Not all team building games and activities need to be drawn out all day affairs. Here are 15 quick activities that you can throw into the start of a meeting or anytime during the day.
Most of these activities don’t require anything more than a pen and paper, phone, or ball. Some of these activities can be done remotely, check out our post on 60 virtual activities for more remote ideas!
1. Alphabet List Game
A classic game, pick a category, for example: cities, the first person to go must list a city starting with A, then the next person must name a city starting with B, if they can’t they’re knocked out, last person alive wins!
Here are a couple of category ideas:
- Famous people
- Animal
- Countries
- Cities
- Brand names
- Foods
- Fruits
- Job
2. Paper airplane olympics
Give everyone a sheet of paper, 3 minutes to fold and 2 minutes to launch their planes at the starting line, farthest wins plane wins! It’s a good idea to give people a chance to re-toss once in case of a bad throw.
3. Draw a logo from memory
See who has the best drawing skills and who can best recall brands. A couple of great global brands to use are:
- Starbucks
- Coca Cola
- Nike
- Adidas
- Apple
- Amazon
- FedEx
- Tesla
4. Broken Telephone
A classic, have someone start a message and pass it on secretly. The last person in the chain shares the message they received, usually the message at the end is completely different from the initial message. Works best in larger groups.
5. Back to back drawing
Like broken telephone, but instead of a message, someone starts the chain by drawing a picture on someones back, then that person interprets the drawing they felt on their back onto the next person.
6. Keep ups
Get a ball or hacky sack and see how many throws or kicks you can do in a row within 5 minutes. This game is nice because it allows you to set a record and beat it in subsequent days.
7. Ice breakers
Another classic, pull an ice breaker list and have your team answer, a great way to learn more about each other.
If you’re looking for ice breakers in Slack, you can add Banter to Slack, which breaks the ice to start group conversations and helps employees recognize each other in fun ways.
8. 5 minute trivia
Find a set of trivia questions and see which team can get the most right answers in 5 minutes. Easy peasy!
9. Would you rather
A great way to provoke interesting opinions and debates. Find a set of would you rather questions and start asking your team.
10. First job and worst job
Go around the room and ask everyone what their first job ever was and what their worst job was. It gives everyone a chance to talk about themselves.
11. Birth map
Especially great for remote or hybrid teams. Create a custom Google my map and get everyone on the team to pin where they were born, it really shows how far your team has come from.
12. Heads Up!
Get the app on Google Play Store or Apple App Store. One player puts the phone on their forehead, the rest of the team can see the word and have to give clues to the person so that they can guess the word.
13. Personality Quiz
Fire up a Buzzfeed Quiz or Meyers-Briggs personality quiz and compare results!
14. No laugh challenge
Search on Youtube for no laugh challenges, find a video that’s approximately 5 minutes long and see who can avoid laughing the longest.
15. Two Truths and a Lie
Go around the team and have people tell 3 facts about themselves, except one of the facts is not truthful. The rest of your team has to figure out what the lie is.
If your team works in Slack, check out Banter, a slackbot that sends ice breakers to help build stronger remote teams.
