You can use personality tests for remote team building too. Here is a list of personality tests to try. Not only does What Would You Do? Here is a list of would you rather questions to start with. One of the best ways to quickly build team morale is to throw spontaneous dance parties during video calls. We have a few recommendations for these virtual activities:. Here is a longer playlist from The Bash. Here is a list of virtual murder mystery games to try.
Virtual Escape Rooms are popular online team building activities during quarantine because they include social elements, problem solving skills and teamwork.
For example, your team may have to figure out how to pull of an art heist and escape, or break out of a jail cell. The virtual activities are fun and interactive, and feel good when you win. Here is a list of virtual escape rooms with both free and paid options. Ten quiet minutes during an otherwise busy day can be an effective way to bring your people together and build strong remote teams.
You can achieve these results with a guided meditation session. Here is a 10 minute guided meditation on YouTube. You can snap a screenshot of your most frequently used emojis and upload it for your team to see. If you are looking for ways to make a virtual meeting fun or engage a virtual team in ways that are not lame, then a quick round of emoji ranking can help.
Each member of your team will likely fit into one of the above categories. However, one thing will secretly unify your people regardless of category: they love getting praise. Start a praise train where each person compliments each others work in succession and watch the employee engagement take off. For example, you could praise someone on their work ethic, and that person could praise a colleague on a successful client call, and that person could praise someone for writing a great blog article and so on.
Mister Rogers Calls are one of the best virtual team building activities during quarantine. The name comes from the goal: to get to know your remote work neighbors. We have been doing Mister Rogers Calls for years, and follow a simple format. First, we use the Donut app to randomly assign conversation partners every two weeks. The call itself should be 30 minutes, over video, and avoid work topics. Encourage your coworkers to talk about hobbies and interests outside of the job.
For example, you can talk about how long you can keep a houseplant alive. This post has themes and topics for virtual coffee chats. Minesweeper is a virtual game you can play on online via Google. Challenge your remote employees to a cutthroat round of the classic online game, and time your scores to see if you can beat each other and me. You can organize an epic Minesweeper tournament for your people and see who can race through the game quickest. This online team building activity takes patience, precision and thoughtful risk taking; which are all good attributes to develop for remote teams.
I recently finished a round in four seconds, unsuccessfully, so the bar is both high and pretty darn low. The Price is Almost Right is a game where the host of a virtual conference call holds up household objects and other attendees shout out prices.
The first person to guess within five cents of the actual retail price without going over gets 1 point for their team. If you guess over the retail price then you are out for that round, but your team members may continue. The Longest Word is a quick virtual activity you can do on video chats and conference calls. To play, arrange your people into teams and challenge them to spell a very long word.
For example, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is as hard to say as it is to spell. The team that gets closest to the correct spelling, judged by an arbitrary eyeing, wins. The winning team can then bet double or nothing by guessing the meaning of the word too. This list has more vocabulary activities for teams. In high school, I joined the Debate Club and attended weekly meetings.
For the entire year, we had exactly one debate with another school. As your Debate Club grows in sophistication, invite more team members to join. The experience will help develop important communication skills and relationships. The other team members guess which country the person is describing to earn points. At the end of the game, the player with the most correct guesses wins! You can assign countries to team members using a random country generator.
Virtual Team Trivia is a facilitated trivia session built specifically for team building online. Virtual Trivia sessions are 60 minute virtual team events over video. You can choose from themes like Rock-and-Roll and Interstellar.
If you prefer, you can host your own virtual trivia too. Learn more: Virtual Team Trivia. For example, popular virtual team building events include birthday parties and online fundraisers. Virtual happy hours are video meetings dedicated to fun virtual team games and activities, and may be part of the work day or at the end of it. For example, you might include a round of icebreaker questions and then do virtual team trivia. Most people include drinks as well.
Check out our list of virtual happy hour ideas for more inspiration. Virtual coffee breaks are usually one-on-one or small group sessions, and are conducted for 15 to 30 minutes during the work day. The purpose of these breaks is to help build relationships and community among coworkers.
See our list of virtual coffee break ideas and topics. If you have a large team, then planning virtual birthday parties may become redundant.
Instead, you can unite the April babies around the shared birthday month, and the same for the other 11 groups too. Here is a list of ideas for virtual birthday parties. These parties generally occur during work hours, and include video team building games and activities. The timeline should start as far back as the oldest member on your team was born or when the company was founded, whichever came first. Mark each year on the timeline. Then, using narrow strips of paper, write down important dates for the company e.
