Library of teambuilding games & icebreakers

A water-tight relay is a great game to get everyone active, if a little bit wet! You’ll need 2 or more teams, a cup for each player, and a source for refilling water. The objective is to carry water in a cup to a teammate, creating a relay chain until all water is collected at the end.

Set-up:

1. Carry water carefully: Create teams with an equal number of members, each member should be the same distance away from their teammate. The first person in the line is given a full cup of water. They move to the second person and pour water into their cup. They can only pour water backward over their head!

2. Continue the chain till the end: Each member repeats the action until the last person pours their water into one large container. The first member in the line then gets another full cup and repeats. Put a measurement on the final container (3 or 4 full cups of water), and the first team to reach the line wins.

Speed does not always beat a steady hand in this game. Try this one out as a fun Friday activity. Just make sure you’re away from electrical equipment!

The Price is Right is a legendary TV guessing game show where contestants need to guess the price of items to win prizes. But did you know, you can also adapt this for the office space?

How to play:

1. Gather your team in a room
2. Choose names out of a hat for the "contestants"
3. Gather office items or personal items of employees (make sure they are willing to let you handle them)
4. Showcase them on a table
5. Ask the contestants to guess the price of each item.
6. Whoever is closest wins!
7. Rotate contestants

This game is not only a fun way to break up the monotony of the workday, but it also helps strengthen teamwork and collaboration skills.

It can also provide an opportunity for employees to provide backstories on their items further improving presentation skills. You never know; some stories could be fascinating listen!

How to play Would You Rather?

In this straightforward but effective game, an employee is asked what they would do in a difficult situation. It could be along the lines of “Would you rather be always cold or always hot?” or “would you rather listen to your least favorite music everyday or a baby crying everyday”.

Make sure that you ask for their reasons as to why they chose a particular answer, as this will highlight their thought process and inject some personality into the game.

It’s a fantastic way to really get to know the likes and dislikes of your employees which could be used to your advantage as you strive to make the office a place of enjoyment.
If you’re lacking on the creative questions to ask in the game, make sure to check out our extensive list of Would You Rather questions for inspiration!

This fun and interactive game helps employees to collaborate and polish their problem-solving skills. If you want to make it even more challenging, then you can set up obstacles or choose materials that will be tricky to pick up.

Here’s how to play the game:

1. Break a larger group into smaller teams of 3.
2. Hand each team a bucket of water filled with small objects (to represent radioactive waste). Grab things like tennis balls, blocks, clips, etc.
3. Put a smaller bucket on a table a few feet away from each team.
4. Participants need to use a rope with a square knot (or whatever other method they work out) to transfer the “waste” from the larger bucket into the smaller one.
5. The team that moves all of their waste first, wins. If everyone is moving at about the same pace, then the winner will be the group who moved the most in the amount of time you allocated.

Online murder mystery events are just like their live-action counterparts, only, online! With the help of a professional third-party organiser, you can create an engaging murder mystery event for any sized group.

Murder mystery events have become a popular team-building activity because they facilitate interaction between employees and improve teamwork and problem-solving skills.

How to play Online murder mystery

To make the experience more immersive, encourage players to dress up and gather props to match the theme of the event. Also, don’t forget to utilise the background features on zoom for added realism.

What was the defining moment of your life? What’s the best thing that ever happened to you? What incident(s) enhanced your personal and/or professional life? What’s the most exciting, adventurous, or rewarding thing you’ve ever done?

How to play Final 30 seconds

Those are the types of questions around which this trust-building exercise revolves. Put them to your team at the next virtual meeting! To help them narrow down their search for answers, frame the initial question like this:

“What moment from your past would you choose to relive in the final 30 seconds of your life?”

Give each person a while to think about it and then go around the proverbial circle sharing your answers. Oh, and feel free to start proceedings with a story of your own! Telling the team about a special time in your life will encourage participation.

Honest and unpretentious, this exercise is a potent way to create a newfound sense of unity among remote employees. Having had a glimpse into their colleagues’ backgrounds, desires, and personalities, they’ll understand and be able to relate to one another better. Expect teamwork and trust to improve as a result.

What you need:

• N/A

This simple card game is designed to get people talking. Building Blocks is a perfect icebreaker tool or exercise for growing teams.

How to play:

The card game has six categories with questions aimed at “removing personal barriers and creating space for teamwork.” An example of a question in the deck is: What do you wish to spend more time on both in and outside the office”. If your team is remote, this can be played in person or over Zoom. The game is marketed for workshops, and meetings.

Materials you’ll need: Building Blocks card deck.

How many people: Small to mid-sized teams (8-16 people)

Recurring group activities like after-work running clubs are a great way of making team-building a regular feature in your team’s schedule.

