A scavenger hunt 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. 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. If you do this over lunch, be sure to cater food and make it a fun time.
Require team members to be present. Have a question and answer session afterwards. Purpose: Most people are eager to let others know interesting things about themselves, but not all team members are able to make that happen. Most teams are lopsided, with some members dominating discussion. Before your regular staff meeting, break your team into groups. Instruct the groups to find out one commonality among themselves.
It might be a hobby or an interest they all do, or having the same favorite genre of music or favorite food. Once they discover a commonality they can agree on, they create a list of what might be stereotypical qualities of such people. Then, the groups come together to announce to the rest of the groups who they are. The Roller Coaster Buffs, for example, might periodically raise their arms and holler, or the Jane Austenites might rephrase all of their speech to co-workers as quotes from Jane Austen books.
At the completion of the meeting or day , talk about stereotypes that we assign to people. Talk about how people managed to find a commonality, and the process it took to dig it up.
Purpose: The idea is to force your team to confront the foolish nature of stereotypes and how, if people really behaved as we casually write them off to be, the office would be much different. The game also reveals the ability of a seemingly random group of people to find a commonality.
To do this, remove key nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Create a worksheet in which the removed words are shown as a blank line with instructions on what kind of word is needed.
In groups of two, have one team member ask for the correct type of word and the other team member supply the word. Or, if you do not want to break the team into groups, ask the team as a whole to supply one word at a time.
Once there are enough words, read the mission statement back. It will sound silly. Now that the team knows what the goal is, ask them for the same word types. See what kinds of words they supply.
Repeat the exercise until you get a mission statement that the team feels is correct. A variation is to categorize the types of words before the first round. So, tell them you are looking for words that apply to the team without telling them you are working on a mission statement. By stripping away the jargon and stiffness and allowing the mission statement to go through several rounds of nonsense, you allow your team to help you craft a statement that is more relaxed and honest.
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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
Pick a spot and encourage everyone to rock up with blankets, balls and beverages for a relaxed and informal get together where fun just blossoms.
Some of the most enjoyable group activities for adults arise out of loosely made arrangements, rather than organised amusement. Set the scene and see what happens. Let the geeks have their moment, and go head to head with a group quiz night. Make it themed around your interests. You could have birdwatching or an 80s music throwback, whatever floats your boat. The best quizzes include different style rounds e. How often do you organise a night out, nearly ageing a decade as you try to pin down a date everyone can do, only for the group to disperse over the evening.
Prevent it from happening by organising your get together on a party bus. Cruise the streets like VIPs, enjoy the cheesy on board entertainment like laser shows and fibre optics, and simply have some fun together doing something different. The anticipation. The competition. The little stampers. Groups have great fun when facing a challenge together. You get to explore a new area too. You can find an event near you , or why not book a detective day just for you guys? Just think of it like a bunch of apes and the group bonding that takes place as they ferret in amongst the fur of their buddies looking for a tasty mite or two.
Has your group been taking themselves too seriously? Do they need to lighten up and have some laughs? Set them the challenge of making a mockumentary. Your event includes an expert host to guide the game through to a successful conclusion. This community building activity is perfect for anyone that loves role playing games, storytelling, or is otherwise down to get a little nerdy.
Learn more: War of the Wizards. Having each of your team members share something about their lives also builds meaningful connections. We recommend the latter option, as it encourages quick and creative thinking. Here are more fun improv games that work for team building virtually. Personality tests are a common element of job applications and on-boarding.
You can use personality tests for remote team building too. Here is a list of personality tests to try. Not only does What Would You Do? Here is a list of would you rather questions to start with. One of the best ways to quickly build team morale is to throw spontaneous dance parties during video calls. We have a few recommendations for these virtual activities:. Here is a longer playlist from The Bash. Here is a list of virtual murder mystery games to try. Virtual Escape Rooms are popular online team building activities during quarantine because they include social elements, problem solving skills and teamwork.
For example, your team may have to figure out how to pull of an art heist and escape, or break out of a jail cell. The virtual activities are fun and interactive, and feel good when you win. Here is a list of virtual escape rooms with both free and paid options. Ten quiet minutes during an otherwise busy day can be an effective way to bring your people together and build strong remote teams.
You can achieve these results with a guided meditation session. Here is a 10 minute guided meditation on YouTube. You can snap a screenshot of your most frequently used emojis and upload it for your team to see. If you are looking for ways to make a virtual meeting fun or engage a virtual team in ways that are not lame, then a quick round of emoji ranking can help. Each member of your team will likely fit into one of the above categories. However, one thing will secretly unify your people regardless of category: they love getting praise.
Start a praise train where each person compliments each others work in succession and watch the employee engagement take off. For example, you could praise someone on their work ethic, and that person could praise a colleague on a successful client call, and that person could praise someone for writing a great blog article and so on. Mister Rogers Calls are one of the best virtual team building activities during quarantine.