Give your team members four slips of paper, and ask them to mark down four important moments in their life. Let them pin them to the timeline. Purpose: This exercise helps show, in a visual way, the different generations and experiences of your team.
It leads well into talking about cultural and generational differences and the effects that has on how people work and communicate. It is also an opportunity for team members to learn more about each other. Have each team member bring one item from their desk to the exercise. Then, tell them that this item is going to be their new product, and that they must come up with a name, logo, slogan, and marketing plan for that object.
Give them a set amount of time. This could be done individually, or in small groups if desired. Discuss, as a group, which products were successfully sold and why. Purpose: For marketing and design teams, this exercise presents the challenge of seeing old things in a new light. When combined with groups working together to sell a common object, you introduce teamwork and crunch-time brainstorming.
It promotes creativity and problem solving, too. Come up with several scenarios in which a person would be chosen to do something. For example, it might be a new job hire, marriage, leading an organization, or commanding an army. Have each team member write their question down. When all scenarios have been covered, discuss the questions as a group and see what each team member thinks would be the perfect question.
Purpose: Team members quickly learn how each other thinks differently. The perfect question that each comes up with will reflect their motives and what they think matters the most. This is an excellent way to lead into a discussion on how team members determine who is capable and who they will follow or trust.
Collect a variety of objects and put them in the center of a table. The broader the variety, the better e. The goal is to collect items that, at first glance, have no apparent connection. Break the team into groups, giving each group a sheet of paper and pen. Make sure they have a clear view of all the objects. Instruct them to classify the objects into four groups, writing down the groupings on their sheet of paper. They should not let the team groups hear what they are doing. When the time is up, have a spokesperson for each group reveal how they classified the objects, and why.
Reasons might vary, from the function of the object to how it looks, or the material it is made of. Purpose: This exercise promotes teamwork and creative thinking, but it also encourages your team to rethink how they view everyday objects.
They are forced to look for commonalities in otherwise unconnected objects. This leads to a discussion on how to work outside the box for solutions to problems that seem wholly unrelated.
Bring in four objects or multiple sets of four objects of the same type e. Write up a conversational scenario for each set that outlines what the perfect item would be, in the order of preference.
While none of the four objects is an exact match, each have qualities that reflect that perfect list. Read this scenario to your team, and instruct them to order the objects from best fit to worst fit. When all object sets are done, have team members explain why they ordered the objects that way.
Purpose: This exercise helps your team break down a scenario or problem and figure out which things are the best fit. This dovetails directly into discussion on current projects or challenges facing the group, in which you can, as a group, write a scenario for an actual project you are working on and decide which solutions are the best fit.
Bring the team into the room, and divide evenly into groups of at least two. Tell them they have thirty minutes to come up with a group problem-solving challenge that would make use of: teamwork, creativity, communication.
When the thirty minutes is complete, the team will choose from one of the problem-solving challenges and actually do the activity. A variation is to use all of the challenges over a period of time so that your team-building activities come directly from your team itself. Purpose: This team building exercise puts leadership responsibilities back on your team, showing them that they have the potential to come up with solutions, too.
It also gives your team a chance to challenge other team members in ways they might not otherwise find the opportunity to do so in regular workday activity. Bring your team in for what they think is just another staff meeting. Have a long document filled with mind-numbing but coherent jargon-filled speech that talks vaguely about sales and marketing goals. Sprinkled in the document are sentences which say something else entirely. These sentences should contain instructions or information that they will be quizzed on after you are finished.
Begin reading it to your team in monotone. The goal is to get them to tune you out. When you are finished, hand out paper to each team member. Then, ask them to write down what they thought you talked about. If your real sentences contained random information, quiz them on that. Discuss who heard what, and see who was able to actively listen. It shows the importance of listening to verbal communication, but also non-verbal communication. They can discuss why they tuned you out, and what you could have done to keep them tuned in.
Create a card deck that has images or words related to your company or brand. It might be logos, products, photos of your team, and so on.
Whatever route you go, keep the images related. For example, use all photos of your team, or all photos of your products. Divide up into teams and see which team can match the most pairs in the least amount of time. You might set additional rules, such as requiring the name of the person to be said aloud when the card is flipped over, or some other related bit of information connected to the image on the card.
