Library of teambuilding games & icebreakers

How to play Mini Myers-Briggs session

If you work in a progressive environment, then chances are you’ve completed some form of personality assessment before, maybe even the Myers-Briggs version. In this popular personality test, you are assigned a four-letter personality type that gives insight into your behavior in relationships, at work, etc. Have everyone complete the test in advance, and then start your meeting by having everyone discuss the results.

Kick off a healthier routine with run & recharge! Form an office running club and go for group runs after work to promote both physical and mental well-being. It’s a low-pressure way to get everyone moving, destress after a long day, and bond as a team.

This activity is perfect for boosting morale, increasing fitness, and recharging your mind—while enjoying the fresh air.

How to play:

• Set a regular time for post-work group runs.
• Run as a team, encouraging each other along the way.
• Track progress together and celebrate small fitness wins!

How to play Communication chain

This is a great game for a team and involves participants expressing activities through gestures. Have everyone stand in a line facing the same direction. The last person on this line is the lead. They should write down an action (such as “I was walking my dog and tripped and fell”). The person next to them in line acts out the particular action without any verbal cues, and then the next person in line does the same, and so on. The first person at the beginning of the line will have to guess what the action was.

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How to play Something in common

‘Something In Common’ is a no-prep game that can be run on the spot in your next virtual get-together. Create some breakout rooms of 4 or 5 people, giving them a 3-minute timer. Set a task of finding the most unique fact they have in common.

One point is awarded at the end to the team with the most interesting example. Tell them to emphasize uniqueness, as ‘we all use phones’ is a bit dull, while something like ‘we have all read a book by the same author’ sparks interest.

In silent birthday shuffle, players must line up in order of their birthdays, but here’s the twist—no talking allowed! Only hand signals and body language can be used to figure out everyone’s birthdate, making it a fun and often chaotic communication challenge.

This game is perfect for breaking the ice and encouraging non-verbal teamwork.

How to play:

• Players must arrange themselves in the order of their birthdays.
• No talking allowed—only hand signals and gestures can be used.
• The game ends when the team is successfully in order!

Here’s a game that demands timing and cat-like reflexes. It’s a rework of musical chairs, something that we’ve all played in childhood at least once. The game is fast-paced and competitive, making it a perfect team energizer. You’ll need a group of 4 to 10 people, a table and an amount of cups that is one less than the number of players you have. Basically, one person is going to be eliminated each round!

Set-up:

1. Get the music started! Get your Bluetooth speaker and an upbeat playlist ready. On the table place a number of cups that is one less than the amount of people playing. Most people will recognize the rules instinctively; you play the music and each player walks around the table clockwise. When the music stops, each person needs to grab one cup with lightning-fast speed. Whoever is without a cup at the end of this round is eliminated. Remove one cup and move to the next round.

2. Whittle down the competition: Continue eliminating one player per round. Make the music more intense and crazy as each round passes by. Eventually, only one person will be left standing (and sipping!), so crown this person as the winner of Musical Cups!

Cups can be full or empty as people play, and as with our other drinking games, choose a beverage that’s easy to clean up and applies to your work setting. Organize it during a work happy hour to get the party started. We’ll say cheers to that!

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.

The perfect game for future leaders, Perfect Square pushes teams to communicate clearly and establish a leader who will help them complete the game. Another blindfold game that involves teams working together to, you guessed it, form a perfect square.  

How to play:

‍Break up into small teams, around four to six people, and give each group a rope. Team members pick up their rope, which is still a circle, and work together to create a perfect square, which isn’t easy to achieve when you can’t see anything! Teams form a circle with their rope on the floor, and everyone gets blindfolded.

This game encourages teams to establish a leader who can help focus and guide the other players to move in the right direction to achieve some four-sided perfection,

Materials you’ll need: Rope, material/ cloth for blindfolds.

