Library of teambuilding games & icebreakers

The spelling bee is a great opportunity for the more introverted members of your workforce to display some raw talent.

How to play Spelling bee

A host will need to make a list of words, with increasing difficulty. Try adding in ‘bonus’ rounds where spellers will need to spell the word backwards.

Building stories together can help an agile team practice iteratively expanding ideas. Building stories has been helping teams grow in corporate events and quickfire meetings, so keep the focus on agile principles and you’ll be improving your employees’ collaborative skills.

Set up:

Dedicate some time to creating prompts beforehand, to make each step in the story open-ended and adaptable. Start with an opening that instigates conversation like “Our new app just launched…” The first team member adds to this line, which can turn the story in any direction, such as “Users flooded in on day one, and our servers went caput.” Encourage the next member to weave in some challenges or a milestone, with a line like “Our support team scrambled to handle user questions.” Keep iterating and adding and see where it leads. When the story ends, reflect as a team and focus on agile practices that helped them to adjust.

Get ready to wield your balloon-bashing skills in the exhilarating Balloon Sword Fight challenge! As your teams gear up for friendly combat, the atmosphere will be filled with excitement and laughter. Inspired by the fast-paced action of sword fights, this game replaces steel with balloons, turning your colleagues into balloon-busting warriors. It's not just about popping balloons; it's about teamwork, strategy, and the art of joyful competition.

Instructions

• Divide participants into teams of equal size.
• Equip each team member with a balloon "sword" – a harmless, air-filled weapon.
• Set up a designated play area with safety precautions in place.
• Teams strategize and plan their approach to the battle.
• Engage in friendly combat, trying to pop opponents' balloons while protecting your own.
• The last team with an intact balloon wins the round.
• Encourage sportsmanship and celebrate the victorious team.

Our next game requires pyramids of stacked cups, some balloons, and a healthy set of lungs. The objective is to exhale into a balloon and use the air to blow every cup off the table. You might find that office-singers do well in this one!

Step-up:

1. Use balloon air to start the destruction: Create three teams, with a table in front of each first-player, On each table, create a pyramid of 10 cups. Each pyramid should be around 15cm from the edge of the table. The three competitors stay in one place, blow into their balloon, hold the air in with their fingertips, and then let the air go while aiming it at the pyramid. You’ll have a few cups fly off the edge of the table.

2. Refill balloons to clear the table: For any remaining cups, the balloon needs to be inflated again. Repeat the releasing of air until every cup is off the table. The first player with a cup-free table wins!

“Blow that pyramid over!” works fantastically as an office party game or on an occasion like a birthday or special celebration. Enjoy the moment!

Remember the Pinball exercise we described earlier? Well, Willow in the Wind is very similar. This time, however, there’s no walking involved…

How to play Willow in the wind

Instead, everyone stands in a circle, with one person in the middle. You then put a blindfold on whoever’s in the center and tell them to a) lock their legs and b) put their arms across their chest.

Then comes the nerve-wracking part:

They have to fall forward, or in any other direction, trusting their colleagues to stop them from hitting the ground! Each time they fall into someone, that person has to keep them upright and push them softly to another side of the circle.

After 30 seconds or so, swap the blindfold around and give someone else a turn. The activity ends when everyone has been in the middle.

Our pro tip is to stop the blindfolded person from falling too far! The further they fall, the harder it becomes to hold them up and push them away. Stay close together to make life easier and prevent accidents from happening.

For a variation of Willow in the Wind, consider doing a trust fall.

A popular team and trust-building exercise, the principle is the same except the blindfolded individual stands at a height (e.g. on a table or wall) and falls backward into the arms of their colleagues below.

What you need:

• Blindfold

Ever feel like time is running faster than you can list your goals? Well, brace yourself for the whirlwind excitement of Speed Goal Sharing! Participants team up, and they've got a mere minute to spill the beans on their current goals to a partner. It's like goal-setting on fast-forward. Why? Because sometimes, brevity is the key.

