When Fun meets Team Building equals Productive team.
Team building activities exist for the purpose of enhancing team cohesion, promoting creativity and innovation as well as getting to know colleagues better while having some fun together. Team building games may not seem much when it comes to hitting team building objectives, but they are not to be underestimated!
To help you generate team building ideas, we have compiled 20 fun team building games for a more productive team comprising a mix of games suitable for indoors and outdoors – these may be simple team building activities but they certainly provide plenty of entertainment geared towards productivity!
Table of Contents
1. Helium Stick
Test your team’s teamwork and communication with a long, thin and lightweight stick! Make them line up in two rows facing one another, holding their arms out while pointing their index fingers. Lay the Helium Stick on top of their fingers.
The group has to lower the rod to the ground by adjusting their finger heights together slowly without dropping the cane, pinching or grabbing the stick. Their fingers must be in constant contact with the rod all the time.
2. Barter Puzzle
This is one of the indoor team building activities that can improve your team members’ sales negotiation and strategy skills! Divide everyone into groups and each group will be given a puzzle set in which different puzzle set pieces from other teams are mixed in randomly.
Each team will have to assign roles and think of ways to barter with other teams to get the pieces they need to finish their puzzle first – a fun way to put bartering skills to a test!
3. Blind Drawing
This game is about exercising communication being the importance of team building.You will need some pens and papers or a small whiteboard, marker and duster for this kind of corporate team building activities. In Blind Drawing, have your colleagues sit back to back. One of them will have to describe an image given to them while the other will try to draw out the described image.
The catch is the person describing is not allowed to explicitly mention words that obviously give out the image but only allowed to use adjectives or other words that spark ideas of the image.
4. Hole Tarp
The whole idea of Hole Tarp is to provide food for thought to your coworkers that coordination and teamwork are important to keep the business going.
Supply them with a piece of tarp, plastic sheet or even canvas with a hole (or a few), and tennis balls. Team members will have to hold the edges of the tarp and shake it before you throw in a tennis ball. Each group has to keep the ball moving on the sheet, and the group that can maintain the ball on the tarp longest wins the game.
5. Game of Possibilities
For this type of corporate team building games, the possibilities are endless – this game is a good exercise for quick thinking and brushing up creativity.
Compile random objects and give on to each participant. Items could be anything from the office (if done indoors), toys or an everyday object. The idea is to have everyone brainstorm an alternative use for the object in their hand and demonstrate it for others to guess from their acting.
6. Lava Flow
Scatter a few objects good for stepping on (you could also just use cardboard or paper) and set an area as the lava river. The rule is to have a group crosses the lava river by jumping on the limited number of objects. Members are not allowed to touch the floor but can only share and move around on the objects to cross the lava river.
The winning group is the first team that crosses the lava river with all members intact.
7. Company Concentration
Time to test your colleagues’ memory skills and concentration!
This game is similar to Concentration card game except it is done corporate style for adults, which means you could create your own set of Concentration cards featuring company logo, organisation, products, anything. Team members have to flip two cards at a time until they can find matching pairs. The fastest team wins.
8. Grab Bag Skits
If you want simple team building activities that energize the team and encourages creativity, a Grab Bag Skit is the perfect fun activity.
Place a few items in a few grab bags and have each group pick a bag. Team members will have to put together a two- to three-minute skit within a set time using the items in their grab bag.
9. Scavenger Hunt
Scavenger hunt is another simple team building activities that allow for many variations, focusing on team efficiency and teamwork. Usually, scavenger hunts are themed and can be done either outdoors or indoors.
Give each group a list of items to hunt and collect and have them complete the game objective within a reasonable period of time. The first group to come back with a complete set of items wins.
10. Murder Mystery Dinner
A murder mystery dinner is part of fun team building games that involves everyone’s participation. You could either plan everything on your own or enlist an event planning company to help you design and customise this mystery dinner specifically for your organisation.