Purpose: To learn the names, information, and visuals associated with your company. This is particularly effective if you have a lot of new team members and you want everyone to learn their name and something about them. Teams can get a point for matching up cards, but they can get two points if they choose to successfully debate and argue why the two cards the turned over are associated.
If the majority of the room agrees with their reasoning, they receive the points. If not, they lose a point. It also forces them to decide what is worth debating or not, as well as whether or not someone has provided a good argument. Place the name stickers in a container, and have each team member draw a name sticker out without being able to see the adjective. Have them stick the name tag on their shirt and wear it for a specific period of time, instructing them that all of their responses and interaction for that time must reflect the adjective on their name tag.
You can use this in several ways. Your team could wear them during a typical meeting or brainstorming session to show how good and bad attitudes affect outcomes. They could wear them for a typical work day and then discuss how they felt. Or, you could have them wear a name tag half of the day, and switch with someone for the second half. If they switch name tags, they will see how behavior and action often defines feeling, and not the other way around.
Give each team member a piece of paper. Have them draw a simple drawing on the paper, without talking to anyone else.
Each person then passes the paper to their right. Each team member looks at the drawing they now have, fold the paper in half, and write at the top what they think the picture is of. The paper is passed to the right again. Each person reads the description, folds the paper over to hide the words, and draws a picture of that.
This continues, where each pass alternates between determining what the picture was and drawing what was described. It is important that each turn only reveals the words or picture from the previous round. Separate sheets or pads of paper may be used if that is easier than one sheet of paper, but they should be passed together. Purpose: This activity tends to create a lot of laughter and is an excellent ice-breaker at parties or before long meetings where you want people to be comfortable with each other.
The drawings and interpretations tend to bring out discussion and jokes. Give each member of your team three cards with the same number on them so that every team member has a set of numbers different from every other player. The goal is to accomplish the tasks in a set amount of time so that whoever is left will get a prize based on the total value of the tasks completed. And once a team member has used up all their cards, they are taken out of the game and out of the running for the prize.
Ideally, there are more tasks and values than can be fulfilled by the cards your team possesses. They must determine which tasks to do, and which cards to use up. As members move around the room to organize themselves in order, you'll notice how they communicate to complete the task and who takes on the role of organizers or leaders. Follow Up Questions. Time: 25 minutes to an hour. Items Needed: Smart phone one per each participant.
Goal: To make others laugh while collecting 7 cards to win the game. Evil Apples is a mobile app inspired by the party game, Cards Against Humanity.
Other players submit cards anonymously to fill in the blank. The person with the game card chooses the best, and often the funniest response. Players will bond over laughs and may appreciate the creativity of other group members. You will need to be cautious how you use it some cards can be considered inappropriate or offensive which for many is the fun of the game.
However, you can download different decks that are more work-appropriate or use other card apps to create your own decks. Number of Participants: Players. Items Needed: Smart phone or tablet, Jackbox games , video calling software. Goal: Every player will make a drawing based on a prompt. Players then submit a title for these drawings and try to pick out the real title from the fake ones.
Drawful is the perfect solution for remote teams. It can easily be played over Zoom or other video calling software, as well as in person. In Drawful, each player receives an unusual prompt they need to try and draw on their phone in a limited amount time.
After someone finishes and submits their drawing, everyone else submits a title anonymously that could fit the other player's drawing. These titles can be humorous or serious, it's up to each player. The goal is to find the correct drawing prompt while fooling others into selecting decoy answer. Bonus points are awarded to the decoys that are particularly clever or funny.
Create a video meeting with team members and share your screen. Start the game! Every player uses their phone or tablet as a controller, so it's important that everyone has access to a device. The game will run everyone through the instructions before playing so everyone viewing the screen share will get the gist. Items Needed: Each participant needs a mobile device. Goal: Work together to save the world from a growing pandemic. Based on the cooperative board game, the Pandemic mobile app centres around teams working together to fight and cure deadly diseases.
Each player has a specific role that they must fill in order to succeed. Roles can be anything from an engineer building satellites so the CDC can communicate to a scientist collecting data and samples to test for a cure. The premise for the game is the perfect setup to teach risk management and foster teamwork. It shows that every role is needed to reach the long-term and tough goals. Goal: Score the highest number of points while laying tiles.
