Our Top Ten Team Building Exercises

You have recruited the individual members of your team. You have set your goal. You have developed a plan and schedule. Now the trick is to get all of those unique individuals to work together toward 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 individually and cooperatively focus on achieving the team 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 team efforts, but place the greatest emphasis on the cooperative achievement of the team goal.

Experiential team building was all the rage not too long ago. The team would travel off-site for a “fun” day of strings games and unusual problem solving, usually at an outdoor educational facility. Unfortunately, too often there was little follow-up and the lessons learned never made it back to the workplace. Today, the emphasis has shifted to internal team-building exercises that can be done at the start 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 get a lot of use out of basic office supplies or a few items from your kitchen pantry.
3. The exercise should be outfitted in normal office clothing or team members should be instructed in advance to dress appropriately.
4. People have a hard time relating to large groups, so break the team into small units of 2-4-6 people. By breaking down barriers and building 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 notice that make gold as doing something helps team members to identify abilities and skills in themselves and their peers that can help them define their roles in the team: leader, facilitator, problem solver, communicator, etc.
7. The exercise must involve all members quickly.
8. You must present a problem that has multiple solutions to allow for 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 “don’t talk” or speed 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, lead the team in reflecting 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 started on the right foot.

1. Scrambled puzzle. Before the team arrives, place a puzzle on each table. To manage the time element, use large piece children’s puzzles of 100 or so pieces. Remove 5 pieces from each puzzle and move them to another table. As the team arrives, divide the members among the tables. Instruct the teams to completely complete their puzzle, by any means, in the shortest amount of time possible. As puzzles are completed and teams realize 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 assembly. Buy 3-D perforated wooden dinosaur puzzle kits. Divide the team into groups of 2-4. Without feedback or instructions, give each group the undrilled puzzle pieces, one complete puzzle per group. Do not allow the group to 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 is in front of them. You’ll get some interesting and creative builds, lots of laughs, and some good-natured frustration, especially with the 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. Hand Light. Divide the team into groups of 4-6. Give each group 4 tennis balls. Tell them that each person must handle all 4 balls in the shortest time possible. Do this several times, each time asking, “How can you do it faster?” This drill will progress from the obvious passing of the balls along 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 masking 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 gumdrops and 12 toothpicks. Ask each group to build a dome. Problem solving, creative thinking, cooperation (and possibly snacking) will be practiced during this exercise.
6. Poisonous web. Stretch a piece of string through a door frame, secure it to the frame or connecting wall with masking tape. You will need two pieces of string, one 3 feet from the ground and the other 4 1/2 feet from the ground. He’s creating an 18-inch-wide “window” that he describes to the team as a “poisonous web.” The team must work together so that all members pass through the opening without touching the ropes. They must pass, not under or over the ropes. If a team member touches any of the strings, the entire 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 up oops. Give each person a wire hanger. Tell the group that they can work individually or create their own groups. Instruct them to make something useful with their perch. 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 society, as well as which are more timid and may need to be culled when working with the group.
8. In the image. This is another puzzle game. Divide the team into groups and give each group a puzzle that has already removed a piece from it. Each team will complete a puzzle with one piece missing. Ask each team what this represents in terms of the team. Your goal is to discover the importance of each individual to the successful achievement of the team goal, but you may get some interesting answers about proper planning, supply officers, and quality control.
9. All aboard. This is another physical game. Depending on the size of your team, place a 1- to 3-foot square of cardboard on the floor, or mark a square with tape 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 square increases, members will need to work together and be creative to get everyone involved. This exercise practices cooperation, problem solving, and leadership.
10. Bridge the gap. Divide the group into teams of 2-4. Give each group a small ball of play dough and 12 toothpicks. Instruct them to build the longest cantilever bridge they can. Award points for construction speed, bridge length, ability to stand without tipping over, and ability to hold 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 up work to get the job 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.