The name comes from the goal: to get to know your remote work neighbors. We have been doing Mister Rogers Calls for years, and follow a simple format. First, we use the Donut app to randomly assign conversation partners every two weeks. The call itself should be 30 minutes, over video, and avoid work topics. Encourage your coworkers to talk about hobbies and interests outside of the job.
For example, you can talk about how long you can keep a houseplant alive. This post has themes and topics for virtual coffee chats. Minesweeper is a virtual game you can play on online via Google. Challenge your remote employees to a cutthroat round of the classic online game, and time your scores to see if you can beat each other and me. You can organize an epic Minesweeper tournament for your people and see who can race through the game quickest.
This online team building activity takes patience, precision and thoughtful risk taking; which are all good attributes to develop for remote teams. I recently finished a round in four seconds, unsuccessfully, so the bar is both high and pretty darn low.
The Price is Almost Right is a game where the host of a virtual conference call holds up household objects and other attendees shout out prices. The first person to guess within five cents of the actual retail price without going over gets 1 point for their team.
If you guess over the retail price then you are out for that round, but your team members may continue. The Longest Word is a quick virtual activity you can do on video chats and conference calls.
To play, arrange your people into teams and challenge them to spell a very long word. For example, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is as hard to say as it is to spell. The team that gets closest to the correct spelling, judged by an arbitrary eyeing, wins. The winning team can then bet double or nothing by guessing the meaning of the word too.
This list has more vocabulary activities for teams. Here are more hybrid activities you can do. A classic game often played at camp, teams can also play Never Have I Ever at the office. To start, players hold up five fingers. Then, in a circle, players name something that they have never done before. The last person still holding up fingers by the end of the game is the winner. Through Never I Have Ever, players learn many interesting and surprising things about your coworkers.
Prior to the game, ask your team to submit an eccentric photo with no context. Then, post the photos in a place where everyone on the team can see them. Ask team members to submit short explanations of what is happening in the photos. The person who originally submitted the photo votes on which story they like the most. No Context Pictures is a great team building game because it helps paint a more complete picture of your coworkers by showing a different side of their lives that may not be visible at the workplace.
Here are more problem solving games. Limericks are a whimsical form of poetry with a distinct rhythm. In Work Limericks, teams use creative muscles to write limericks based on work experiences. After familiarizing your team with guidelines on how to write limericks , give everyone a period of time to compose limericks. Then, have your team vote on which limericks are their favorites. The limerick with the most votes wins. Work Limericks is an excellent game because it lets your team exercise creativity and share creations with others.
Based on Secret Santa , Secret Gifter is a gift exchange game that you can play any time of the year. Players submit names and receive a subject to buy gifts for. To keep gifts fair and of similar quality, set a price limit and sponsor the purchase as a company. Then, on the designated day, publicly exchange gifts. During the gift exchange, team members guess who their Secret Gifter is. If a team member guesses correctly, then they win! Secret Gifter is a great game because it encourages team members to learn more about each other to buy the perfect gift.
Plus, who does not like to receive a fun surprise? Also, Hangman is exceptional for team building because it unites the team by pushing your coworkers to work together to successfully guess the word. Alphabet Chain is a terrific game for teams who wish to increase vocabularies. In this game, your team first settles on a topic.
Then, team members must name words that fit in that topic. However, every word proposed needs to begin with the last letter of the previous one. If a team member is unable to think of a suitable word and breaks the chain, then that person must withdraw.
The winner of the game is the last person still remaining. Since Alphabet Chain only requires an expansive vocabulary to play, no materials are needed, making it an easy game to start with. At the end of the week, the engineer with the most fixed bugs wins the game and gets a reward. Every week, your team logs the number of pages read and writes a brief reflection on the contents. At the end of the summer, the team member who reads the most pages wins the game.
Guess the Film Buff is an entertaining game inspired by Guess the Refrigerator. Prior to the game, team members submit photos of DVD or home movie collections. Then, display the film collection pictures in a central location and have team members submit guesses for who the owners are by the end of the day.
The person who guesses the most film collections correctly wins. Team Charity Drive is a meaningful game where your team competes together to make the world a better place. Select a charity your company would like to contribute to. Then, set a reasonable donation goal for the company to reach. If your team is able to achieve the goal by the end of the month, then treat your team to celebratory drinks or pizza parties. Here are ideas for virtual fundraisers you can do, and a list of community building activities for work.
For this game, request team members submit photos of their desk setup. Once the photos are in, post the pictures in a shared space where everyone can see. Then, ask your team to turn in guesses on whose desk is whose. The person who guesses the most number of desks correctly wins. If your team is hungry for new recipes to try, then My Next Meal is the activity for you to try. At the beginning of the week, a different member of the team submits a photo of what is inside their refrigerator.
Then, other team members present creative recipes using the ingredients seen in the photo. Everyone votes for the best recipe, and the recipe with the most votes wins.
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