Another board game turned mobile app, Carcassonne focuses on laying tile to strategically gain control of map's cities, fields and other terrain with the end goal of earning the most points. The game is best played in groups of four players and as a pass-and-play for teams.
Everyone can also play together or remotely on their own device. With each new tile that is laid, individuals must adjust their strategy. It can get people thinking about how to formulate strategies and use logic to reach long-term goals. Goal: To complete all tasks before being killed by the imposter. Among Us is a multiplayer game that combines strategy with sci-fi.
Individuals are assigned roles: either as one of the crew members on a spaceship whose goal is to complete their assigned tasks or an imposter who poses as a crew member and whose goal is to kill the majority of the crew members while sabotage the mission. Similar to games like Mafia and Werewolf, the crew will gather after a dead body is fond to discuss who everyone believes may be the imposter. At the end of these gatherings, someone will be voted off the spaceship.
Players will find there's a strategy to sticking together with other crew members and collaboration is necessary to complete all tasks and find the imposter. Communication is also key to winning the game.
Number of Participants: 2-Unlimited. Goal: Team up and go on quests. It can be download on Android or iOS devices.
People can communicate, barter, form alliances and show what they are capable of when they work as a team. Playing a fantasy multiplayer RPG game may seem like an unconventional way to build your business team, but it can foster real-world teamwork. It also taps into the imagination of your members and their ability to communicate.
Team building games and activities for teams with more time available. All activities should take between minutes of participants time. Items Needed: Anything they could use to build a bridge. Some suggestions: tape, paper, marshmallows, straws, Legos, popsicle sticks or Jenga blocks.
Goal: Have two groups independently build bridge halves that must fit together. To tap into your team's creativity and communication skills, try bridge build. Divide into two different teams. Each must build half of a bridge with the materials provided. The goal is for the two bridges to have similar or identical design and be able to fit together when finished. The challenge is that the teams must be separated so that they can't see the other team or what they are building.
But, they are allowed to communicate verbally or through chat e. Depending on what you use, you may want to also supply them with tape, paper and pens.
This exercise is good for developing communication, creative thinking, and leaderships skills. What was the hardest part of this challenge? How did you overcome that? Did you miscommunicate at any point? How did you fix miscommunications and get back on track? Time: 40 minutes. Items Needed: cue cards, post-its or scraps of paper, pens. Goal: Participants must guess the name on their forehead using only yes or no questions.
Create a set of names, which can be celebrities and icons like Beyonce or Mickey Mouse or types of professions like actor, football player or doctor. You can use Post-It notes or tape and small slips of paper. Have each person place a name on their forehead.
Make sure that they can't see who it is. Set a timer and instruct everyone to move around the room asking different people yes or no questions until they guess correctly or time runs out. This gets people to move around the room and interact with people they may not spoken with before.
It also makes them more aware of stereotypes and categorizing others based on certain characteristics. Number of Participants: Unlimited. Items Needed: Cue or index cards. Goal: Find pairs. Similar to "Concentration", in which you flip over cards two at a time to try to find matching pairs, this activity focuses on learning and memory. You can create cards with photos and names of team members or with company information like products, logos, and values.
Face these cards down on a table and then break into teams. Each team must find the pairs in the cards while only facing 2 cards up at a time. Time each group and whichever finds all the matches the fastest is declared the winner. Company concentration teaches employees more about your business while playing a fun game. Items Needed: Flip cart or white board, Markers.
Goal: Come up with newspaper headlines that describe company or department achievements in the future. With this team-building exercise, you can boost creativity and get an inside look at how your employees see the future of your business. To do All the News, you just need a few newspapers, whiteboards, markers, pens and paper. Each team is given a newspaper and asked to come up with different headlines that cover what the company or department will be doing in the near future.
They can create as many as they want and as far in the future as they want. Groups share their headline ideas with the rest of the team and get feedback. All the News is useful for entrepreneurs and business owners that want to get an idea of the company's future direction and start setting some new goals. Toggl Track is the time tracker that can slot into any team's workflow. Get crystal-clear insights into what your team members do with their time and see which team members are overworked, and which ones can take on more.
