4 Team building activities that you have to do with your group

Modern businesses have become global and dispersed, team building activities in organizations aim to increase bonds and help bring people together. We share 4 team building activities that you should do with your group to strengthen relationships and achieve better results.

The business are accommodating greater diversity and adjusting themselves to technological innovations. All of this has made collaboration and teamwork more complex and difficult.

Irrespective of the post or pre-pandemic era, effective collaboration and teamwork are pivotal for business success. Organizations must promote team building to foster a shared mindset and cohesion among team members.

The Team Emblem Activity

The objective of the team emblem activity focuses on creative thinking, collaboration and fostering a team identity.

This creative team building exercise is great for smaller teams. Players are divided into small teams where they must work together to create an emblem, flag or shield for their teams.

Besides collaboration and creative thinking, this activity is also great for building a stronger sense of team identity and cohesiveness. Plus, it’s flexible enough for any situation or group size.

Grab cardboard, chart paper, markers, crayons, tape or anything else you’ll need to draw and paint a team emblem or team shield. Divide players into small teams of 3-4 people each.

You can make the team composition the same as your real-life office teams to focus more on the team identity aspects of this activity.

Give each team enough time to plan, draw and paint an emblem for their teams. The emblem must represent something the identifies the team and its values.

They get 10 minutes for inspiration (they can look up ideas online if they want to), 20-80 minutes to make the emblem. Once the time is up, ask each team to display their emblem.

Invite all other teams to give their own interpretation of the emblem. Then the creating team gives their actual interpretation.

Repeat the process for all other teams.

One of the hardest aspects of team building is fostering a sense of identity. A simple team emblem – representing something the team collectively cares about – can help you do that.

Teams will have to first build consensus on their collective values, then divide tasks to succeed at this activity.

The I Know That Activity

The activity “I know that” is one of the best ways to build confidence on a team is encouraging people to be an expert in their field. Most team members share their professional expertise with their team every day, but they don’t often get the chance to show other areas of expertise.

A great exercise is having each team member teach the group something. This could be anything from how to make sushi, to how to read sheet music, to how to arrange flowers, to 10 words in other language.

The goal here is giving each team member a few minutes to teach the group something non-work related. You give each person 15 minutes to share their knowledge.

You could have a teaching day, where everyone shares or you could assign one person a week. This is a great way to kick off a weekly meeting, with a new teacher each week.

Do this in one big teaching day or at the start of each meeting until every person on your team has had a turn to go.

This activity is very effective at building trust because you are giving team members a chance to show off in a safe way. This is also a great way for team members to learn about each other.

The best part is, they choose what they teach. Simple or complex — it’s up to them!

The Tag Team Game

Tag team game objective for each person to share with the group their individual strengths and positive traits that contribute to the overall success of the group.

Break the group into smaller groups of four to eight. Give each team one large sheet of paper, some writing paper, marking pens and a pen or pencil.

Instruct the groups to make the “ultimate team member” by combining all of their best traits into one imaginary person. They need to give this “person” a name and draw a picture of him/her on the large sheet of paper with different attributes labeled.

Then the group needs to write a story about this person. The story should highlight all of the amazing things their imaginary person can do with all of the awesome charactersitics he/she has been given.

Allow time at the end of the group time for each team to share their person and to read their story.

Moment of Reflection

• If one person had all of your best traits would he/she be much better than any one person in your group?
• How can you as a group member contribute to the team?
• How does working as a team make things easier for each person?
  What can you do as a team than you can’t do by yourself?
• What other attributes do you think you have to contribute to the team that were not mentioned in your story?
• What other attributes do others in your group have that were not mentioned in your story?

The Four Facts and a Lie

Four facts and a lie is ideal for a team whose members don’t know one another very well. It provides an informal platform for individuals to share personal information and build trust.

This activity to designed to improve communication, build trust, develop listening skills, and enable your people to understand one another better.

It is an interesting exercise that can be applied in groups of any size. In addition, each participant only needs a pencil and paper.

Ask the participants to write down five “facts” about themselves, one of which must be a lie – but a plausible one. For example, “I once swam with dolphins.”

Allow participants enough time to write down their facts. Give them about 20 minutes to complete.

Once they are finished, go around the group and ask each participant to read out their five facts. As a group, guess which facts about each person are true and which is the lie.

Ask the rest of the group which of the speaker’s facts they think is false and why.

When each person has revealed their truths and lie, discuss the outcomes. Were any surprising? If so, were the truths more surprising than the lie?

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