Workgroup games

Or an activity that helps to break the ice and get participants comfortable talking to each other. Consider these exercises and group activities for kicking off your next training workshop or large group team building session.

People play against each other in pairs until the first win. But instead of the losing players becoming eliminated from the tournament, they become a fan of the winner, and they cheer for them as the winner plays against a new opponent. You repeat the process until there are only two players left with a huge fan base cheering for them.

The last two players have to play until one has won twice. Looking for fun group activities? Look no further! Rock, Paper, Scissors Tournament energiser warm up remote-friendly.

This goes on until a final showdown with two large cheering crowds! Doodling Together is a fun and creative icebreaker where the group gets to collaboratively draw postcards through a series of instructions as participants complete the postcards started by others. You can simply use this technique in parallel groups as the instructions are easy to follow.

It is a great group activity to establish creative confidence, collaborate effortlessly and build capacity for working together as a workshop-group. Large group games rarely have the potential to be more hilarious. Doodling Together collaboration creativity teamwork fun team visual methods energiser ice breaker remote-friendly. Bang is a group game, played in a circle, where participants must react quickly or face elimination. A good activity to generate laughter in a group.

It can also help with name-learning for groups getting to know each other. For events with more than 30 people, it is best to play it in parallel groups. Bang hyperisland energiser. In this group activity, every participant creates three thoughtful questions that they want to ask from other group members to get to know them better. People start to mingle to ask and answer questions in pairs.

After asking a question and listening to the answer, they hand over that question. Thus, in each one-on-one meeting, participants will swap one question each.

This allows people to learn interesting facts about each other and works with a group size of up to people.

An activity to support a group to get to know each other through a set of questions that they create themselves. The activity gets participants moving around and meeting each other one-on-one. Facilitation techniques and activities to build effective teams and support teamwork. These large group games put an emphasis on fostering trust and openness for better collaboration and manage team dynamics effectively.

Getting your large group team building activities right can be the difference between helping your team bond or leaving them frustrated. These group activities will help you to initiate meaningful conversation in the group, provide a starting a point for focusing on teamwork and collaboration, and importantly give engaging tasks to participants in which they work together.

This is essential to increase cohesion within teams. The key for successfully achieving these goals in large groups is to have big group games that can be easily run in smaller groups in parallel. This group activity helps group members to get to know each other better through a creative drawing exercise: Each participant draws their own coat of arms — a design that is unique to themselves, representing important characteristics, achievements and values of its owner.

If you want to direct the focus of this group activity to certain areas, then you can instruct people to which question to answer in each segment of the Coat of Arms. What is something you are very good at? When people are finished drawing, they present their work to in their group.

The presentation part is practical to do in smaller groups. And whether you have a small or large group, you can arrange a neat Coat of Arms gallery by sticking all the drawings on the wall of the workshop room. Large group games where participants have something to show at the end can be especially effective and can really set the stage for a productive, interactive workshop.

Coat of Arms teambuilding opening ice breaker team get-to-know thiagi. In eighteen minutes, teams of people must build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string, and one marshmallow. The marshmallow needs to be on top. Since the instructions are fairly simple, it is easy to scale this activity up to groups playing in parallel and competing who builds the highest structure.

It emphasizes collaboration, group communication, leadership dynamics and problem-solving strategy — everything you want in your large group games. Also, there are marshmallows. All group activities are better with marshmallows! Marshmallow challenge with debriefing teamwork team leadership collaboration.

In eighteen minutes, teams must build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string, and one marshmallow. The Marshmallow Challenge was developed by Tom Wujec, who has done the activity with hundreds of groups around the world.

Visit the Marshmallow Challenge website for more information. This version has an extra debriefing question added with sample questions focusing on roles within the team. The Helium stick group activity gives a simple challenge to teams that require teamwork and coordination to manage.

People are lined up in two rows facing each other, 5 to 10 people per row, depending on the length of the sticks you have for the game. Participants point with their index finger and hold their arms out in a way that a stick can be horizontally laid on their index fingers. Why Helium Stick? You can easily scale this activity for larger groups, just have as many sticks as the number of lines you will create, and the sub-groups will compete against each other who manages to lower their stick first.

Helium Stick teampedia team teamwork ice breaker energiser. A great and simple activity for fostering teamwork and problem solving with no setup beforehand. Large group games are undeniably effective at getting things rolling, and fun group activities are essential for getting a team engaged, but what if you need to go deeper?

There are dedicated facilitation methods that work really effectively if you need certain conversations to happen in large groups. The techniques below can be used as core group activities for planning and facilitating large group workshops.

They tend to have only a few guiding principles and rules, which allows smaller groups to organize and manage themselves during a workshop.

Open Space Technology — developed by Harrison Owen — is a method perfectly suited for organizing and running large scale meetings, often multi-day events, where participants self-organize themselves to find solutions for a complex issue. There are only a few rules guiding the structure of the event, and the agenda is created by the people attending. It is a great method for tacking important and complex problems where the solutions are not obvious.

The technology can accommodate hundreds of people. Open space group activities can be incredibly productive, though remember that there is a degree of self-determination here, and the individual groups in the open space are only as good as their members and the set-up of the open space.