What’s more, healthy activities like jogging and yoga boost employee well-being, job satisfaction and company culture while giving employees a chance to bond outside of the office.

Great for: Company culture, job satisfaction, employee well-being, interpersonal relationships

Duration: 30 minutes

You’ll need: N/A

How to start:

• Arrange a regular running schedule for your employees to register. It’s wise to create multiple groups for different fitness levels.
• Pin a running calendar to the staff room wall, detailing the different group times.

How to play Gratitude Hot Seat

A gratitude hot seat is an exercise where employees express gratitude or appreciation for something or someone in the workplace.

In this exercise, one person sits in the "hot seat" and shares what they are grateful for or appreciative of at work, which can be anything from a relationship with a coworker to a successful project outcome. Other participants in the group are encouraged to listen as well as offer acknowledgment.

How to play Mystery basket

In this game, blindfolded players will try to guess what’s in a basket by feel. To play, gather a bunch of items from around the office. Obviously they should be safe and not have things like sharp ends or spikes. Place everything in a basket or bowl and have blindfolded participants explore the items with their hands and try to guess what they are observing. Keep track of answers with a pencil and paper, and the person with the most correct guesses wins.

Think of this game like the classic six degrees of Kevin Bacon exercise. In each game, you need to figure out a way to connect two seemingly distant ideas. While six degrees of Kevin Bacon uses celebrities, Invisible Bridge uses words.

To play:

1. One player suggests two unrelated words.
2. The first player should give a number of planks. That’s how many steps other players have to use to relate the two words.
3. Other players come up with words that share similar traits, synonyms, or other connector words to get from one term to the next.

Here’s an example:

1. Lion, Ship; three planks
2. Lion - Carnivore - Meteor - Astronaut - Ship

This is also a great game to encourage creativity since there are endless options of correct answers. It also encourages players to think about the nature of words and the relationship between phrases.

You know that friend who's always got your back? Consistency is like that—being reliable, so colleagues know they can count on you. It's the secret ingredient for building trust and teamwork.

Consistency activity - Recognition raffle:

• Establish a recognition program that rewards consistent behaviors and contributions.
• Introduce a system where colleagues can earn tickets or tokens for displaying consistent positive actions, such as punctuality, collaboration, or going the extra mile.
• Collect the earned tickets and hold regular raffle drawings where participants have a chance to win small rewards or incentives.
• Celebrate the winners and highlight their consistent efforts to reinforce a culture of reliability and teamwork.
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This activity motivates colleagues to maintain a high standard of performance and contributes to a harmonious and supportive work environment.

How to play Night watchman

Both small groups and big groups can benefit from this exercise. The game involves players imitating a statue under the watch of a “night watchman”. They should try to move without getting caught. You’ll have to choose a night watchman at the beginning of the game; this person can move about freely while everyone else should behave like a statue. Players can try to take steps, but the night watchman must not see them move. If they see someone move, that person is out of the game. In some variations, the night watchman can do things to make the players move, but they shouldn’t touch them directly. You can also make this a no-winner game where the last person caught moving becomes the new night watchman.

The Digital Detox Adventure is a refreshing escape from the virtual world, where you'll engage in outdoor activities, games, and team-building exercises that encourage face-to-face interactions. This challenge rekindles genuine connections and highlights the importance of interpersonal skills and effective communication.

Instructions

• Divide participants into teams, ensuring a mix of personalities.
• Plan outdoor activities that require teamwork and communication.
• Engage in games that promote problem-solving and collaboration.
• Reflect on the differences in communication when technology is removed.
• Share your insights on how the digital detox experience impacted your team dynamics.

How to play Ping Pong Tournament

As open office plans became more popular, more companies started setting up breakout rooms where employees could decompress by grabbing a coffee or playing ping pong. If you already have a ping pong table in the office, this is an ideal game to add to the Office Olympic games—a ping pong competition works well with individual players and teams.

While there is the classic two-person setup for table tennis, there are numerous games, like playing with two balls at a time or a group game that gets smaller as people must step out if they miss their turn to hit the ball.

This game isn’t just a different name for “lunch,” It could be the perfect one to play just before you and your team sit down for a meal.

How to play:

‍One leader will gather everyone in a circle and give them two cues; one is “sandwiches” and the other “hamburgers.” Depending on their title, each person is also given a corresponding movement to go with their category.

For example, Sandwiches raise their left hand, and Hamburgers do a little jump.

For the first round, every time the leader says the word, they will do their assigned action as well, but after a few plays, they will start switching the steps up to create confusion. See how many team members can catch on to changing commands and keep up!

Materials you’ll need: Just your team and space to the lineup, or sit in a circle.

