Top 21 5-minute team building activities for instant engagement

Why run 5-minute team building activities?

As Forbes notes, team building is one of the best investments you can make in your team. Five minutes isn’t a long time. So is it worth running a team building activity that short at all? Absolutely!

With the right activity, you’ll be surprised at how much you can accomplish and the kind of connections and moments you can create. Here’s why you should run quick team building activities during your team meetings and workshops.

• Team building activities create a foundation for further conversation and connection. Whether you’re working with new team members or established groups, the conversations you begin in your chosen activity encourage open communication in the session ahead.

• 5-minute team building activities are great ways to improve collaboration and team cohesion in short order. Starting a workshop with a quick problem solving game can help shift the group into the collaborative, productive mindset, rather than being hung-up on what came before or is scheduled to happen after the meeting.

• Quick team building activities can create a jolt of energy that refreshes the group and keeps them engaged. If you’re running a long session, team building games are a great way to create balance and variation in your workshop agenda, keeping things fresh while still allowing you to finish on time.

• Even short activities can help remote teams feel more connected and embodied. Often, we can zone out during virtual meetings and when working alone. A quick activity that encourages us to get out of our chairs or switch perspectives can help us land back in our bodies and reconnect to the other people in the session.

In a world of virtual or hybrid work and shortened attention spans, facilitators have an opportunity – and the responsibility – to bring the body back into the workspace.

Myriam Hadnes, host of Workshops Work

• Ultimately, people are not robots who just exist to work. Working hard as a team and something you all care about is connective, but so is taking a moment to remember why you appreciate each other as people, not just as colleagues.
  
  5-minute team building activities are an easy way to take a breath together as a team and remember that you’re all people who deserve empathy and kindness.

The best 5-minute team building activities

Below, you’ll find our list of tried and tested activities that can be run in just five minutes. Most of these activities require zero prep; many can be run equally well with in-person or remote teams.

You’ll find a brief explanation of each team building activity and a link to full instructions in the SessionLab library, an open source collection of 1000+ activities you can bring to your meetings, training sessions and workshops.

You might also find our full collection of team building activities helpful if you want to go into more depth or find an exercise for a specific purpose such as building collaboration skills, getting aligned or just having fun as a team.

Appreciations Exercise 

The Appreciations Exercise is a simple but effective way to create good vibes, improve team morale and create positive momentum at any point of a session.  

Team members sit in a circle and each write their name on the bottom of a piece of paper. Next, each person hands their paper to the person on their left, who writes some words of appreciation and thanks for that person. They fold the paper over so those words are hidden and continue passing the paper around the group. The activity ends once the paper returns to the starting player.

Here at SessionLab, we run this activity online at our end-of-year team meetup online. To run it online, create spaces on a Miro or Mural whiteboard for each team member, then ask everyone to write notes there. Special tip: to help keep notes anonymous, we write them yellow-on-yellow so text stays invisible until you click on it!

Giving appreciation to colleagues can help cement bonds, build team spirit and give the entire group a boost. Whenever we run this activity, people feel good and more connected to others in just a few minutes!

Two truths and one lie

Two Truths and One Lie is a tried and tested team building game, probably one of the best-known out there! As such, it has acquired a bit of a reputation as something meaningless and stale, but we beg to differ: if done well, it can be fun and bring people together.

In this game, each person will present three statements about themselves: two statements must be true while one will be a lie. For example:

• I have been teaching for 10 years.
• I have a pet cat called, “Mini”
• I lived in Rome for a year.

Don’t put people on the spot: give them a few moments to work out what they want to share about themselves, and to make their lie a smart one.

Our favorite use of this game is actually with teams who know one another well: it’s when we think we have nothing new to learn about our teammates that we can really be surprised!

Icebreaker Questions

Icebreaker questions are a fast and effective way to help in-person and remote teams form connections and get to know each other better.

Needing almost no set-up whatsoever, icebreaker questions and conversation starters are a simple but powerful way to kick-off a team meeting or group session. You can separate team members into small groups or pairs and simply ask them to respond to a single question you share with the group. If you have more time to prep, you can create a set of questions people can choose to ask.

For best results, have one or more of these questions relate to the topic of the session to help prime the group for what come’s next. For example, if you’re running a training session on conflict resolution, why not encourage team members to talk about what makes them angry or what helps them stay calm.

