Team Building Activities: A Simple Introduction

Team Building Activities

Team building activities are any activity that is designed to bring a group of people together so that they can work more effectively as a team.

They often involve improving understanding of each other, aligning purpose, creating shared identity and common history, revealing strengths and building motivation.

The result of these types of activities are more cohesive, supportive, effective and motivated teams.

When are they Useful

Team building activities are essential for newly formed or merged teams. They’re also useful within established teams as a way to maintain effective working relationships. Cross-team activities are also useful for any broader working relationships.

How do they Work?

These activities work by strengthening the relationships between a group of people, as well as by revealing skills and building pride and common purpose.

Generally speaking, the more people know each other and have common experiences and a sense of aligned purpose, the more effective they are at communicating with each other and the more they want to work with and support each other.

Team building activities often create actions or environments that accelerate building shared histories and overcoming challenges while ensuring everyone can contribute.

What Groups do they Work in?

Team building activities can work in large groups, but are more generally suited to smaller or medium sized teams (say 3-12). With larger numbers it is usually difficult for everyone to contribute, though some exercises exist that work for larger groups.

Activities like this are most important for newly formed groups, but can be used for all groups to re-affirm relationships and ensure effective working.

What Types of Activities do they Include?

Team building activities fall into several categories that have slightly different purposes including:

• Communication and getting to know you (building knowledge improves future communication),
• Overcoming a challenge / problem solving (collective accomplishment builds warmth, identity and loyalty),
• Physical activities (shared exercise helps build bonds), and
• Trust building (focuses specifically on trust).

We’ll share a few examples below:

1 – Two Truths and a Lie (Team-building)

This simple, classic team building activity works well with small or medium sized teams. You can repeat it multiple times with the same group to help people get to know each other.

Each member of a team writes down three “facts” about themselves, two truths and one lie. The members of the team then take turns sharing their three statements with the wider team, who each guess which one is the lie.

If you’d like to make the game a bit competitive, introduce points. Every time someone correctly guesses a truth they get a point. Whoever has the most points once everyone has shared their three statements is the winner.

This activity can be used so that everyone takes part in it as an icebreaker or as part of a team meeting . Alternatively, it can be used with just one or two people sharing their three statements as part of, for example, a leadership Q&A session, an “ask me anything” session or even as part of a daily huddle.

2 – The Tennis Ball Game Team Building Activity

This team building activity works well with groups of about 6-8. It’s best where there are multiple groups of the same size, so they can compete against each other. This activity requires a fair bit of space, reasonably active participants and some tennis balls, juggling balls, oranges or even eggs if you want to bring some extra “danger” to proceedings.

The activity works by getting each team to work together to pass a tennis ball (or whatever object you choose) between their members as quickly as possible. Like most activities of this nature, there’s a specific way to do it that results in very fast times.

The Preparation

To prepare for this game all you really need to do is to ensure that you’ve got an appropriate location for the game, that you have enough objects so that every team can have one and that you’re able to explain the rules clearly.

The Activity

Start this activity by dividing your participants into evenly sized groups of between 6 and 8 people. Next, give each group a tennis ball (or similar object). Once you have these groups established, explain the rules of the activity.

The rule are simple. Each group needs to pass the ball between all the members of the group so that everyone has touched it and it returns to the original holder as quickly as possible. Only one person can touch the ball at at time. The teams will have 3 minutes to practice, then there will be a race.

After three minutes the facilitator gets everyone to their starting positions and starts the race. The team that completes the activity in the fastest time wins.

After the winner has been announced they can receive a token prize. There may be benefit in some feedback about the event, there may not.

3 – Birthday Ordering

Birthday ordering is an activity which requires a group of people to do something simple. Line themselves up in order by their days of birth in the calendar year, but there’s a twist.

The Activity

This energizer activity requires a facilitator and works well in medium and large groups, provided adequate space and physically able participants. As usual, the facilitator needs to explain the activity to the participants.

The facilitator splits the room into at least two groups of between 15 and 40 people. They then explain that the groups are about to race against each other. Once the activity starts, each group will need to order its individuals from left to right in order of the day of the year in which they were born, starting at 01 January and finishing on the 31st of December (ignore years of birth).

Once they complete the exercise, the group should shout out that they’re done. Let that sink in as it sounds simple, then explain that there’s a catch…

The catch is that the participants are not allowed to speak or write anything down. The facilitator shouldn’t provide any more information than that. The groups will need to work out their own ways of communicating (they inevitably mime, but it is a bit clumsy).

The facilitator then counts down to “go” and starts a timer. The facilitator observes the groups and keeps a note of the order they complete the exercise in. Once everyone completes, the facilitator gets the participants in the first group to say their days of birth in the order they are lined up in. If they’re all in the correct order, the group has been successful and they are the fastest winners, if not they are eliminated. Once all the groups have completed this, the facilitator declares a winner and awards a token prize.

