Team Building Games and Activities

Teams have emerged as managers of significant business functions like analyzing customer needs, performance review, etc. Team games and activities help in team’s growth and development. Team games are tools that direct the trainee’s/learner’s interest on what has to be learned.

Team building games assist in developing an environment for effective communication and community building. They utilize mental abilities of the learner.

Team-building games must be flexible enough and take into consideration the learner’s who come from different backgrounds, have different mental levels, different potential, different patience rate and an amalgamation of other differences. Such games assist in employee motivation also.

Some of the corporate team building games and activities are as follows:

• Celebrate team’s success always - Celebrations are significant as they are a means of demonstrating that the organization has concern for employee’s contributions and efforts. They create a feeling of unity among the team. They motivate the team to work harder and experiment new things. Below is mentioned an activity for celebrating team’s success:

  Conduct a team-information sharing party periodically, may be quarterly or monthly. Do not celebrate success of your team only; do invite other teams to boost up your team in the celebration.

  The team invited for participating in the celebration must be asked to get along atleast three-four testimonials of their team’s success to the party. This testimonial may be momentous, jovial, or metamorphic. It should be a small or a big team success, but worth celebrating and sharing with other organizational teams.

  The team leaders should be asked to tell their success stories to the entire group and then the team should be commended. The celebrations can include partying out, or arranging for food, drinks and dancing within office premises.

• Encourage effective listening among team members - Effective listening is crucial for efficient team building and development. The team members must listen for deeper meaning of communication within the team. Effective listening requires motivating team members to express their views, clarify opinions of whatever is said, reiterate key points, display speaker’s thoughts and views, recap the communication context and recognize the speaker’s efforts and contribution. Below is mentioned game for encouraging active listening among team:

  Make team members sit close to each other around a table. Tie their eyes tightly with a cloth headband through which nothing is visible. The objective of tieing a headband is to remove sight sense so as to emphasize the impact of hearing sense. Now the team members should be asked to discuss on a real issue in the team.

  Talk about issues like less written work, effective communication within team, etc. This game will make the team members conscious of whatever is being said and make them attentive of other team member’s contribution by active listening.

  As a team leader, you must keep the conversation going-on and ensure that all members are indulged in active listening. At the end, remove the headband tied around the eyes of team members and examine the event/happening. It will be observed that the team members will speak what they mean and nobody can boast, act expert/bossy and nobody can act arrogant.

• Defining team roles and responsibilities within the team - In the eagerness to carry new roles and responsibilities, the team members generally don’t elucidate the team model they best fit in. Generally, the team is unaware of the principles for good intra-team relationships. Below is game for making the team sensitive to different kinds of team as well as for defining roles within a team.

  Conduct a team meeting to evaluate the working of the team. Encourage a relaxed discussion of various types of teams. This can be done by guiding with an idea that team members participating in the meeting should concentrate and emphasize on the relationships within the team.

  The team members should be asked that which team model they best fit in, and how they shape their behaviours. This meeting should be carried on till the time it is beneficial. This team building game should be conducted periodically to analyze the relationships within the team. Then, the team should be asked to concentrate on the kind of team process, as they evaluate their own team model. This way the team will have an apparent idea of how their team should perform in terms of intra-team relations.

• Boosting employee’s and team’s morale - Below is game for boosting employee’s morale:

  Ask the team members to make a congratulations card saying “Wow! U r an asset to our organization. Udid a great job! Congratulations!” and mention their name, organization’s address, contact number.

  The card must have a “Truly” salutation as well as the team member’s signature. Now, ask them to send this card to randomly selected five-ten names of organizational members. The team member might be unaware of any detail of why the selected names deserve congratulations.

  The purpose of this team-game is to observe the number of people who respond to the team members in some or the other way, and to see that how many were delighted to receive the card for some accomplishment or honour.

  The team members should then record the feedback and responses received and should link them at a team meeting. Then, a discussion can be carried on how to recognize other’s accomplishments and develop self-respect.

Authorship/Referencing - About the Author(s)

The article is Written By “Prachi Juneja” and Reviewed By Management Study Guide Content Team. MSG Content Team comprises experienced Faculty Member, Professionals and Subject Matter Experts. We are a ISO 2001:2015 Certified Education Provider. To Know more, click on About Us. The use of this material is free for learning and education purpose. Please reference authorship of content used, including link(s) to ManagementStudyGuide.com and the content page url.