How many people: Small to large teams (8-25+ people)

How to play Sentence mish-mash

It’s often necessary to present straightforward information without much activity. However, you can liven things up a bit using this method. Start by reviewing your training materials and pulling several sentences out. Write these sentences on pieces of paper that you tape up to the wall next to where you’re giving your presentation.

Proceed with your slides, and then at the end, have people say where these sentences should have gone in the presentation. It’s a great way of helping people to put facts into context and also to encourage active listening.

How to play Trading post

Understanding pricing and its effects on supply and demand is a natural skill in the business world. This game can help your employees to focus on this area in new ways. You can do this game for any length of time, so it’s perfect for fitting into most agendas. Start with two groups, a pile of fake money, and some simple items to trade like paper clips or pencils. Each group should have their own money and supply of items. The groups will need to decide what things cost and come up with trade terms.

Then, they should get busy buying, selling, and trading. At the end of the exercise, bring everyone together and see who came out ahead. Why did one group do better than the other? What did everyone learn? Supply and demand are pretty simple economic concepts that most people know, but this is a fun reminder and refresher.

There’s nothing like a spot of mischief to bring colleagues closer together. With office makeovers, different teams within the company have the chance to “redecorate” another team’s space. From unraveling rolls of toilet paper to putting up posters of people’s favorite boy bands, the options are endless.

Set some ground rules beforehand to stop the pranks from going overboard though. The atmosphere should be light and full of laughter – not frustration at the state of your redecorated space!

Also known as Battledecks or Powerpoint roulette, Powerpoint karaoke’s a creative improv game where you ask people to give a presentation on a topic they haven’t seen or been able to prepare for.

How to play PowerPoint karaoke

Start by choosing a theme – such as vacations – and creating simple slide decks on it. In this example, the first slide would be a location/destination; the slides to come might include inside jokes, company references, random details, and activities.

To play, you invite a volunteer to the front of the room and ask them to say, “Let me tell you the story of the crazy trip I recently took to…”

You’d then reveal the first slide with the location on it, at which point the participant must improvise a fictional tale about their recent visit! After a little while, you’d move to the next slide and they’d have to incorporate whatever’s on it into their story. Keep going like this for a few minutes or until the story comes to a natural end.

You’d then invite someone else to the front, ending the game when everyone has had a go (although don’t force anyone to present if they don’t want to).

There are countless reasons to play PowerPoint karaoke!

For one thing, it always leads to fun and laughter. For another, it’ll make your team feel more comfortable standing up to give a presentation – if they can do it on a whim, they can definitely do it when they’ve had time to prepare. And finally, it reveals individual personalities and brings the team closer.

How to play Human Hungry Hippos

Do you remember the game Hungry Hungry Hippos from childhood? Bring the game to life with this super physical challenge. You’re guaranteed to get some laughs after even the longest meetings. The concept is simple: you recreate the classic game using your own bodies, skateboards, laundry baskets, and plastic balls. You can have 3 or 4 people go against each other every round.

To start, one person lays on their stomach on a skateboard, and another participant holds their feet in order to steer. The laying-down player should hold a laundry basket upside down, ready to snatch the balls. The leader should dump a basket of small plastic balls onto the floor to start the game. From there, each pair of players scrambles to grab as many balls as they can with their basket. The pair with the most balls at the end wins. This game is best suited for people who don’t mind getting physical and aren’t afraid of looking silly.

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How to play Secret word

Insert some fun and laughter into your everyday office work by playing this silly game. To play, start by writing down any word on a piece of paper (An object or action is usually easiest). Choose your first participant and have them place the paper on their forehead (without looking at it). It’s key that the player doesn’t know what word they are displaying! Other players should gesture to try to get them to guess the word without actually speaking. The person with the card will try to guess the word based on the actions of everyone around them.

Put strategic thinking to the test with the Strategy Showdown: Board Game Bonanza challenge. Teams will face off in a series of classic board games that require cunning tactics and clever maneuvers. From chess to Uno, participants will showcase their ability to strategize and outwit opponents. This challenge highlights the importance of strategic collaboration in achieving collective goals.

Instructions

• Select a variety of strategic board games.
• Divide participants into teams and assign each team to a different board game.
• Teams compete in rounds of board games, earning points based on their performance.
• Declare the team with the most points the ‘Board Game Bonanza’ champions.

In lightning hunt, players race to find specific household items and show them on camera. It’s fast-paced, and a great way to get everyone moving and laughing as they scramble to find the most random things lying around their homes.

This game is perfect for injecting some spontaneity into your virtual meetings. Plus, it’s always fun to see what odd items people can dig up at a moment’s notice!

How to play:

• The host calls out specific household items.
• Players race to find and show the items on camera.
• The fastest player to find each item wins a point!

Looking for more fun team-building activities for virtual or in-person teams? Browse our full list for extra inspiration.