Sometimes people interpret this type of activity as putting pressure on them to talk about very personal matters, and it should never be this way. A pro tip is to always remind everyone to keep their contributions as light or as deep as they are comfortable with.

Who are you? The Pirate Ship Exercise

The Pirate Ship exercise is a simple but powerful activity for helping teams reflect on their feelings and align on roles within the group.

Start by showing participants the image of the below pirate ship and ask them to silently choose which of the 20 characters they most align with in relation to the team or the project you’re working on. Some team members might pick the lookout or the captain while others may pick the person firing a cannon or pretending to be a shark!

You can easily run The Pirate Ship exercise in five minutes, though extending it with a debrief about the roles everyone chose can be a great way to create alignment and shared understanding.

Group Order

Group Order is a simple exercise that supports the getting-to-know-you process at the start of a session and gets people moving. Helping engage and integrate a new team can be as simple as asking participants to group themselves together based on what they know about each other and inviting them to find out what they don’t.

Group Order requires nothing more than getting your group together in a room and asking them to line themselves up in an order based on a criterion such as distance from home to the workplace, birth date in the calendar year or number of different countries visited. You’ll be surprised at how easy it is to get people talking and sharing when in pursuit of a common goal.

Pro tip: after running this activity with a couple of “obvious” criteria such as the ones above, ask participants to come up with questions they are curious about themselves.

Name Juggling

Working with new teams means having new names to learn. Team building starts with getting to know everyone, but how can we make this more fun and dynamic than simple introductions?

Name Juggling is a get to know you game that also serves to energize the group and get them moving. Start by having everyone stand in a circle and introduce themselves by name. Introduce a ball and have people state someone’s name before throwing the ball to that person. That person thanks the person who passed the ball by name before then passing the ball on to someone else. Once people get comfortable with Name Juggling, spice things up by introducing more balls and trying to keep them in the air!

With this and any other game that is based on movement and/or dexterity, always be aware of any people with disabilities in the room, and apply your common sense to whether it’s adequate to the group and situation.

Open Fist

Open First is a fast, fun activity where team members work to find things they have common with one another in order to build cohesion and improve group communication.

Start by asking team members to sit in a circle. The first player calls out an interesting and little known fact about themselves. (Examples might include: I have traveled to Japan, I like science fiction novels, or I play the piano.) Ask the other team members to open one finger from their fist if this statement is also true for them.

Sharing little known facts about ourselves can help teams be more cohesive and by limiting the number of shared facts to the amount of fingers on a hand, this quick team building activity can fit into any agenda and facilitate team bonding with ease. It’s always surprising to find out how many more things unite us than divide us!

Quotes

The Quotes team building activity is a simple way to help team members start meaningful discussions and get to know each other more deeply.

Start by assembling a number of meaningful quotes relating to the topic of your workshop or teamwork in general. (Google or BrainyQuote can help here!) Next, distribute one quote to each person and ask folks to pair up and discuss what the quotes mean to them.

Though this activity can go for much longer, even a single five-minute conversation between pairs or small groups can help set the stage for the session ahead and improve team cohesion.

I’ve found the Quotes exercise particularly useful when discussing company culture or engaging critical thinking skills at the start of a team building session. Choose your quotes accordingly and there’s little you cannot cover with this activity!

Cross the Circle

Cross the Circle is a playful team building activity where participants are encouraged to cross a circle of people in response to questions posed by a person in the middle. It’s a simple variation on many get-to-know-you games, though it’s especially effective when you might want to create more energy in a team or create breakout groups as a result of your opening activity.

Start by getting everyone in a circle and having one person make a statement based on a personal fact. For example, “Cross through the circle if you have worked here more than 5 years.” or “Cross through the circle if you can play an instrument.” After each stage, a new person gets to pose a statement and you continue until everyone has moved at least once.

I’ve found Cross the Circle is especially useful when introducing new team members to the group but it also has a bit of a secret power. In my experience, it’s so easy for team members to fall into familiar pattens, cliques and even places where they stand in a meeting room. Literally changing where we stand can help bring a fresh energy to a session, so give it a go if this is what you need!

