member write their question down. When all scenarios have been covered, discuss the questions as a group and see what each team member thinks would be the perfect question. Purpose: Team members quickly learn how each other thinks differently.

The perfect question that each comes up with will reflect their motives and what they think matters the most. This is an excellent way to lead into a discussion on how team members determine who is capable and who they will follow or trust.

Collect a variety of objects and put them in the center of a table. The broader the variety, the better e. 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. Bring in four objects or multiple sets of four objects of the same type e. Write up a conversational scenario for each set that outlines what the perfect item would be, in the order of preference.