Open Space Technology idea generation liberating structures problem solving. Explain that some of the pieces in their puzzle belong to the other puzzles in the room. The goal is to complete their puzzle before the other groups, and that they must come up with their own method of convincing the other teams to relinquish the pieces they need, whether through barter, exchange of team members, donating time to another team, a merger, etc.

Whatever they choose to do, they must do it as a group. Purpose: This exercise is time-consuming, but it accomplishes creative teamwork on several levels. As a team, they must build the puzzle. As a team, they must find a way to convince the other teams to help them.

In other words, they must solve both the puzzle and the problem of getting their pieces back. Talk about team bonding, huh? Divide your team into equal groups. Create a specific project with clear restrictions and a goal. For example, you might have your team create a device that involves movement without electricity, and moves a golf ball from point A to point B. The challenge is completely up to you.

Then give each team the same supplies to work from, or create a pile of available supplies in the middle of the room. Give them a specific time to complete the project, making sure to mention that they can only use what is available, though how they use it is completely up to them. The final reveal is a fun event, and a great opportunity for your team to compete. Purpose: Problem solving as a team, with a strong mix of creativity, is exactly what this exercise accomplishes. It also brings an element of fun and maker-ism into the mix, with the added twist of learning how to solve a problem with reduced options.

In the book Weslandia by Paul Fleischman, the young boy Wes creates his own language, culture, and economy one summer. A new startup created a small economy and ended up having a great deal of fun as well as learning about what motivated other team members. Get your team together and decide if you want to create an economy or some mini-aspect of larger society. Set up the rules you will abide by, leaving enough wiggle room to experience problems that need group agreement to solve as the system is put into action.

There are rewards and penalties. Some team members will reveal themselves to be rule-abiders and others as creative rule-benders. The team will quickly learn how others work, solve, and think outside of the typical work-related realm. This will bring new understanding to work-related projects that need solutions. This team-building exercise takes place not in one sitting, but over time.

Make a large, blank journal or scrapbook available in the break room or other common areas. The book may have prompts on each page, asking questions or suggesting things to write or draw.

Or, you may have guidelines printed and displayed next to the book i. Leave pens, markers, tape, and other items that your team can use to write and draw in the book. When the book is full, put it on the shelf and get a new one. Purpose: This team exercise creates a living history of your business that you can keep adding to. It is somewhat similar to the Zappos culture book, but allows your team a chance to build it more directly. This game encourages creativity, collaboration, and recollection.

Divide your team into equal sized groups, and send them out with a list of items to locate and bring back. Whether they remain in the office or are to leave the building is up to you. The ultimate goal is to get back first with the most items. You may want to set a time limit so that all groups are back in a reasonable time, whether they found all items or not.

A scavenger hunt can be themed, and might involve a variety of clues or other twists that force a team to get creative and work together. One variation is to make it a digital scavenger hunt in which they must find examples and specific information or web pages online.

You may wish to restrict which search engines or methods they use to complete the challenge. Purpose: A scavenger hunt is a fun activity that forces people to work together as a team. It spurs creativity, particularly if clues or riddles are involved.

Much like a scavenger hunt, a geocache adventure relies on clues but has the added level of using GPS coordinates to find an item. Each group will need to have a GPS device that will work for finding geocaches. There are several apps available to use on smartphones that would suffice.

You may wish to have a set time in which all groups must return. The clues you hide in specific geographic locations could be part of a larger riddle or message that you wish the teams to have revealed to them.

A variation of this might be to use QR codes placed around the office or neighborhood, mixing GPS locations with other clues found in QR codes. Purpose: This exercise helps team members work together to achieve a specific goal using a specific and narrow process in which close enough is not good enough.

It also promotes problem solving in a creative way if riddles and puzzles are involved. If you do this over lunch, be sure to cater food and make it a fun time.

Require team members to be present. Have a question and answer session afterwards. Purpose: Most people are eager to let others know interesting things about themselves, but not all team members are able to make that happen. Most teams are lopsided, with some members dominating discussion.

Before your regular staff meeting, break your team into groups. Instruct the groups to find out one commonality among themselves. It might be a hobby or an interest they all do, or having the same favorite genre of music or favorite food.

Once they discover a commonality they can agree on, they create a list of what might be stereotypical qualities of such people. Then, the groups come together to announce to the rest of the groups who they are. The Roller Coaster Buffs, for example, might periodically raise their arms and holler, or the Jane Austenites might rephrase all of their speech to co-workers as quotes from Jane Austen books. At the completion of the meeting or day , talk about stereotypes that we assign to people.

Talk about how people managed to find a commonality, and the process it took to dig it up. Purpose: The idea is to force your team to confront the foolish nature of stereotypes and how, if people really behaved as we casually write them off to be, the office would be much different. The game also reveals the ability of a seemingly random group of people to find a commonality. To do this, remove key nouns, verbs, and adjectives.

Create a worksheet in which the removed words are shown as a blank line with instructions on what kind of word is needed.

In groups of two, have one team member ask for the correct type of word and the other team member supply the word.

