Teamwork Activities and Games

Rythm Instruments is a fun way to break the ice in groups, helping each participant to feel involved and create something from "scratch".

A rapid game of name learning with probably a lot of funny moments. Besides it teaches particiapants how to communicate and strategize in an effective way without being  explicit about these goals.

You can engage a group to learn and improve rapidly from tapping three levels of knowledge simultaneously: (1) explicit knowledge shared by participants; (2) tacit knowledge discovered through observing each other’s performance; and (3) latent knowledge, i.e., new ideas that emerge and are jointly developed. 

This powerful combination can be the source of transformative experiences and, at the same time, it is seriously fun. Participants identify and act out solutions to chronic or daunting problems. A diverse mix of people is invited to dramatize simple elements that work to solve a problem. Innovations represented in the Improv sketches are assembled incrementally from pieces or chunks that can be used separately or together. It is a playful way to get very serious work done!

This a simple icebreaker activity energising participants, also suitable for debriefing learning points towards spontaneity and teamwork. The activity involves participants standing in a circle and throwing imaginary ball(s) to each other in increasing pace.

Use Craig Raine's poem A Martian Sends a Postcard Home to spur creative thinking and encourage perspective shifting in a group. After a warm-up, you can then use this martian perspective to describe your product or service and gain new insights and ideas.

When you hear about your strengths from others and acknowledge them to yourself, this builds your motivation and self-confidence.

If you do this at the end of a workshop, you go away feeling good about yourself and your colleagues too.

Even with established teams, it’s important to get people into the holiday mood and encourage creativity and collaboration.

Assign people into pairs or triads and each pair/triad needs to write one pair of rhyme for the music of a popular song. In this holiday-themed version, we'll ask participants to create a version of Jingle bells.

Whatever the occasion or song, it's a nice twist if they incorporate something in the lyrics that is related to your own company and culture.

This is an active team building game and requires participants to move about a lot and so can be also used as an energiser.

This an easy but powerful exercise to open a meeting or session and get participants to reflect on their attitudes or feelings about a topic, in the organization, team, or in the project.