Sync Claps

Sync claps is a fast-paced exercise that helps create focus and presence in a group. Get started by getting your team into a circle and ask them to move a clap around the room quickly by having two members clap at the same time.

By asking your group to synchronise and move quickly, Sync Claps is a fun way to energize the room and help your group feel more connected. By introducing complexity and multiple claps, you can easily up the ante and give your group a sense of satisfaction when they finally get it right! Sync claps is a great way to build team spirit in just a few minutes!

Stand up if

Stand up if is a great example of a simple team building activity that can help create connection points in minutes. Begin with a small set of yes/no questions that will allow folks to share and learn a little about each other. As facilitator, ask the first question and invite people to stand-up if the statement is true for them.

Some example questions might be:

1. Have you ever climbed a mountain?
2. Have you ever been horse riding?
3. Have you ever done bungee jumping.

I recommend starting with some fairly simple, universal questions and then move towards questions which relate to the session you’re running or the group. For example, if you’re running a leadership training workshop you might ask “Have you ever been in a conflict you could not solve?” or “Have you ever managed a team of more than 5 people?” 

These questions can provide talking points for participants during the session while also allowing you as a facilitator to figure out competency levels or have points to follow-up on.

A classic way to run this activity online is to invite people to switch cameras on and off in response to the questions.

Draw your mood

A supportive team culture is one which creates space for everyone to contribute and people feel safe to share how they are feeling.

Draw your mood is a simple team building game that encourages team members to share their current mood by drawing it and adding it to a shared canvas or whiteboard. Simply hand out materials to the group, ask the question and give them five minutes – easy!

It’s a great way to start a team meeting and ensure that people are able to share where how they are doing without feeling pressured to go into more detail with the group. It can also help the team stretch their creative muscles, think visually, and kick-off proceedings in an engaging, fun way. Makes for great pictures and screenshots too!

Catch all

Catch all is a fast paced team building activity that helps build communication skills, encourages knowledge sharing and keeps a team engaged too!

Start by grabbing a ball and asking team members to sit or stand in a circle. Next, let them know the topic for the session. This might be on a particular skill, product or the material of your training session. Throw the ball to someone in the group who needs to share something relevant to the topic of the session. They throw the ball to the next person and play continues. Stop after five minutes or once the entire team has had chance to speak.

But vs And

But vs And is an improv-inspired, fast, effective exercise where team members split into small groups and practice their collaboration and communication skills.

Start by asking groups to plan a company party. Each person must add one idea. Anyone can start, though each successive idea must begin with the words, “Yes, but…” After a few minutes, ask groups to start over but by following each idea with “Yes, and...”

Debrief the activity with the entire team and ask members to reflect on how it felt to have their ideas blocked or encouraged. Generally, team members feel valued when they’re listened to and accepted – But Vs And helps the whole team talk about this subject in a safe and fun way.

This team building activity works great with both in-person and remote teams. The creative, collaborative nature of But Vs And is also a simple way to build team morale and get ideas flowing quickly!

Desert Island

Desert island is a classic team building activity that helps encourage team bonding, share understanding while also having a little fun.

Begin Desert Island by telling participants that they are stranded on a desert island and must choose 3 items to bring with them. With small groups, you can have team members pair up or work solo. If you’re working with groups of more than 10 people, you might wish to split people up into breakout groups and ask them to come to a (quick) decision as a team.

Desert Island is a fun game that gives groups a great chance to get to know each other better. When used with small groups, it’s also an effective way to explore team dynamics – who put themselves in charge of your island, how did it feel to collaborate on something quite so important?

Helium Stick

Helium Stick is a great team building activity for building group connections, encouraging team work and engaging the team’s problem solving skills.

Start by getting the group to line up on either side of a long thin rod (a broom handle works fine) which we call the helium stick. Balance the stick on everyone’s index fingers and instruct participants that they must lower the rod to the ground while ensuring everyone’s fingers touch the rod at all times.

Helium Stick is a fun game that is not as simple as it first appears and which gets your team thinking carefully about how to succeed as a group.

Snapshot of my life

Snapshot of my life is a simple but effective team building exercise that can enhance team dynamics and create instant connections and talking points.

Before your next team meeting, ask participants to take a photograph of something important in their life and share it to a shared whiteboard or online document. During your session, each person will share their photo with other members of the virtual team and tell the group a little more about it.