How many people: Small to mid-sized teams (8-16 people)

Grab your party hats and imagine the sweet taste of success as you envision your retirement bash! In this activity, participants fast-forward to the future, picturing the day they bid farewell to the 9-to-5 grind. But it's not just about the cake and balloons – it's a chance to reflect on the accomplishments you want to be celebrated for at that legendary retirement party. We're talking about a holistic approach here – both professional victories and personal triumphs. By contemplating your legacy and long-term impact, you can set goals that align with your values and priorities, ensuring a fulfilling journey throughout your career and beyond.

Top Tips For Facilitators:

• Encourage thinking about personal successes, growth, and relationships for a balanced view of success.
• Try pictures or charts to make future plans clear and real.
• Emphasize goals that match values, ensuring a celebration that reflects a well-lived life.

Cool off and blow off some steam with super soaker showdown! Teams engage in a friendly water gun fight, battling it out while dodging sprays and soaking each other. It’s a fun, refreshing way to unleash some energy and enjoy the outdoors.

This is perfect for adding a bit of action-packed excitement to a team day out—and there’s nothing like a good water fight to get everyone laughing.

How to play:

• Equip each team with water guns and create boundaries for the battle.
• Teams strategize to soak their opponents while staying as dry as possible.
• The team with the driest members (or the most soaked fun) wins!

Dabble is another great letter game that combines elements of Scrabble with crossword puzzles. 2 or more players compete to create five unique words. These words must be 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 letters long each, using 20 tiles. Easy to pick up, difficult to master!

How to Play:

1. Each player receives 20 letter tiles
2. Race to create a 2-letter, 3-letter, 4-letter, 5-letter and 6-letter word using your tiles.
3. The first player to finish all five words wins the race, but then scores are counted depending on the value of each letter.

This one is fast, fun, and utterly addictive!

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.

Ah, Pictionary, the timeless guessing game that has brought joy and frustration to households for decades. But have you ever thought about playing it in the office? Trust me, it's not just a game for family game night.

How to play:

1. Split into teams.
2. One player draws a word or phrase from a container.
3. That player must draw the word or phrase, while their team guesses.
4. The team has a limited amount of time to guess correctly.
5. If they guess correctly, they earn points; repeat until all players have had a turn.

Not only does it encourage teamwork and communication skills, but it also allows for a fun and creative break from the typical daily routine. Plus, it's a refreshing change from staring at screens all day.

Imagine sitting in a circle with your colleagues, weaving a story together one sentence at a time. This is the essence of the Storytelling Relay, a playful yet powerful activity that fosters active listening in the workplace.

How to play

1. Form a circle with your team members. Ensure everyone has a clear line of sight to the person speaking.
2. The game starts with one person. They utter the opening sentence of a story, anything that comes to mind.
3. The next person continues the story with a single sentence, following the lead of the previous speaker. It should make sense and smoothly connect to the previous sentence.
4. Go around the circle, with each participant adding a sentence. The goal is to build a cohesive narrative.
5. This is where active listening comes into play. Participants must pay close attention to the unfolding story to ensure their contributions fit seamlessly.
6. It's essential not to interrupt or correct others. The story may take unexpected turns, but that's part of the fun!
7. Continue until you reach a predetermined ending point or when the story feels naturally complete.

How to play Walking questions

This is another exercise that encourages interaction and cooperation. Start by giving everyone a sheet of paper and having them sit in a circle. Each trainee writes down one open question pertaining to the training topic. Then they hand the paper to the person on their right. That person will read the question and write down any answers or insights they might have. Then they add another question and hand the paper to the right. The exercise is over when everyone gets their original sheet back. It should give everyone something to review with plenty of Q & A to look over.

Trusting your colleagues doesn’t just feel good. It also has very practical implications. After all, it means you can count on each other for help; to work together to achieve common goals.

The Perfect Square (otherwise known as the “blind square”) game teaches this lesson to your employees and sets in motion the teamwork that’s so pivotal to a successful working environment.