This quick teambuilding activity isn't just a time crunch; it's a crash course in concise communication and prioritization. So, get ready to share your aspirations at lightning speed – clarity and alignment within the team await!

Top Tip for Facilitators:

• Keep the vibe upbeat and the clock ticking. Encourage everyone to channel their inner auctioneer – goals on the fly, people!
• Guide the conversations to make sure it's not just a blur of words but a meaningful exchange.
• This activity is like a goal-driven race, so set the pace, cheer them on, and let the concise communication marathon begin!

How to play Drama-freeze

Best for small groups, this option can be really interesting. You start with pairs of two and a supervisor. The first team will act out a spontaneous scene without discussing it beforehand. While they do so, the supervisor of the game calls out “freeze” (any time they want). At that time the acting team must remain still. Then the next team of two begins and will start upon the supervisor saying “action”. They need to come up with a scene entirely different from the one from the pair before them. This will go on until each team gets a turn to act and freeze.

Some of the simplest trust-building exercises for new teams involve asking good old-fashioned ice-breaker questions. Case and point?

“You Get One Question”.

This super quick and easy game requires minimal preparation, which makes it ideal whenever you want the team to connect and/or unwind. It’s a good way to kick off morning meetings, for instance, or to use when onboarding new employees.

How to play You get one question

To play, you need to create or acquire some cards with different scenarios or roles written on the back. Examples might include “starting a company”, “babysitting your nephew”, or “being a world leader”.

You’d then split your team into pairs and let them choose a card from the deck. Their task is to come up with one perfect question to determine if the other person would be a good fit for that specific role.

After a few minutes of thinking and talking, you can then reconvene and discuss the questions and the process of creating them as a group. By the end, your team will have had a stimulating chat in which they learned more about each other.

What you need:

• Pre-written cards with different scenarios on them

How to play Bullseye

Another hands-on game, this is just what it sounds like - trying to hit a bullseye target. Put up a large bullseye target in the space that you’re working in, and have people throw foam balls to try and hit it. If you want it to be more “icebreaker-ish” then have each person announce their name and role before tossing the ball. Keep track and narrow down to a few winners that need to share a bit more information about themselves in order to get a prize.

Expressing gratitude to employees by offering them continuing education through online training courses can be a great way to foster a positive work culture and boost employee morale. By offering to fund workshops and classes, employees can refine their skills and be better equipped to do their work.

• Communication and de-escalation course
• Emotional Intelligence Training
• Team building methods
• Diversity and Inclusion Training
• Leadership Development
• Mindfulness and stress reduction

Many of these courses are found on popular online learning platforms like Coursera, edX, and Udemy. If your team prefers an in-person learning session, contact professional development and HR organizations for tailored training programs. Tailoring your training to your organization's specific needs and culture is essential for practical gratitude expression.

Get ready for a storytelling showdown, emoji-style! Each participant receives a handful of those tiny expressive symbols, and their mission, should they choose to accept it, is to concoct a tale or spill the beans on a personal experience using these digital hieroglyphics. It's like writing a story, but with smiley faces and thumbs up emojis stealing the spotlight!

Emoji storytelling is an exercise in creativity and interpretation. It's like decoding a secret language. As the stories unfold, the hilarious attempts at translating emojis into real-life adventures begin. It's a light-hearted, laughter-inducing journey into the world of shared imagination.

Instructions:

1. Grab your personalized emoji set - it's time to flex those creative muscles.
2. Cook up a short tale or spill the beans on a memorable experience.
3. Present your emoji masterpiece to the eager crowd.
4. Witness the guessing chaos unfold, crown the emoji storytelling champion, and bask in the glory of a well-told tale.

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How to play One-word icebreaker

This is a perfect exercise for kicking off a specific event or meeting. You need a group of 4 or 5 people, or to break larger groups into teams of that size. The goal is to have everyone describe their feelings on the event that is about to take place using only one word. Give them a few minutes and then go around the room having everyone state their word, like “excited”, “nervous”, or “curious”.

