Our Top Ten Team Building Exercises

You have recruited individual members of your team. You have set your goal. You have developed a plan and timeline. Now the trick is to get all of those unique people to work together towards the same goal. Given the varied personalities, communication skills, and personal agendas that individual members bring to the team, getting your team to work cooperatively can be challenging.

In the most productive teams, members focus individually and cooperatively on achieving the team’s goal. Members understand the interdependent nature of the team: that their individual work depends on and affects the quality of the work of others and, ultimately, the team’s ability to achieve its goal. Members respect, appreciate, and recognize each person’s unique contribution to the team’s efforts, but place the greatest emphasis on cooperative achievement of the team’s goal.

Experiential team building was all the rage not too long ago. The team would travel off-site for a “fun” day of ropes games and unusual problem solving, usually at an outdoor educational facility. Unfortunately, too often there was little follow-up and the lessons learned never returned to the workplace. Today, the emphasis has shifted to internal team building exercises that can be done at the beginning of a meeting.

Follow these key steps to plan a productive team building exercise:

1. Keep it simple. It should be quick and easy to set up in a typical meeting room.
2. It doesn’t have to be expensive. You can make great use of basic office supplies or some items from your kitchen pantry.
3. The exercise should be designed for normal office wear or team members should be instructed in advance to dress appropriately.
4. People have a hard time relating to large groups, so divide the team into small units of 2-4 or 6 people. By breaking down barriers and creating partnerships within these small groups, team members will be able to better relate to the larger team.
5. Instructions should be easy to understand, especially for non-native English speakers in your group.
6. Limited instructions can be part of the team building exercise. Force people to realize what do or as Doing something helps team members identify skills and abilities in themselves and their peers that can help them define their roles in the team: leader, facilitator, problem solver, communicator, etc.
7. The exercise should involve all members quickly.
8. You must present a problem that has multiple solutions to allow creativity, but can only be solved through collaboration and cooperative action.
9. You can increase the difficulty level of any exercise by adding a complication like “no talking” or speeding things up by asking, “How can you do it faster?”
10. At the end of the exercise, it is crucial that a facilitator, often the team leader, leads the team to reflect on what happened, the decisions made, and how they interacted with each other. Team members should discuss what they would do differently next time. Reflection is essential to identify and reinforce learning.

Try these team building exercises to get your team off to the right foot.

1. Scrambled puzzles. Before the team arrives, place a puzzle on each table. To manage the element of time, use large-piece children’s puzzles of approximately 100 pieces. Remove 5 pieces from each puzzle and move them to another table. When the team arrives, divide the members among the tables. Instruct the teams to completely complete their puzzle, by any means, in the shortest time possible. As puzzles are completed and teams realize that pieces are missing, they will be forced to negotiate with other teams to complete their puzzle. This exercise promotes flexibility, communication, negotiation, and cooperation.
2. Creative montage. Buy 3D perforated wooden dinosaur puzzle kits. Divide the team into groups of 2-4. Without comments or instructions, give each group the undrilled puzzle pieces, one complete puzzle per group. Do not let the group see the boxes, pictures or instructions or in any way identify what you have given them. Instruct each group to put together their project, telling them that they can only use what they have in front of them. You’ll get some interesting and creative builds, lots of laughs, and personable frustration, particularly with winged dinosaur kits. When time is up, ask each group to describe their construction. In this exercise, creative thinking, brainstorming, problem solving, cooperation, and consensus will certainly be exercised.
3. Lightweight handheld. Divide the team into groups of 4-6. Give each group 4 tennis balls. Tell them that each person must handle the 4 balls in the shortest time possible. Do this several times, each time asking yourself, “How can you do it faster?” This drill will progress from the obvious passing of the balls down a line, around a circle, to some interesting ball drops and hand slides. Your team will practice cooperation, quick thinking, and creative problem solving in this exercise.
4. Going up. Divide the team into groups of 2–6. Give each person an 8 1/2 “x 11” sheet of paper and a 5 “strip of tape. Instruct each team to build the tallest free-standing structure possible. This exercise promotes cooperation, creative thinking, problem solving, consensus, leadership, and division of labor.
5. Gnome dome. Divide the team into groups of 2. Give each group 20 gummies and 12 toothpicks. Instruct each group to build a dome. During this exercise, problem solving, creative thinking, cooperation (and possibly snacking) will be practiced.
6. Poisonous cobweb. Stretch a piece of string through a door frame, securing it to the frame or connecting the wall with duct tape. You will need two pieces of rope, one 3 feet off the ground and the other 4 1/2 feet off the ground. He’s creating an 18-inch-wide “window” that describes the team as a “poisonous web.” The team should work together so that all members go through the opening without touching the strings. They must go through, not under or above the ropes. If a team member touches any of the strings, the whole team must go back to the beginning and try again. This exercise encourages cooperation, leadership, creativity, and problem solving. It also forces team members to trust and depend on each other.
7. Hang Ups. Give each person a wire hanger. Tell the group that they can work individually or create their own groups. Tell them to do something useful with their coat rack. Set a time limit of 5 to 15 minutes. Ask each person / group to describe their “tool” and its use. This exercise will indicate which of your team members are natural leaders or born members of high society, as well as who are more shy and may need to be drawn when working with the group.
8. In the image. This is another puzzle game. Divide the team into groups and give each one a puzzle from which you have already removed a piece. Each team will complete a puzzle with one missing piece. Ask each team what this represents in team terms. Your goal is to discover the importance of each individual to the successful achievement of the team’s goal, but you can get some interesting answers on proper planning, supply officers, and quality control.
9. All aboard. This is another physical game. Depending on the size of your kit, place a 1-3 foot cardboard square on the floor, or mark a square with masking or masking tape. Draw numbers, one for each team member. In the order of the numbers drawn, the team members must stand on the square. As the number of people in the plaza increases, members will have to work together and be creative to get everyone on board. This exercise practices cooperation, problem solving, and leadership.
10. Bridge the gap. Divide the group into teams of 2 to 4. Give each group a small ball of clay and 12 toothpicks. Instruct them to build the longest cantilever bridge they can. Award points for speed of construction, length of bridge, ability to stand without tipping over, and ability to bear weight (to measure this, stack quarters until the bridge tips over or breaks). Team members will practice creativity, problem solving, consensus (and manual dexterity).

To be successful, teamwork must be more than a method of dividing work to get work done. Teamwork must adopt a cooperative attitude of mutual respect, shared responsibility and open communication. Teamwork recognizes the individual contribution of each team member to the team in the context of the interdependence of those efforts in the cooperative pursuit of the team’s goal.