Items Needed: Character descriptions, Clues, Dinner. Goal: Work together to find who the murderer was. A Murder Mystery Dinner is an interactive activity that will require everyone to get involved. There are several companies that will design murder mystery dinners specifically for business groups. Actors will provide an entertaining story and set clues in place for your team to decipher. But, you can also host your own murder mystery dinner party which may be more cost-effective and intimate.
Learn more about Murder Mystery Dinners here. It's ideal for problem-solving and critical thinking. Items Needed: Powerpoint karaoke slides, projector or screen. Goal: Create a presentation on the spot from slides participants have never seen. If you want to test your team's presentation skills and see how they react in fast-paced or high-pressure situations, play PowerPoint Karaoke also called Powerpoint Roulette or Battledecks.
Groups are given a set of slides that they haven't seen before and must give a presentation based on those slides. This is a more intense version, but you can adjust it so that groups are given a few minutes to view the slides and prepare before giving the presentation. It requires groups to think quickly and work together to pull off a difficult task with a short time to plan.
Was this more difficult than a regular presentation? Why or why not? Goal: Act out a impromptu slideshow. Similar to Power Point Karaoke, slide show is a improv game which involves a group presentation.
One person in a team will tell a story of an adventure or process. This could be anything from traveling through the jungle or navigating around a city to building a house or planning a large dinner party. The other team members must act as the slideshow or visuals for the presentation.
With each section that the presenter says they must demonstrate the scene. Add in random props to make it more exciting. Slideshow sparks creativity and pushes members to think on their feet. It also shows how they support each other throughout the process. Time: Long Term.
Items Needed: Notebook, Pens. Goal: Get to know employees over a long term period of time. Some businesses may do team-building activities once for new employee orientation or once or twice a year for a company retreat. Although team-building activities help to bring your group together, you don't have to limit them to only one time a year. Doing team-building games more often prevents your team from drifting apart over time. Companies like Zappos have incorporated a culture book.
It is a long-running team-building activity that can be done every day. In a common area like a break room, leave a book with markers or pens. On each page, you can leave a prompt or ask a question for each day. Encourage employees to leave quotes from movies they are watching or books they have recently read. This can also be done virtually in work chat apps like Slack by using Geekbot's Pizza Toppings preset, which brings up a fun question for your team to answer once a week.
Items Needed: Team Brief, scoring sheet. Goal: Rank items given based on a hypothetical scenario. Want to see how your team makes decisions? Set up a hypothetical scenario, in which an accident strands the group in a body of water. The traditional team brief in All Adrift is that your boat catches on fire and you have to abandon it. You only have a few minutes to grab items. Some examples are: First Aid Kit, rope, canned food, water, a bucket, a knife, a compass and a blanket.
First, individuals should write down the items that they would grab from in the order of most important. Then as a team, they have to decide and agree on which 10 are the top priorities. Groups should have about 30 minutes to complete the entire activity and come to a consensus. There is also a scoring sheet that they should use to rate their decisions. All Adrift helps you see that you can often make smarter decisions as a team with combined knowledge than on your own.
These activities may give you the inspiration and motivation to build stronger and more successful company teams. But, remember there are other opportunities to bond your team, so don't stress too much about planning out everything in exact detail. It could be as simple as holding monthly team Happy Hours. Focus on creating shared memories and finding common ground. All plans come with a free, day trial of Toggl Track Premium—no credit card required.
Upgrade at the end of the trial or continue using Track for free. By signing up, you agree to our terms of service , privacy policy and to receiving marketing communication from Toggl Track.
You can opt out anytime. Supercharge your productivity and project management with these resources. Get more done in less time with these time management tips and strategies. Back to Toggl Global Products. Why Track? Track Apps.
Log in Try for free. Try for free. Log in. See all resources. Why Do Team Building Activities? Follow Up Questions: What was the groups initial reaction? What we're their biggest challenges? Did team work come easily or was it a struggle to get through? What skill were used to succeed in the challenge? Were any creative solutions purposed?
How were they received? Follow Up Questions: Did you assign people on your team specific roles? What was your thought process? Follow Up Questions: What was your biggest challenge crossing the fence? What did the group have to do or believe to be successful? What would you do differently next time? Follow Up Questions: Was the artist confused? What was their thinking process? Was there any descriptions that confused the artist?
What methods of communication worked the best for your team? What leadership was demonstrated during the challenge? What did you learn from the challenge? Follow Up Questions: Did you work as a team to act out the phrase?
0コメント