Or, if you do not want to break the team into groups, ask the team as a whole to supply one word at a time. Once there are enough words, read the mission statement back. It will sound silly. Now that the team knows what the goal is, ask them for the same word types. See what kinds of words they supply. Repeat the exercise until you get a mission statement that the team feels is correct.

A variation is to categorize the types of words before the first round. So, tell them you are looking for words that apply to the team without telling them you are working on a mission statement.

By stripping away the jargon and stiffness and allowing the mission statement to go through several rounds of nonsense, you allow your team to help you craft a statement that is more relaxed and honest. Using wooden blocks or an actual Jenga game, mark blocks according to the hierarchies present in your company.

For example, you might have some blocks denoted as the IT department, and others as HR. Divide your team into groups, giving them an equal number and kind of blocks. From here, either specify the type of structure each team must build, or provide guidelines and allow them to build any structure they want. When the time limit has been reached, each team, taking turns, must begin to remove a block at a time without destroying their structure. Do not inform them ahead of time that you will be asking them to do this.

If time allows, you may ask them to repeat the exercise. See if they find a way to build a structure that can withstand removal of blocks. Purpose: This exercise is meant to show how each department and the various managers and staff positions are necessary to complete the task, and that without everyone in place, things fall apart. Divide your team into groups of two each. Have each person sit with their back to the other.

One person will have a picture. The other person will have a blank sheet of paper and a pen. The team member with the picture must not show the other person the image. Instead, the are to describe the image without using words that give it away, while the other team member is to draw what is being described.

For example, the picture might be of an elephant standing on a ball. After a set time limit, the drawing time ends and both team members view the original picture and the drawing.

This game is a great way to get people mixing and mingling fast, while producing some pretty hilarious results. It can get pretty wild, and the subject matter can sometimes get a bit inappropriate… so you might want to set some house rules first.

But this game can actually be a really great ice-breaker for new colleagues to get to know one another better. The way we like to play this in the office, is to divide a space into two areas. Everybody stands in one area, and the first player will state something that they have never done. Then, they will go and stand in the other area — and anybody else who has never played golf with their mom, will join them. Everybody left in the original area will have played golf with their mom.

The following games are specifically listed with the idea of helping your employees to learn to work better as a team. In a game of Human Snakes, you need to split your group into teams of equal size. You can have as many teams as you like, and you could theoretically have teams of any size… but we recommend between people per team.

Each team stands in a line, with their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them. Every single person in the line must be blindfolded… except for the person at the very back!

You must then ask each team to navigate some sort of obstacle course, being driven, of course, by the person at the back of the line. Navigation should be kept to a simple tap of the shoulder — left for left, right for right — which is transmitted up the chain. This will teach the person at the back better timing and coordination skills, and the rest of the team will learn to better trust their colleagues.

Place a balloon between each person, which they must hold in place without using their hands. It is fun to run a race with all teams at once. But you can get them working together to build a small bridge out of items like paper, old bottles and glue!

You can do this however you like, but our favourite method is to place two markers, a couple of feet apart. The bridge must stand alone from one marker to the next. The bridge which can hold the most weight without collapsing, will win the prize. Similar to the Bridge Building game, this game requires your teams to work on a construction together. Only this time, the goal is for the device to hold a raw egg, which can stay in-tact after being dropped from a certain height. If more than one invention safely prevents the egg from breaking, then the winner should be the team with the device that weighs the least.

But we prefer the US game of the same name, Broken Telephone. This is one of our favourite games to play at work, because it encourages very careful communication — and can have some hilarious results!

Get everybody to stand in a long line, or even a circle. The starting player must think of a short sentence — or you can provide them with one. They must then whisper this sentence into the ear of the person on their left.

The last player must announce the sentence they believe was whispered into their ear. This is another great game to encourage communication between team members. And there are lots of versions of this game, but the one we like the best, is the one where you split your group into pairs. Each pair sits back to back. Give one person a picture, and give the other person a pencil and paper. Then, get the person with the picture to describe what they can see to their partner — who must attempt to draw a replica of the picture, as best they can.

But some might surprise you. And either way, your team members will be learning to improve their communication skills in the process. Not all games need to be focused on something like team building or team bonding.

In fact, playing games during break time is a great way to recharge your batteries and get ready for the next half of your shift. So we have decided to include a few of our favourite tabletop games that can generally be played in under an hour. Chess is probably the most popular two-player board game in the world.

And not only is it a great way to pass some time, but it hones skills such as strategic planning and forward-thinking. As with many board games, Chess is now very easy to play online — either against a friend, or against a stranger. Werewolves is such a fun game of social deduction and trickery, that we think it deserves more than one mention.

In a game of Werewolves, players are secretly assigned roles. The werewolves must attempt to convince the villagers that they are innocent, while the villagers must attempt to lynch the secret werewolves amongst them. There is a print version of the game you can buy, or you can print your own copy and learn the rules here.

Alternatively, you can just play the game online at Board Game Arena , which makes remote play possible. Another game of social cues and bluffing, in a game of Coup you rely on your individual ability to smuggle lies past the other players on the table.