Team energizers
Group Postcard
For a more creative game, have your team collaboratively use postcards to make a bigger picture. Hand out several blank postcards and have the team work together to determine how they’ll create their picture. Some people like to have a cohesive image in mind and then discuss how they’ll each do a small part. Other people like to bring up and color the postcards one at a time, adding a small piece to the growing image, and seeing what it becomes. Either way, this is a great way to facilitate teamwork, cooperation, and creativity all at once.
Cooperative yoga or stretching
A collaborative set of movements is always a nice idea for a group. We suggest focusing on yoga moves and having each person picking the next move in your flow. A participant will pick a yoga move that everyone completes, and then the next person selects a different one, and so on. It’s best to complete these exercises quietly and without speaking, focusing instead on breathing and movement.
Who Said It?
For this game, you’ll need to have several quotes from famous individuals prepared. Start by giving everyone a quote and challenging them to guess who said it. Whoever submits the first correct answer wins. It’s easiest to have pieces of paper with the quotes printed on them, that you can just hand out as people enter the room.
What’s new (in my office)?
If you have a lot of virtual meetings with the same people, it can be a fun idea to throw in some changes now and then. For this game, send out a note prior to the meeting instructing everyone to add one new thing to their normal working space or background. Then, during the meeting, everyone should take turns observing the work space of their colleagues and seeing if they can point out what’s new. The new item can be anything from a plant on the desk to a silly poster on the wall. Obviously, this game only works well for people who are used to being in virtual events in the same space with their camera on. For that reason, it’s a nice way to mix up daily status meetings or weekly department meetings.
“Follow the leader” dancing
If your colleagues are comfortable getting a little silly, you can create a fun game using the “follow the leader” format combined with a dance-off. You’ll have to choose one team member as the leader to direct the dancing. Put on some music, and everyone should dance just as the leader is doing. You can make this more competitive by breaking the game into rounds, where the last player to copy the leader is “out” every time. Spruce things up by having a judge available to watch the dancers and call out the slowest people or those who are missing the mark on the moves. We guarantee you’ll share some laughs.
Breakfast Guessing
This game is super simple and doesn’t require any props. Players simply take turns guessing what other colleagues had for breakfast that morning. To make it more interesting, the team can collectively ask up to three questions to narrow down their options. For example, they might ask if it was a cold item, or whether it was savory or sweet. Sometimes people get really creative, asking questions like “Did it come from a blender?” or “Would fancy restaurant serve this food?” Warning: this game does tend to get people thinking about food, so make sure you have a plan in place for your next snack or meal.
Recycled Art Competition
If your team is on the creative side - or you want to encourage them to be - this is a smart activity for you. You’ll need plenty of recycled materials like paper, cardboard, or plastic items.
Toxic Waste
This fun and interactive game helps employees to collaborate and polish their problem-solving skills. If you want to make it even more challenging, then you can set up obstacles or choose materials that will be tricky to pick up.
Interactive group map
In this engaging team warmup exercise, you have the group imagine the space that you’re in as a map. Their goal is to place themselves where they are from. The first few steps have the most energy, as people try to find relative geographies and move around the space and each other. This game can be played with teams of any size, but it tends to be more fun when people are from more diverse, spread out areas. If everyone is from the same state, simply scale down your map and have everyone stand in the town they’re from.
3-Question mingle game
This is a bit like the previous game, but also a different game in its own right. For this one, every participant should write down 3 separate questions on 3 pieces of paper. The questions should be thoughtful and meant to engage in real conversation, not just things like “where do you live?” Then, have everyone begin to mingle around the room and start to engage in discussions in pairs. People will ask their questions and get answers. The trick is, after asking a question and getting the answer, you hand over that piece of paper to the person you’ve spoken to. They’ll do the same. This way, in your next conversation, you’ll have new questions to ask your next partner. On and on the game goes until everyone has paired off or the timer that you set goes off. Many people find this is ideal for a large group of over 50 or 60 people, and is good for encouraging participation among even your quietest team members.
Business card collection
To introduce people who haven’t met before, you can try this game. Set a timer and have everyone try to collect at least 3 new business cards in the room. Through the conversations they have with others, they should write down at least 3 details about the person on their business card. So, once the timer goes off, you can go around the room having each person name the people that they met and the information they found interesting (from their notes on the card). If people want to collect more than 3 cards, that’s fine, as long as they are taking the time to also get to know some details about each individual. Remember, the goal is to get to know others, have real conversations, and recall both names and other facts about each person.
