You probably first heard the phrase \"team building\" years ago. When your class cooperated to solve a task in primary school, or perhaps it was at camp, your group had to finish a scavenger hunt or catch each other in trust falls. Now you may be looking for effective team-building activities that your employees and teams can do. In this article, we will explore some of the popular and effective team-building activities.
Team building activities have many advantages for businesses and employees and provide a fun and original substitute for socializing during happy hour. Team building fosters collaboration, communication reduces conflict, and fosters trust. Your company's success depends greatly on engaging in team-building exercises that will enable employees to foster close relationships.
The close relationships among team members give your business a competitive edge. Close relationships also help your employees stay engaged in their work, not only individually but as a team. An engaged employee is an essential asset in the organization. Engaged workers have a more positive impact on corporate culture and financial performance with effective team development.
The morale of your staff is significantly impacted by team building. The daily grind of work can become dull and repetitive. This will hinder creativity and productivity at work. Putting together effective team-building exercises is a breath of fresh air and a welcome break from work. Furthermore, it also motivates people to express their creative side.
Effective Team Building Activities Employees will enjoy
Team building activities do not have to be boring events at all. While scavenger hunts and trust falls may not be activities that corporate teams can do, there are a variety of other fun team-building activities available for your teams. Below are some of the most popular and effective team-building activities.
Stop Walk
Advertisment
Stop-Walk is a wonderful game to get your team going at the start of a team-building activity. The game is an adaptation of the famous \"Simon Says\" game.
Instructions for players
Spread your team evenly throughout the room before starting the game of Stop-Walk, and choose a leader who will issue orders from the front. Introduce the first two actions of the game: walking and stopping. The participants must move around the room randomly when the commander commands them to \"walk.\" The players must halt where they are when the leader yells \"stop.\"
The leader will reverse the meaning of the two words once everyone has practiced this a few times. As a result, \"stop\" now denotes \"walk,\" while \"walk\" denotes \"stop.\" When someone takes the incorrect action, they are disqualified from the game. This is a fairly simple version of the game, but the game may be made more challenging by the leader, including additional movements like clapping, jumping, sitting, and dancing.
Benefits of this activity
This game will teach your employees how to sharpen their listening skills and be quick thinkers.
Human Knot
The game Human Knot is excellent for motivating your staff to cooperate to find a solution. You must exercise strong leadership and teamwork to solve the challenge to win the game. The goal is to resolve the issue within the allotted time and to develop problem-solving and time-management skills.
Instructions for players
To play this game, put employees into groups of six to twelve. Ask them to stand in a circle facing each other. Tell them to reach across the circle with their right hand and grab someone's hand.
Then instruct everyone to extend their left hand and grasp a member of the circle by the hand. Ask them to disentangle the \"knot\" within the allotted time by setting a timer for them. The aim is for the participants to untie the knot without losing each other's grip and to stand in a perfect circle with their hands connected at the end. Players must maneuver through each other's hands by turning, twisting, and passing through them while still maintaining effective communication. Whoever unravels first wins the game.
Benefits of this activity
This game will help your employees sharpen their problem-solving and communication skills. It also helps them learn how to organize themselves so they can achieve their goals on time.
Blind Retriever
One of the best team-building activities is playing blind retriever. The game Blind Retriever is fantastic for fostering better teamwork and will have everyone smiling in no time.
Instructions for players
Divide the players into teams, then have them line up behind a start line to begin the game of Blind Retriever. One member from each team must then put on a blindfold while a random object is placed somewhere in the room. Make use of soft materials without any sharp edges.
When you hear \"Go!\" the teams must lead their blindfolded teammate to the object before the other teammates get there first. Instructions can only be verbally given, and participants cannot cross the start line. The team that obtains the random item first wins the game.
Benefits of this activity
This team-building activity will help your employees improve their communication and listening skills and teamwork abilities.
Memory Wall
This game will revive pleasant recollections that your teams may have had in the past.
Instructions for players
Give everyone a piece of paper and some pens or markers. Give them 20 minutes to look around the room and make a list of happy times they've had with the people there. These can be collective experiences, a project they worked on, or an educational opportunity. Give them fresh sheets of paper after they have finished listing their recollections. Request that they illustrate the memories they have written down.
To reproduce these visions, they can work with the person they shared the memory with. Allocate 30 minutes for them to finish this activity. Members then have to attach their recollections to the wall with tape. Invite them to stand up to share the memory with the rest of the group.
Benefits of this activity
The \"visual memory wall\" will boost teamwork and re-establish constructive interactions among the workers.
Sneak a Peak
This game will require a lot of building block sets.
Instructions for players
The goal of the challenge is for each group to attempt to construct a replica of the hidden constructed model. Before the challenge begins, you will need to build a small sculpture with some of the building blocks and hide it from the group. Next up, divide the participants into small teams of four (or similar). Each team should be given enough building material to duplicate the already created structure. Place the sculpture in an area that is an equal distance from all the groups.
One member from each team can come up at the same time to look at the sculpture for ten seconds and try to memorize it before returning to their team. The catch is that each group is only allowed one 10-second glimpse at the hidden model at a time. They then go back to their group and report what they have seen. After they return to their teams, they have twenty-five seconds to instruct them on how to build a replica of your sculpture.
After one minute of trying to recreate the sculpture, another member from each team can come up for a \"sneak a peek\" before returning to their team and trying to recreate the sculpture. The challenge should be continued in this pattern until one of the teams successfully duplicates the original sculpture.
Benefits of this activity
This activity will help your employees with their Problem Solving, Communication, Memory, and Strategy skills
Barter Puzzle
This game is time-consuming, however, it accomplishes creative teamwork. As a team, they must build the puzzle and find a way to convince other teams to help them. In other words, they must solve the puzzle and the problem of getting their pieces back.
Instructions for players
To play this game, break up your employees into groups of equal members and give each team a distinctly different jigsaw puzzle of similar difficulty. Explain that some of the pieces in their puzzle belong to the other puzzles in the room. Explain that they have a set amount of time to complete the puzzle as a group.
The goal is to complete their puzzle before the other groups, and they must devise a method of convincing the other teams to relinquish the pieces they need, whether through barter, exchange of team members, donating time to another team, or a merger, etc. Whatever they choose to do, they must do it as a group. The team who gets all their pieces assembled the fastest wins the game.
Benefits of this activity
This activity will help your employees with their Problem-Solving, Communication, and Strategy skills.
The above team-building activities may be adopted depending on your purpose, the size of your team, the environment, and the amount of time you have for preparation. This will also affect how you employ these activities. You can certainly use some indoor activities and vice versa. For optimum results, mix up your team-building activities with some silly games. The lighter activities frequently have less of an effect on your company than the enjoyable games do.
Effective team building should also be enjoyable. Building a culture of teamwork within your business will encourage employees to stick around. \"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.\" – Helen Keller
Natasha Chimphondah is an organizational development consultant at Industrial Psychology Consultants (Pvt) Ltd, a business management and human resources consulting firm.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natasha-chikondi-chimphondah-9b62a9159/
Phone: (0242) 481946-9/481950
Mobile: (+263) 783836901
Email: natasha@ipcconsultant.com
Main website: www.ipcconsultants.com