How to play Perfect/blind square

Here’s how it works:

Get your entire team to stand in a circle and give them a long stretch of rope to hold. Next, put a blindfold on each person. They then have to drop the rope, take a few steps back, and spin around a few times until they’re dizzy.

That’s when the fun really starts!

Their goal is to return to the rope and work together to lay it out in the shape of, you guessed it…a perfect square. You can give them as much time as they need or add some pressure by setting a time limit.

We like this activity for its simplicity, but you can definitely make it harder if your team’s finding it too easy! For example, why not get them to make a star, diamond, or pentagon? It’s sure to keep them occupied a little longer.

What you need:

• Blindfolds
• Rope

How to play Sales pitch

This exercise not only gets the creative juices flowing, but can also help with sales skills. Have everyone grab one item from around them - like a pen from their desk - and craft a brief sales pitch to present to the larger group. People should spend about 15 minutes coming up with a logo, a slogan, some talking points, etc. Then they give the sales pitch of their item to the larger group. If you want to make it competitive, you can announce a winner and even grant a prize as part of this sales game.

How to play Count to 20

Truly one of the simplest and fastest team-building games to play. This exercise doesn’t require any planning and can be done completely spur of the moment. Have everyone sit or stand in a circle together. Start the game by saying “one”. Next, another player will say “two” and so on. The goal is to make it to 20 without two people saying the same number at once. This requires observing your colleagues and predicting when they will speak up. If two people say the same number, the game starts over. Make sure to review our list of minute to win it games, too.

How to play Linkword

Here’s a letter game that has some great online worksheets to get teams started. This fast-paced brain teaser has teams thinking laterally. You might want to create teams for this one, as some examples can really get people scratching their heads.

Your teams will look at three words and have to decide on one word that connects all three. Common words are the aim of the game. Let’s say for example you show them the words “POINT,” “SAFETY,” and “CUSHION”. All three of these words can be connected with the word “PIN,” forming “pinpoint,” “safety pin,” and “pin cushion.” Try this one out with your teams.

Learning how our colleague's minds work enables us to see things from their perspective. Blind Drawing tests your employee’s abilities to interpret the instructions provided by their partner.

Great for: Communication, observation, listening

Duration: 10 minutes

Players: 6+

You’ll need: Pen, paper, reference images

How to play Blind Drawing

Setup: Divide your group into pairs and ask them to sit back to back. Give one player from each pair a reference image and give the other player the pen and paper.

To play: The player with the pen and paper must attempt to draw the reference image by listening to the instructions provided by their partner. The drawer cannot speak or communicate in any way—they must do their best with the instructions they’re given. When the time runs out, ask each team to present their drawing. The team whose drawing most resembles the reference image wins.

How to play Six word memoir

This is a common exercise in college English classes, but it involves a lot of creativity and brainpower. Ask people to boil their lives down into six words only. For example, one of the most impactful memoirs we have seen said “The broken bird flies through fog.” This person was sharing - without really disclosing details - that they had overcome some struggles and were proud of their ability to persevere. Give people time to put some real thought into this exercise and it’s sure to be something that stays with them long after the meeting.

“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.

Comic craze is a creative and collaborative activity where teams build a comic strip together. Each person draws a panel, passing it along to the next person to continue the story. It’s a fun way to let imaginations run wild and see how a simple idea can evolve into something hilarious.

This game is ideal for encouraging creativity and team bonding, with lots of room for unexpected twists in the storyline.

How to play:

• Provide each team with blank comic strip panels.
• The first person draws a panel, then passes it along for the next person to continue.
• Once complete, the team presents their comic strip for some laughs!

How to play Jenga Questions

Ideal for small groups, this simple game involves taking Jenga blocks, writing a question on each one, and then setting up the Jenga tower as usual. You then take turns pulling out a block and answering whatever question’s on it.

The questions themselves can be totally random, work-related, or tailored to your interests. For larger teams, consider splitting up into smaller groups first and assigning a Jenga tower to each one.