Gossip? Nah, we're all about good vibes. Avoiding gossip keeps the workplace drama-free and the focus on what truly matters.

Avoid gossip activity - Positive news sharing:

• Set up a designated time, such as a weekly meeting or a designated chat channel, for sharing positive news and uplifting stories.
• Encourage colleagues to bring forward news articles, personal accomplishments, or inspiring anecdotes to share with the group.
• Facilitate discussions around the shared news, allowing participants to express their thoughts and reflections.
• Emphasize the importance of maintaining a positive and supportive atmosphere by focusing on constructive conversations.
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This activity shifts the focus away from gossip and fosters a culture of optimism, inspiration and meaningful interactions.

How to play 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.

Who’s the office detective? In whodunit: office edition, your team plays out a murder mystery, with each member taking on a character to help solve the case. The goal? Work together, piece by piece, to find the culprit.

This interactive, large-group teambuilding activity is great for boosting communication, creativity, and collaboration. It encourages employees to engage and think critically while embracing their roles. Plus, it’s a hilarious way to break up the day and get everyone involved in some playful, investigative fun!

How to play:

• Assign characters and a murder scenario to each participant.
• Everyone plays their role and works together to solve the mystery.
• The team that figures out “whodunit” first wins!

Most likely everyone is familiar with the old game Pictionary. This activity puts a spin on the traditional game, focusing on adaptability and quick-thinking. Adaptability is highly important in agile practices, with most teams needing to respond to changes while mid-task. This game helps with that, so here’s how to set it up:

Set up:

Get everyone into pairs or small groups, with one person from each group starting out as the “artist.” The artist draws a prompt that you give them, such as “team goal” or “product feature.” Halfway through, introduce a new element to what they need to draw, like “user feedback” or “project roadblock.” They need to adjust the drawing on the fly, while everybody else throws out their guesses.

How to play Suggestion box raffle

If you’re looking for ways to improve morale and enhance communication, try having everyone write down some thoughts. Many times, people don’t want to take the time to do so (or they’re nervous to share their real opinions). Incentivize idea-sharing by holding raffles on various entries. Have everyone write their idea, question, or discussion item down on a piece of paper and put them all in a box. Pick a few entries at random and hand out prizes accordingly.

How to implement insights (following event)

If you want to go beyond recall, have each person describe how they will implement what they learned in their daily lives and tasks. Hearing important concepts is one thing; knowing how you can practically apply them is something else!

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Here’s a fast-paced improv game that encourages creative thinking and imbues energy into the room. It’s ideal for those Monday morning meetings when everyone’s feeling sluggish, or as a warm-up exercise on a team-building retreat!

What Are You Doing revolves around miming – i.e. using gestures, body movements, and facial expressions to act something out. That’s one reason it’s so fun! It’s light-hearted, silly, and gets people moving.

How to play What are you doing?

To play, you get everyone to stand in a circle, then ask one person to imagine a certain action and start miming it. The action itself can be anything they want! Washing the dishes, taking the kids to school, throwing a baseball, brushing their hair, cleaning their teeth…the world is their oyster.

After a short while, someone else steps forward and asks, “What are you doing?”

The twist is that whoever’s miming must say a completely different action to the one they’re doing! Instead of cleaning their teeth, for example, they could say they’re putting their shoes on or amputating someone’s leg. Whoever stepped forward to ask what they were doing must then perform that action.

This process continues until everyone has had a turn miming. Try to keep the game moving and encourage people to be creative with the actions/responses.

Oh, and feel free to add another element to the game, whereby you decide who goes next. Rather than going around the circle or jumping in whenever they want, you could point at the next mime – or make eye contact with them.

Heads up, this game is best for smaller groups if you don’t have much time to spare. You want everyone to have a go miming an action, which can take a while when you have dozens of people on the team!

“It’s 11.30am on a midsummer’s day and your plane has just crash-landed on a remote desert island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Your task is to rank these 20 items that were salvaged from the plane in order of their importance to the survival of you and the team.”