By sharing a story and something outside the ordinary with the group, you can encourage team bonding and help remote teams feel more connected too.

Follow the Follower

Follow the follower is an active, physical team building activity that helps create joy, connection and energy in any group.

Start by designating one member of the group as the leader. This person will begin moving and everyone else needs to copy their moves as best they can. After 15 seconds or so, they’ll name another person and pass the leadership role to them. Continue until each person has lead or when things devolve into chaos!

Follow the follower is great for getting teams moving and can be especially fun for remote teams on a Zoom call. Encourage team members to explore the frame of their camera when leading their movements and incorporate stretches and dynamic movement to build even more energy.

One Word Method

One Word Method is one of my favourite 5-minute team building activities because its fun, flexible and gets everyone involved.

Start by setting a topic for the activity and explain that each person in the group will contribute a single word to a sentence that you’ll build together. Have the team leader or facilitator start the sentence and go round the group.

While this can be a fun activity in itself, it can be great to challenge the team members to make a sentence that makes sense or speaks to the topic of the session. One Word Method is a simple but fun word association game that can relax a group and serve as a great warm-up for any team meeting.

Rock Paper Scissors Tournament

Running a Rock Paper Scissors Tournament at your next team building session is a great way to encourage friendly competition and energize the group.

Start by simply asking team members to pair up and play a round of rock, paper, scissors. The winner goes to find a new opponent while the loser becomes their cheerleader. Continue play until there are just two players remaining, each with a massive fanbase! While this game works especially well with in person teams, you can adapt it to work with remote teams too!

5-minute team building activities work best when they are simple to learn, get the group moving and create moments of instant connection: Rock Paper Scissors Tournament ticks all these boxes with ease!

Team Charades

Charades is a simple game that has stood the test of time for good reason: it’s easy to teach, creates memorable moments and helps bring people together.

Begin by having team members write down words or phrases on pieces of paper and putting them in a hat. One by one, team members stand and act out a phrase they pull from the hat while the rest of the group tries to guess what it is. Working with a virtual team? This online charades game in the SessionLab library is a simple way to play by using an online whiteboard and Zoom.

The way we communicate and collaborate as a team sets the tone for how we feel as members of that group. By spending a few minutes having fun while exercising some problem solving skills, you can easily improve connection and boost team morale too!

What’s next?

We hope this collection of 5-minute team building activities has given you a bunch of ideas for adding an opportunity to create team connection to any session.

Want to go deeper by exploring a full team building workshop or get tips for running a virtual session? You’ll find some more resources and heaps of team building ideas below.

• Want to dive deeper into team dynamics or give your team something more to chew on while working on collaboration or problem solving skills? Our collection of the best team building activities is a comprehensive list of tried and tested methods you can use with teams of any size.
  
  You’ll find activities grouped by purpose, time limit and participant size to help you easily find the right exercise for you.
• Working in a virtual team can make connection and team cohesion a challenge. Check out this post on icebreakers for virtual meetings if you want some effective ways to bring energy and conversation to the start of your sessions. You’ll also find this post on virtual team building activities a great source of inspiration for any online session.
• Running a dedicated team building workshop is a great way to supercharge collaboration, bring a team together and work on team development as a group. The team development day workshop is a great example of a session to introduce and develop a new team.
  
  If your group needs some help working on alignment and wants to improve collaboration, this team alignment workshop is a great way to rally everyone towards creating the best possible team.

In conclusion

So there you have it! A collection of fast, effective methods with near-zero prep and which take just a few minutes to run.

While these are a natural fit as openers and energizers during a team building session, they’re also great activities to bring to your regular meetings and collaborative workshops.

Working little and often on team cohesion can go a long way to helping everyone in the group feel connected, and we hope these activities can get you started.

Need some advice on planning the rest of your team building workshop? Check out our guide on how to plan a workshop for more guidance there.

If you want more bespoke advice and to discuss team building in greater depth, our facilitation community is a great place to ask questions and talk shop with facilitators and leaders!

James Smart Head of Content

James Smart is Head of Content at SessionLab. He’s also a creative facilitator who has run workshops and designed courses for establishments like the National Centre for Writing, UK. He especially enjoys working with young people and empowering others in their creative practice.