Energizing Activities for Teams: A Simple Introduction

Energizing Activities for Teams

Energizers are any activity that brings energy and focus to a group of individuals. They’re often used in longer days of activity like workshops or off-site days. They help ensure that participants stay focused and engaged with the content of the day.

When are they Useful?

Energizing activities for teams are useful whenever you need to re-engage a group of participants. They’re particularly useful when you’re running longer days or sessions, of at specific times of the day when people may lose focus (e.g. directly after lunch).

How do they Work?

Energizers generally work by engaging people in a new, energetic and focused activity. These activities are often not directly related to the overall purpose of the day. Activities are often physical, and nearly always engage everyone in the room. Energizers help to ensure that everyone in the room is participating in an activity for at least a little bit of time so they focus and increase their energy levels.

What Groups do they Work in?

Energizing activities for teams can work in groups of all sizes, but the energizer chosen needs to be appropriate to the size of the group and the venue being used. Generally speaking they’re most useful for groups that will be spending a lot of time together (more than say 2 hours) as it’s normally over these longer periods of time that focus, attention and energy can start to fall away.

What Types of Activities do they Include?

Energizers can take a huge range of forms but most often include: physical activity (helps get the heart rate going) and spoken interaction (e.g. shouting out responses, interacting with facilitator).

We’ll share a few examples below:

1 – The Disassociated Word Game Energizing Activity

This mentally challenging energizer game works well for small or medium sized groups and doesn’t need any physical activity to be fun. It also doesn’t need any preparation.

The Activity

The facilitator or team lead starts this activity by getting the participants to line up in a circle. They can be standing, sitting in a circle or just sitting around a table.

The facilitator then explains that they will start the game off by saying a word. The person to their right then needs to say another word, of their own choice, that has no associations with the lead-off word. The game continues in order with each person trying to say a word that has no associations with the word the person before them said.

Each time a word is spoken the participants say either “Yay” if the word passes the test or “nay” if there’s an association.

If enough people say “nay” and the facilitator deems there to be an association, then the person who spoke the word steps out of the group or drops out of the circle and the game continues.

The winner of the disassociated word game energizing activity is the last person remaining, and they are awarded a nominal prize by the facilitator.

2 – Fizz Buzz

“Fizz Buzz” is a simple game that can be used as an energizer or team building activity. To play the game, individuals are placed into small groups of three to six. In their groups, they take turns counting out loud. This twist is they must replace each multiple of three with “Fizz” and each multiple of five with “Buzz”. Other variations exist.

The Activity

This fast paced children’s game works best for small and medium sized groups. It can be flexed to work for either more or less active groups.

Players generally stand in a circle in a group of between three to six. The player designated to go first says the number “one”, and each player after them counts one number in turn. However, any number divisible by three is replaced by the word “fizz”. And any divisible by five by the word “buzz”. Numbers divisible by both become “fizz-buzz”. A player who hesitates or makes a mistake is eliminated from the game.

While this game is usually used for groups, it’s also possible to play the game in pairs. In this version, the pair that lasts the longest in the room is crowned as victors.

You can also modify the game as you wish by replacing Fizz / Buzz with any words you choose, or with an action.

For example, instead of saying “fizz” participants can be told that they need to clap, or jump, or raise an arm. Through this type of modification it’s possible to make the game quite silly and funny.

Alternatively, you can modify the actions of the game to link to overarching themes that you’re looking to focus on.

3 – The Film Photo Challenge Energizing Activity

This energizer activity is good for longer events where people are in tables. It can work well for large groups, which could consist of up to 200 people spread across 20 groups or tables. The activity simply requires each table to take a picture of themselves reenacting a famous scene from a film. Then they share the pictures and other teams need to guess the film.

The Activity

The facilitator starts the activity by explaining the rules to the room. Each table or working group will be give 10 minutes to think of a well know scene from a film that they can reenact using just themselves and any materials or props that they can find in the room. Once the 10 minutes are up, everyone will be given a further 10 minutes to prepare, pose and capture their replica image of a famous scene.