The team building objectives for this activity centres around the idea of critical thinking and problem solving which is crucial in a company. Everyone will have to try to solve the murder mystery and find the culprit from the acting and clues given.
11. Telephone, on Paper
If you think team building games couldn’t get any better, this game might just blow your mind away.
Provide each person in a team a piece of paper and ask them to draw something simple in silence. Everyone will have to pass their paper to their right. The person who receives the drawing will then fold the paper in half after looking, and write down what they perceive from drawing. The paper is then passed to the right again, and the next person who receives the words now draws on the paper.
Continue until the paper reaches the original owner before discussing on the various interpretations.
12. Group Order
Simple team building activities like Group Order actually provides quite a challenge. Divide participants into groups and have them rearrange themselves in ascending or descending order according to set criteria. It could be based on birthdays, age, show size or height.
The catch is that this activity has to be done using non-verbal communication – a good way to get to know people better and break the ice!
13. PowerPoint Karaoke
PowerPoint Karaoke is a pretty straightforward type of team building activities that puts presentation skills and quick thinking to a test.
Give groups a set of PowerPoint slides that they have never seen before and have them do an on-the-spot presentation using those surprise slides. Alternatively, you could also give them a few minutes to go through the slides prior to presenting for a less extreme version of the game.
14. Balloon in Water
Corporate team building games such as this requires only simple materials and less effort to organise without minusing the fun.
Test participants’ problem solving skills by having them make use of limited number of resources of inflated balloons, a bucket of water, disposable straws, paper clips, binder clips, plastic bag, string, tape and scissors to submerge the balloon into water for at least five seconds. Provide them a minute to plan and they have to complete the task within five minutes.
15. Minefield
What better game to promote teamwork and trust among members than playing Minefield?
Have a team member blindfolded and placed in an area designated as the Minefield, which is scattered with random objects. The goal is to have the other teammates guide the blindfolded one through the Minefield safely without stepping on the “minesâ€. If the person touches the “minesâ€, the round has to be repeated again.
The first group who successfully navigated their member across the area wins.
16. Heads Up!
You can either download Heads Up mobile app or manually make your own Heads Up cards for this. One participant will put a word or phrase on their forehead of which the person is clueless. Others will be able to see the word and they have to act out the hints for the participant to guess the actual word or phrase.
17. Reverse Charades
Reverse Charades is another variation of Charades where instead of one person has to act out a given word or phrase, this time one person has to guess the word or phrase from the rest of the team members’ clues.
Have everyone participate proactively. You could either play this game using cards, download the game’s mobile app or customise your own set.
18. Zombie Escape
This game focuses on a team’s capability to react quickly to adverse situations and work together as a team to achieve team building objectives.
Set in a zombie apocalypse theme, have one team locked in a room together. The goal is to find the hidden key to unlock the door. You could throw in some creepy music to set the tone or have an event planning company host it for you.
19. Egg Drop
Does your team has the brains to create a safe and sturdy egg pouch enough to withstand the height of an egg drop? This game challenges your colleagues to that!
Separate into groups and have each group build an egg package to protect an egg. Each team will give a short presentation on the egg package features before testing their package design – releasing the egg package from a set height. The first team with an intact egg after the egg drop wins.
20. Bears, Cowboys, and Ninjas
Step your team building activities up a notch with Bears, Cowboys and Ninjas! This game is much like Scissors, Paper and Stone game except with replaced hand gestures, with added sound effect!
Each player will have to select a pose among the three choices. For each play time, players either roar for bears, shoot finger gun for cowboys or pose as a ninja when competing against one another.
When corporate team building games are more fun and interactive, your company’s team building objectives will be achieved. The above activities are designed in such a way that promotes good teamwork, communication and creative thinking which are all crucial to have a more productive and efficient team.
Well, that’s all for our list of 20 fun team building games for a more productive team! If you enjoy reading this article, help us like, share and comment your thoughts!
Looking for inspiration on indoor company team building games or company annual dinner games? We have some ideas for you!
