5 team building activities your small business should try

Every now and again you should try out different team-building activities to help strengthen your working relationships. Some employees might not like having to participate as it can make them feel awkward and embarrassed. It’s not always easy, especially if you have new employees that don’t really know many members of the team.

As a manager, you’ll want to proactively build morale around the office, and as employees it’s important to get along with all team members. This is easier said than done; how exactly do you go about making your team excited about team building? To help you out, we’ve put together a few activities you could try out.

Team day out

Plan a day trip and let your team interact without any formalities. There’s no limit to what activities you can plan with your team, whether you go bowling or try an assault course. Depending on how much money you want to spend, the world is your oyster! Just last week we went on our own day out and had a go at escaping Cell Block C in Birmingham at Clue HQ. We really enjoyed this challenge; we all put our heads together to work out the clues and figure out how to escape, and with our amazing communication and problem solving skills we were ables to escape before the clock ran out… go team!

Two truths and a lie

This has always been a go to “‘ice-breaker’ game that many schools, universities and businesses seem to use. Each member has to introduce themselves by telling the rest of the team two truths and one lie about them. The rest of the team the has to take turns guessing which out of the three was the truth. Try not to be boring when playing; think of exciting truths that you know your colleagues won’t believe.

Scavenger Hunt

Get your team working together by sending them out on a scavenger hunt. Put together a list of items for each team to find, the first team to collect all items win… simple! This game encourages teams to work together and think creatively. You could always make it more difficult by writing clues or riddles, meaning teams have to think a lot harder when figuring out the items on the list.

The Egg Drop

This is a classic problem solving game; more than likely you’ve played this before. Once the office is split into teams of three or four, the aim is to package the egg so that it can sustain an eight-foot drop. You’ll be able to use a variety of materials from paper to bubble wrap. Once the packages have been created, each team will present their packages in a 30-second advert and highlight the main features. Finally all teams will drop their eggs and see which team designed the most successful solution. The aim of this game is to see how team members can work together and communicate for a common purpose.

Back-to-back drawing

A great task to test your team’s communication skills, back-to-back drawing involves everyone getting into pairs and sitting with their backs to one another. The team members take it in turns being the Describer and the Drawer, with the former being given an image that they then have to describe to their teammate. The Drawer must recreate the image based on the Describer’s instructions, and the winning pair are the ones who produce the most accurate reproduction of the original picture.

Got any other ideas?

Have you tried out any of these activities, or do you know any other good activities to try out? Pop them into the discussion box and let us know how they worked out for you; did it help bring your team closer together? For more like this join our Nimvelo Community.