12 Awesome Team Skill Building Games Your Team Won't Hate
"Not another dumb company team building game," says the displeased employee. Ouch. When this thought crosses your employees' minds, you can pretty much throw the benefits of team bonding games out the window.
Team skill building games are supposed to be not only educational, but also enjoyable. They help the team learn about each other — how each person thinks, works, solves problems, and has fun. Whether you want to do some new hire orientation ice breakers or just bond your team closer together, there are inventive ways to do this.
To encourage your team to learn about one another without hearing a chorus of groans, below are 13 team skill building games online your team will want to play over and over again. While many of these games can be tailored for remote teams, if you're looking for more inspiration, check out our list of skill building games online in India.
Quick Team Building Games
Time: 5-6 minutes
Number of Participants: One or multiple small groups
Tools Needed: Any random objects
Rules: This is a great 5-minute team building game. Give an object to one person in each group. One at a time, someone has to go up in front of the group and demonstrate a use for that object. The rest of the team must guess what the player is demonstrating. The demonstrator cannot speak, and demonstrations must be original, possibly wacky, ideas.
Objective: This team building exercise inspires creativity and individual innovation.
Time: 5-6 minutes
Number of Participants: Two or more people
Tools Needed: None
Rules: Partner A shares something negative that happened in their life with Partner B. It can be a personal or work-related memory, but it has to be true. Then Partner A discusses the same experience again, but focuses only on the positive aspects. Partner B helps explore the silver lining of the bad experience. Afterward, they switch roles.
Objective: Participants discover how to reframe negative situations into learning experiences together.
Time: 1 - 2 minutes
Number of Participants: Any
Tools Needed: None
Rules: This one is for those of you looking for a great indoor team building game that won't take up much time. Before a meeting, have each individual walk around and share what they hope to contribute to the meeting with as many people as possible. If you want, offer a prize for the person who shares with the most people, and another for the person who successfully contributes what they shared.
Objective: Improves meeting productivity and makes attendees think about how they're going to contribute, rather than just what they hope to get out of the meeting.
Outdoor Team Building Games
Time: 1 hour
Number of Participants: Two or more small groups
Tools Needed: Pen and Paper
Rules: Break the group into teams of two or more. Make a list of goofy tasks for each team to do as a group. Tasks can include taking a selfie with a stranger, taking a picture of a building or object around the office, etc. Give the list to each team, along with a deadline by which they must complete all tasks. Whoever completes the most tasks the quickest, wins! (You can even create your own point system according to task difficulty if you want!)
Objective: Great team bonding exercise that helps break up office cliques by encouraging people to work with colleagues from other teams, departments, or just social circles.
Time: 15 - 30 minutes
Number of Participants: 8 - 20 people
Tools Needed: None
Rules: Have everyone stand in a circle facing each other, shoulder to shoulder. Instruct everyone to put their right hand out and grab a random hand of someone across from them. Then, tell them to put their left hand out and grab another random hand from a different person across the circle. Within a set time limit, the group needs to untangle the knot of arms without releasing their hands. If the group is too large, make multiple smaller circles and have the separate groups compete.
Objective: This game for team building relies heavily on good communication and teamwork. It also results in a lot of great stories for the water cooler chat in the workplace.
Time: 15 - 30 minutes
Number of Participants: 5 - 20 people
Tools Needed: Long piece of rope tied together and a blindfold for each person
Rules: Have your coworkers stand in a circle holding a piece of the rope. Then instruct everyone to put on their blindfold and set the rope on the floor. Have everyone take walk a short distance away from the circle. Next, ask everyone to come back and try to form a square with the rope without removing their blindfolds. Set a time limit to make it more competitive. To make it even more difficult, instruct some team members to stay silent.
Objective: Focuses on strong communication and leadership skills. By instructing some team members to be silent, this game also requires an element of trust across the team, allowing team members to guide each other in the right direction.
Time: 15 - 30 minutes
Number of Participants: 4 - 10 people (even numbers)
Tools Needed: Various handheld objects, several blindfolds
Rules: Find an open space such as an empty parking lot or a park. Place the objects (cones, balls, bottles, etc.) sporadically across the open space. Have everyone pair up, and make one person on from each pair put on the blindfold. The other person must lead their teammate from one side of the open space to the other without stepping on the objects — using only the verbal instructions. The blindfolded person cannot speak at all. To make it more difficult, create specific routes the blindfolded team members must walk.
Objective: This game focuses on trust, communication, and effective listening. This activity makes a great team building beach game as well.
Time: 1 - 2 hours
Number of Participants: Two or more small groups
Tools Needed: Assorted office supplies
Rules: Split everyone off into groups of three to five people and give each group an uncooked egg. Put all the office supplies in a pile. They have 15 to 30 minutes to use the supplies to build a contraption around the egg that will keep the egg from breaking when dropped. Some suggestions for supplies are: tape, pencils, straws, plastic utensils, packing material, newspapers, rubber bands. Once time is up, drop each egg contraption from the second or third floor of your building and see which eggs survive the Eggpocalypse.
Objective: This classic team building game is an engaging (and messy) exercise. It uses teamwork and problem solving to bond team members. The more people the better, so this makes for an "eggcellent" corporate team building game! Make sure you have an extra supply of eggs in case some break (ew!) during the construction process.
Time: 1 - 2 hours
Number of Participants: Four or more small groups
Tools Needed: Different jigsaw puzzles for each group
Rules: Have everyone break off into small, equal-sized groups. Give each group a different jigsaw puzzle with the same difficulty level. The goal is to see which group can complete their jigsaw puzzle the fastest. However! Some pieces will be mixed around in other group's jigsaw puzzles. It's up to the team to come up with a way to get those pieces back — either through negotiating, trading, exchanging team members, etc. Whatever they decide to do, they must decide as a group.
Objective: This activity will rely heavily on problem solving and leadership skills. Some team members might stand out and some might stand back, but it's important to remember that the entire team must come to a consensus before a decision is made.
Time: 10 - 15 minutes
Number of Participants: Five or more people
Tools Needed: None
Rules: Sit everyone in a circle facing each other. Have each person come up with three facts about themselves and one lie. The lie should be realistic instead of extravagant. Go around the circle and have each person state the three facts and a lie in a random order, without revealing which is the lie. After someone shares, the others must guess which is the lie.
Objective: This is a great ice breaker game, especially for new teams. Helps eliminate snap judgements of colleagues, and gives introverts an equal chance to share some facts about themselves.
Time: 10 - 15 minutes
Number of Participants: Two or more people
Tools Needed: A picture, pen, and paper
Rules: Divide everyone into groups of two. Have the two individuals sitting back-to-back. Give one person the pen and paper and the other person the picture. The person with the picture describes the picture to their teammate without actually saying what it is. For example, if the image is a worm in an apple, do not say, "Draw an apple with a worm in it." The person with the pen and paper draws what they think the picture depicts, based on the verbal description. Set a time limit for 10 - 15 minutes
Objective: This is an activity that focuses on interpretation and communication. Once the drawing is finished, it's always interesting to see how the drawer interprets their partner's description.
12. This is Better Than That
Time: 15 - 20 minutes
Number of Participants: Any
Tools Needed: Four or more objects
Rules: Pick four or more objects that are different (or the same objects that look different). Split all your participants into even teams. Describe a scenario where each team has to solve a problem using only those objects. This can be anything from "You're stranded on a desert island" to "You're saving the world from Godzilla!" Have each team rank the objects based on their usefulness in that specific scenario, along with their reasoning.
Objective: This exercise inspires team creativity in problem solving. The idea is to not make the scenarios too easy so it becomes obvious which objects are most useful.
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