4 – Maps and Pins Team Building and Diversity Activity

This premise behind this team building activity is to help individuals share some of their personal history. They do this through disclosure of countries or cities that are important to them. It’s a simple activity that can help people explore their individual differences in a safe and limited way.

The activity quite intimate and works well in small to medium teams (4-12) when done face to face. Variants of the activity can work fairly well as inclusion activities at much larger scales if done virtually, provided you have the appropriate technology. The activity is particularly useful for multi-cultural teams.

How the Maps and Pins Team Building and Diversity Activity Works

As with most activities of this nature, the world maps and pins team building exercise should be facilitated. The facilitator should talk the participants through the activity before it is started to ensure everyone knows what to expect. They should also fully take part in the activity.

The facilitator should prepare for this event by drawing two maps on separate “flip-charts” or similar. One of the maps should be of whatever country you are in. The other should be of the whole world. The maps really don’t need to be of a high quality, they just need to be recognizable.

Once all the participants are in the room, the facilitator should ask everyone to mark two places that are important to them on either map. One of the places they mark should be where they grew up. The other place should be anywhere in the world that’s important to them, for whatever reason they choose. To help distinguish the marks, it might be worth having the participants use their initials.

Once everyone has marked their places, the facilitator guides a conversation around the group. They ask each participant to share the places they’ve identified with everyone else in the room, and to spend a few minutes explaining either why they have chosen them or what they’re like. The facilitator should start this process off and set the tone for the conversation. They do this by identifying and sharing the places that they have identified as important to themselves first.

The activity ends once all participants have talked about the places that are important to them. It may be worth saving the maps and keeping them in a team room or similar, if appropriate.

A Large Group Alternative

Several variations of this activity can be used for much larger groups.

In a large office context it’s possible to use a physical world map as a way to show the diversity of employees. Doing this can raise awareness of diversity and increase inclusion. To do this, simply place a world map on a cork-board in a public space and ask individuals to place pins in the board to represent where they come from. The populated map becomes a visual reminder of the offices diversity.

In a virtual context, it’s possible to repeat the same activity but with a virtual map. Again, individuals can drop virtual pins, they can simply write their initials where they are from. This requires a bit of technology, but can be useful in larger organizations as a diversity tool and as a conversation starter.

5 – The Map Game (Communication & Connection)

The Map Game is a team building activity that focuses on communication. Facilitators must prepare to lead this game and it must be played by pairs, though many pairs can take part simultaneously.

Preparation

The facilitator prepares for this game by finding two different maps of the same area, one with street names on it and one without. You can can make such maps from the internet quite easily.

The facilitator takes their maps and copies them into a document so that one is in landscape orientation and the other is portrait.

The facilitator then puts two place-markers on the portrait map (location A and location B). The facilitator then prints the maps out so that there are enough copies for half of the participants to receive a landscape map, and half to receive a portrait map.

Some example maps are provided here so you can see what they may look like. However, it’s better to complete the activity with maps you make your self. This is particularly the case if they can have some relevance for your participants.

The Activity

To undertake the map game team building activity, the facilitator splits the room into pairs. One member of each pair is a “navigator” and one is a ”listener”. The paired participants are asked to sit with their backs together. This way all listeners are facing one way, and all the navigators are facing away from them.

The facilitator then gives all the navigators a copy of the portrait map (showing the place-markers for locations A and B). They then give all the listeners a copy of the landscape map (without the place-markers on it).

The facilitator starts the exercise by explaining that the exercise is simple. Everyone in the room has a map and all that’s involved in the activity is for the navigator to explain to the listener where points A and B are on of the map, and for the listener to draw a route between them. The exercise ends when all pairs have completed the exercise.

The pairs then complete the activity. They usually all start with their maps held as they have been received (landscape / portrait) and struggle significantly to communicate effectively. Over time the participants will start to identify useful points of reference and then ultimately they will be able to complete the activity. Some of the listeners may even realize that their maps are not the right way and and rotate them.

If things are particularly difficult, a facilitator may provide a few hints and tips.

The Debrief

Once all of the participants have completed the map game team building activity the facilitator can debrief the room. This usually is done through questioning of the participants to see what they experienced.

The purpose of the debrief is to draw out messages related to communication, most specifically that everyone goes into relationships with different perspectives. When people have different perspectives and starting points, communication can be difficult.

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:

Everyone is unique. Each of us has our own history, personality and way of doing things. Everyone has their own “in-group” and perceptions of others around them. And most people start their relationships with others from a position of doubt and uncertainty.

The purpose of team building is to break down all the challenges that come with this uniqueness and the positions of doubt. The purpose is to build trust, to build a common history, to build connections and understanding. With these connection, trust and understanding comes an increased ability to work well together and to care for each other.

In our view, though it takes time to build a team, it’s worth the effort.

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

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