Share your superpower
Another easy variation on an icebreaker is to share what your superpower would be. As everyone stands and introduces themselves, ask them to include some information on the special talents that make them unique. They can use their imagination for most desired superpowers like teleporting, or they can list some actual talents such as speedy present-wrapping or fantastic filing. It’s a nice way to learn a bit more about the people around you and what makes them special (plus, you might learn about who you can go to when you need some help with certain tasks).
Show your phone
A very simple and easy icebreaker involves asking everyone to share the latest “something” on their phone. The “something” could be their most recent photo, or the last app they had open. As long as it’s work appropriate, you can get creative about what you’ll ask people to show. A popular take on this game is to share the last 3 emojis you used, but you can get as creative as you feel comfortable. For a super fast and effective icebreaker, have each person stand up, introduce themselves, and share this tidbit of information based on your prompt.
Candy questions
For this game, you’ll need several different colored candies. Write on the board one question per color, for example purple means “Do you have a pet?” and red means “Did you go to college and where?” Then, have everyone take 3 candies randomly from your supply. The 3 colors they get represent the three questions they’ll ask their neighbor. In this way, people can have fresh conversations and not just repeat the usual getting-to-know-you questions over and over.
Name game
For this 5-minute energizing activity, have each person add an adjective to their name as they introduce themselves to the group. For example, “Amazing Anita” or “Resourceful Ron”. Make sure each person present gets the chance to share their enhanced name. Then, go around in a circle and have each person try to recall 3 of the names they heard, along with their adjective. This is a fun memory-jogging activity and it also forces people to pay more attention as others are introduced. It’s an easy first icebreaker for teams who don’t work together too often.
Don’t laugh
This activity is great if you have some especially funny team members. Start by having all attendees stand in a circle, and then have a volunteer stand in the middle and make some jokes. The attendees should not laugh, no matter how funny the person inside the circle is being. This is a great way to lighten the mood during heavier topics or serious meetings. One caveat: make sure that the “joker” is based purely on volunteers only. It’s not easy to stand in front of a group, particularly when it comes to trying to be funny. Not everyone will be up for this, so you need to know your team before you proceed.
Simple stretching
Sometimes, just moving your body and getting some good, deep breaths is enough. Several times throughout the day, use the natural breaks that occur to have everyone stand up and stretch. If you want to be more formal, you could have a team leader facilitate some group stretching or even introduce a short yoga session. As long as you can get people’s bodies moving, it’s a great thing. Plus - it’s free and no special supplies are needed!
Backward names
This energizer activity is best for people who have at least some familiarity with each other. It’s a simple format which means it's easy to execute. Divide everyone into groups of less than 20 to make things even easier. Hand each attendee a piece of paper and pen, and they should write their name down. After that the team leader should collect all of the papers, and have each participant draw a slip of paper. That person will read the name on the paper backwards to the entire group. The first person to guess the actual name being said wins. You can keep score and have a winning person or team, or just do open-ended guessing and enjoy the laughter that will ensue.
Smartphone bingo
Some variation of bingo is helpful in nearly all scenarios, and this is no exception. Start by creating bingo cards with a random assortment of prompts based on your phone. For example, “has a to-do list”, “has Amazon as a bookmark”, “has more than 300 contacts”, or “has a photo of their dog”. Have a facilitator randomly pull these prompts and call them out, and attendees will fill in the square if it applies to them. This is a fun way to learn a bit more about your coworkers while also improving listening skills.
Sit-stand
In this physical activity, there will be a facilitator instructing the larger team. You’ll also need ample space so make sure you are in a location that can accommodate a large group moving around. Have the facilitator start by instructing people to do some simple, engaging activities. For instance, they could start by saying “stand up”. Then, the facilitator says “stop” and then the instruction is flipped to its opposite. So, if they say “stand”, that really means “sit”. If they originally had said “walk”, that would now mean “stand still”. As you can imagine, this leads to pure chaos and a lot of laughter. This is helpful for getting more physical but also in encouraging people to communicate better throughout the day.
“Hot takes” break
During breaks, encourage people to share unpopular opinions around a certain topic. You start by announcing a subject that is normally non-controversial. Then, let people raise their hands and share a “hot take”, which is an opinion not usually shared by others in general. Here’s an example: the topic is “movie villains”. Someone might raise their hand and say that their hot take is that a certain movie villain is misunderstood and shouldn’t be viewed as bad. Or, maybe the topic is “ice cream”. A hot take might be someone claiming that chocolate ice cream is the worst flavor. It’s important to keep these topics light and fun so that everyone is comfortable and finds the situation humorous. Now is not the time to bring up politics, religion, or even sports teams if you have a particularly passionate group. You can do a few rounds of this throughout the day whenever you need a pause or refresh.
Team tour
One of the simplest energizers you can do before a virtual meeting is to ask each willing employee to give a 1-minute webcam tour of their workspace. Take turns showing people around, telling them where you are, and accepting questions about the location and/or any noteworthy items/observations.