That’d be one way to introduce the classic team and trust-building exercise called Desert Survival! A powerful way to demonstrate that teams outperform individuals and that collaboration’s key to success, this activity always goes down well.

There are three ways to play:

• With actual items that the team can hold and put in piles
• With pictures of each item or
• With items simply written down on a board or piece of paper

In any case, the team gets around 40 minutes to discuss each item, reflect on their respective pros/cons, and work together to decide what they’re going to keep. In the process, they’ll realize the:

• Need to speak up if they wish to make a point
• Problem with stubbornness in a collective environment
• Value of compromise and sacrifice in search of unity
• Gaps in their personal knowledge/reasoning that others can help fill

From a managerial perspective, the Desert Island scenario also reveals how well the team works together and how easily they find solutions to a problem. You’ll see how rapidly they approach a state of synergy – where collaboration enables them to leverage their individual strengths and become greater than the sum of their parts.

What you need:

• A selection of items to be used on a desert island (or pictures of them) – unless you choose to write them down instead.

Reminiscent of the classic family game, Charades, No Speaking allowed is another awesome improv exercise for small groups. As well as being fun, stimulating, and creative, it also teaches the value of effective communication.

How to play No speaking allowed

The first step is to divide your team into pairs (a group of 3 is fine if there’s an odd number). Then all you do is give each person a phrase, saying, message, or idea that they have to act out to their partner. Here’s the twist:

They have to get the message across without speaking!

Participants are able to use gestures, facial expressions, body movements, props, and/or anything else they can find to communicate their message (apart from writing it down). But they’re not allowed to talk. If they do, they’re disqualified.

What’s cool about this game is that it showcases the reciprocal nature of communication. It takes 2 to tango!

While whoever’s doing the acting can’t talk, their partner can. They’re paying close attention, focusing on their various non-verbal cues, making suggestions, and asking for clarity. In other words, they work together to express and decipher the message.

Continue until everyone has successfully guessed the answer, or set a time limit to stop it from going on for too long. Want to spice things up a bit? Split the team into groups and pit them against each other to add a competitive element.

How to play:

Create a set of cards with safety-related images or terms and their corresponding definitions or explanations. Lay the cards face down and have employees take turns flipping two cards to find matches. The player with the most matches wins.

A safety memory match game is a fun and engaging way to reinforce safety concepts and terminology. It improves memory and recall while adding a playful element to learning. A simple game that can be enjoyed by everyone, making it a great addition to training sessions.

If you’re looking for a serious game that teaches the value of collaboration in a plain and no-nonsense manner…then this one definitely isn’t it!

Hello kitty’s a super simple improv game that’s all about being silly, getting involved, having fun, and making each other laugh. And, ultimately, that’s what improv games are all about. The fact they forge tighter bonds between teammates is a bonus.

How to play Hello kitty

Hello kitty couldn’t be easier to play either. Suitable for groups of any size, you start by dividing employees into two teams: kittens and puppies. Next, separate everyone into pairs, where one partner’s a kitten and the other’s a puppy.

The puppy’s job is to say hello with one goal in mind: to make their partner smile, chuckle, laugh out loud – anything that shows they’re amused. The kitten’s job is to keep a straight face. Expect all sorts of funny voices, impressions, and gestures to follow! What happens if/when they succeed, you ask?

The kitten turns into a puppy, of course! They can then both turn their attention to any remaining kittens who are yet to laugh. The game ends when everyone has joined the puppy team. By then – having exercised your creative sides and laughed a lot – you should all be feeling energized, light, and closer to your teammates.

How to host Book exchange

Make everyone a bit smarter while they quench their thirst. Request that at your next happy hour, you bring a book to share. Ask people to bring their favorite book, or to choose the professional development book that’s been most helpful. Everyone should share a bit about what makes that particular book so special. At the end of the event, people can borrow the books available or just remember the title so they can find it on their own later on. This is a great way to learn more about your colleagues and learn some new things at the same time.