The teams then all email their pictures to the facilitator or host for the day, who can either load them onto a computer slide show to share with the room later, or who can print them out as quiz sheets for the teams.

If they are used to create a slide show, the facilitator will subsequently share each image with the room and ask people to shout out if they know the film. If they are printed in quiz sheets, each table will try and guess which film each picture relates to. The team that guesses the highest number of pictures correctly wins a prize, and the team whose picture was guessed correctly most times also wins a prize.

4 – The Weekend Chairs Energizing Activity

Weekend chairs is an energizer activity that works as both an energizer and a team-building activity. It’s basically a variant of “musical chairs” which includes an element of people sharing things about themselves. The activity requires chairs and is good for any medium sized groups who are active.

Note that it can be hectic and might be a little dangerous!

The Activity

This activity requires a facilitator to set up a room by arranging for there to be one less chair than there are participants. It’s helpful if the chairs are arranges in circle or rows without any tables.

At the start of the session, the facilitator introduces the game as “weekend musical chairs” and explaining the rules to everyone.

The game starts with the facilitator standing up without a chair, and everyone else standing up in front of a chair. The facilitator then tells the room an activity they themselves either undertook at the last weekend, or plan to undertake over the next weekend. For example, “last weekend I went for a run” or “next weekend I’m going to the theater”.

Once the facilitator has made there statement, anyone who has done (or will be doing) the same activity sits down on their chair.

Everyone else though, has to try and sit down in a new chair. The facilitator should try and sit down too. This usually results in a scramble for chairs. As there are fewer chairs than attendees, there will always be one person left standing.

Whoever is left standing at the end of that round becomes the facilitator for the next round, sharing an activity they either completed at the last weekend, or plan to complete at the next weekend. The game repeats for as long as the organizers wants, but a good stopping point may be once everyone has been facilitator at least once.

5 – The Human Rock, Paper, Scissors Energizing Activity

This energizer activity is a physical, host led activity that works well for large groups where participants are able to be fairly active.

It requires each participant to be able to choose a full body pose for each of the “rock, paper or scissors” gestures people normally make with their hands.

The Activity

The activity works best in large groups, typically conferences or large workshops which have a host, compere or lead facilitator who is running the day. Obviously, before the activity starts, the host or facilitator needs to explain the rules to all of the participants. We’d also recommend a brief demonstration.

In this activity all of the attendees at the event are competing against the lead facilitator at rock, paper, scissors. The twist though is that instead of using your hands, everyone adopts a body pose for each of the rock, paper or scissors shapes. You can make up whatever shapes you want for this.

The game is played over multiple rounds, until only one person is left standing, and they are crowned the winner.

In each round of the game all of the participants in the room are competing against the host or lead facilitator. The host counts down 3,2,1, then everyone, including the host, adopts a body pose. Anyone who was “beaten” by the host then sits down, and the game is repeated. You keep playing until there is only one person left among the participants. They are the “winner” of the game and they usually receive a token prize.

Team building and ice-breaking activities are very important. They help build trust in teams and help progress team maturity. They can also reduce the risks of social threat and improve interpersonal awareness.

Being able to deliver them is a helpful facilitation and meeting skill. A few specific activities we’ve written about include: The Disassociated Word Game, Participant Bingo, Find Your Partner, Vegetable Introductions, and the Questions Cocktail Party.

Laughter and play are also great ways to help build a team. You can learn more about how playfulness helps teams in our podcast on the subject:

Energizing activities for teams can be an important part of longer-form group activities. It normally doesn’t take long to bring some energy to a group, and it’s usually worth the time it takes. While many energizers get people physically energized, their real purposes are to help raise mental energy levels.

Though there are many different types of energizer, in our view it doesn’t really matter what you do to energize a group of people as long as you stimulate them. In some instances just doing something different for two minutes can be clear the mind and bring energy. It’s good to keep these activities as simple as possible.

In our view, every team leader, manager or facilitator should know a few energizers and be ready to use them when required. Many of them don’t take any preparation or materials, so can be delivered without much notice or preparation.

This post is based on general experience and there are no specific references for it.

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