Up, down, left, right
Ready for a fun, 5-minute energizer that’s suitable for groups of all sizes and you can do via video call? This one ticks all the right boxes.Start the activity by asking everyone on the call to stand up – ensuring they’re still visible on the webcam. Then all you do is say the words “up”, “down”, “left”, and “right” and tell the team to point their heads in the corresponding direction.
Roulette questions
Quick, easy, engaging, and ideal for getting to know one another, Roulette Questions is an energizer/ice-breaker that’s sure to go down well before virtual meetings – especially for new teams.
Stand back to back
Short, snappy, funny, physical, and with a powerful message about collaboration, this energizer for large workgroups is hard to beat.It starts with participants pairing up with someone of a similar build. They then sit back to back on the floor and link their arms together.
Competitive Human knots
Human knot is a popular team-building activity that requires at least 6 people. To play, everyone stands in a circle, puts their hands into the center, and grabs somebody else’s hands with their own (ensuring they’re holding 1 hand from 2 different people).
Collaborative portraits
One of the hardest parts of joining or working in a large group is remembering everyone’s name! Collaborative Portraits is a warm-up activity that helps tackle the problem, while also providing an entertaining way to get to know your colleagues.
Red light, green light
Red Light Green Light is another popular team warm-up/energizer that you may remember from childhood. Simple to play and fun to participate in, your team has to line up on one side of a room and move toward a finish line whenever you – the facilitator – shout “green light”. When you yell “red light”, they have to stop.
Your north
As well as being a good energizing activity for large groups, Your North is a great exercise for sparking conversation about the importance of team alignment and direction. Even better, it’s also simple and fun to play.
My first job was…
Here’s another easy, energizing, ice-breaking, and amusing activity that brings teams together and helps co-workers learn more about each other. To play My First Job, start by handing out a pen and a post-it note or scrap of paper to each participant. Next – and without showing anyone else – they have to write down whatever their first job was, before folding up the paper, and placing it in a hat/box in the center of the room.
Don’t answer that
Fun and laughter are guaranteed with Don’t Answer That. A verbal exercise this time, all participants have to do is stand in a circle asking each other questions!
The chair game
Here’s another awesome energizer for small groups that enables co-workers to have fun and get to know each other at the same time.
Walk and stop in sync
Looking for an energizer that’s great for enhancing the group dynamic as well? This one should do the trick. Simple and sweet, start by asking everybody to stand side by side in a line – preferably in a large space – before issuing a simple instruction:
Isn’t that crazy?
Want to get people talking? Get the team’s creative juices flowing? Instigate some laughs and spark some fun into the day? This energizer will be ideal.
Balloon challenge
Start this fun and active energizer by inflating lots of balloons in the office (the more the merrier!). When you’re done, the challenge can commence:The team’s job is to stop the balloons from touching the ground at all costs! Play for 5 to 10 minutes and explain there’ll be prizes if they succeed.
Pass the ball
Popular in interview settings and among new teams, Pass the ball is an effective ice-breaker that both unites and energizes employees. It couldn’t be simpler to play either.
Shock wave
If you’re in a big team and want a fun and speedy energizer to lift the mood in record time, try Shock Wave.
Got your finger
5-minute energizers don’t get much better than this one. Got Your Finger is fun, fast-paced, suitable for groups of all sizes, and sure to lift the mood. Oh, and it requires no prior planning or preparation either.
Fizz buzz
We love Fizz Buzz. A classic energizer game you may remember from your school days, it involves standing in a circle and taking turns to count upward from 1.
Pink toe
Ready to channel your inner child and do something silly as a team? This hilarious energizing exercise involves colleagues listening to instructions and pressing different parts of their bodies to objects around the office, depending on their color. Sounds bonkers, right?
Human rock, paper, scissors
Rock, Paper, Scissors is a classic game you’ve probably played since childhood to pass the time and make group decisions. But have you ever done it using your bodies to make the shapes as opposed to your hands?
Most likely to
Here’s an ice-breaking, energizing, and entertaining game that’s great for small teams of people who know each other already. Expect it to open up funny conversations and help everyone learn more about their colleagues in the process.
Attract and repel
Fun, chaotic, and surprisingly difficult, Attract and Repel is a fantastic game for making people laugh and for breathing life back into the room.
Group exercise
Some of the best energizers are also the simplest. Case in point? Exercise. Well-known to perk you up, improve your mood, and make you feel more alert, getting the body moving can work wonders in the workplace.
Telephone
Many people might remember this game from their childhood. Commonly used as an exercise to get kids to enhance their listening skills, this simple yet effective game still works just as well in adulthood!
