Library of teambuilding games & icebreakers

This game is about open and honest communication; even when it’s not an easy topic, teams that work remotely, or have been together for a long time, can take advantage of this game to avoid stagnant communication and encourage growth.

How to play:

‍Leaders hand out a sheet of paper or sticky note for participants to write down one issue, or “elephants in the room.” Those leading the game then ask participants to address their elephants by applying “control, influence and accept” (C, I, A), asking them to decide which method would best approach the problem.

After everyone writes down their elephant and decides how they would address it, the notes are collected and then separated.

• Elephants that are “accepted” are put into one pile and accepted
• The remaining elephants are then discussed in a moderate group discussion to address how they should be dealt with as a team

Team leaders should encourage players to answer questions about the elephants in the room, such as, “why is this an issue, and how can we solve it as a team.”

Materials you’ll need: Sticky notes.

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

How to play Rolling the dice

You can’t beat this one for simplicity. Have players break into groups of two and provide a set of dice to each pair. The goal is simple: roll the die and try to get the highest total possible in one minute. So, one person should roll and the other can document the number they get. This should go on as many times as they can in one minute. Whoever has the highest number wins.

Ever wish you had a roadmap to success that's so clear it practically unfolds itself? Well, here's a twist on traditional goal-setting – the Backward Goal Setting activity. Instead of starting at square one and plotting your course forward, imagine you've already reached the pinnacle of success. What does it look like? Now, work backward to identify the steps and milestones that got you there.

This technique transforms lofty long-term goals into manageable, bite-sized chunks. It's like reverse-engineering success – a strategic approach that breaks down the journey into actionable tasks, helping you pave the way to your objectives with confidence.

Top Tips For Facilitators:

• Encourage participants to break big goals into small, manageable steps. Sometimes the big goals can get overwhelming!
• Plans can change, and that's okay. Let know that they need to be adaptable to unexpected shifts.
• Share stories of success with backward goal setting for inspiration. Perhaps an employee from a different department or an inspirational figure online!

Random Acts of Kindness is a mobile app that challenges your employees to perform as many good deeds as possible within a given time limit. This large group game is a fantastic way to get employees out of the office and interacting with the local community.

Great for: Company perception, well-being, interpersonal bonding

Duration: 1 hour

You’ll need: One smartphone per team with the Random Acts of Kindness mobile app installed

How to play:

• Separate your group into even teams and provide each one with a smartphone with the RAOK app installed.
• Once the teams launch the app, there’s little more for you to do. The app will set a time limit and then present a series of challenges like helping somebody pack their groceries or assisting an elderly person to cross the road.
• The winning team is that which has completed the most challenges when the time runs out.

The perfect opportunity for your team to flex their trivia muscles! Can easily be played in smaller, tight-knit teams.

Materials needed:

• Round up some trivia questions about the company and the team.
• Grab a whiteboard or flipchart.
• Snag some markers.

Instructions on how to play:

1. Split the team into little trivia squads.
2. Toss out questions and let the teams brainstorm.
3. Keep score and crown the trivia champs.

Why it's a great team building game:

• High-fives all around: Makes competition fun and brings the team together.
• Company brain boost: Boosts knowledge about the company's history and values.
• Teamwork triumph: Needs everyone to join forces and answer those questions.

Top tip to help the game run smoothly: Mix up the questions. Throw in some easy ones to build confidence and some head-scratchers to keep things interesting. Remember, it's about fun and learning!

This game seems a little childish at first, but it usually leads to a ton of laughs. It’s the perfect game for leaving egos at the door - chances are everyone will feel equally silly. Why not let your walls down and just goof off for a while? You’re sure to feel closer to your coworkers afterward.

To begin:

1. Have the group stand in a circle, and have one person stand in the center. The circle should be wide enough that the person in the center can freely spin around, and people can move fairly freely.
2. The person in the circle should spin around a few times with their finger pointed out. When they stop, the person they are pointed at is “up”.
3. The person in the center asks that person to make a particular noise - for example, a lion, or a car that won’t start. Chances are the sound won’t be that accurate, and the more outlandish, the funnier the game gets.
4. Then the person who was just “up” moves to the middle and does the same. They will spin, point to someone, and come up with a silly noise for them to make. This goes on until everyone has had a turn.

How to play Celebrity matching game

This is similar to the childhood photo matching game, only instead of a photograph from their childhood, staff should bring in a photo of a celebrity they’ve been told they resemble. You can either post the pictures in a public space or pass them around and have everyone guess which photo belongs to which person.

Not every team-building activity needs to be carefully choreographed. Sometimes, organic bonding activities like Company Potluck build stronger relationships.

Great for: Interpersonal bonding

Duration: 1–2 hours

You’ll need: N/A

How to organise:

• Set a time and date for your team to come together for a group meal.
• Ask each team member to arrive with a snack or dish which they prepared themselves. For the more culinary inept employees, shop-bought products are also acceptable.
• Everybody arrives at the event with their offerings and spends the afternoon eating and mingling with their colleagues.
• To prevent lots of people from bringing the same product, you can pin a paper to the staffroom wall for people to write down what they intend to bring.

How to play Relay Sack Race

Instructions: Divide participants into teams. Each team stands in a line, and the first player in each team gets inside a sack. On "go," they hop to a designated point and back, then pass the sack to the next teammate. The team that finishes first wins.

Materials needed: Sacks or large bags.

Relay Sack Race encourages teamwork, coordination, and builds camaraderie among team members. It adds an element of fun and nostalgia to the picnic while providing an opportunity for participants to cheer on their teammates.

In silent birthday shuffle, players must line up in order of their birthdays, but here’s the twist—no talking allowed! Only hand signals and body language can be used to figure out everyone’s birthdate, making it a fun and often chaotic communication challenge.

This game is perfect for breaking the ice and encouraging non-verbal teamwork.

How to play:

• Players must arrange themselves in the order of their birthdays.
• No talking allowed—only hand signals and gestures can be used.
• The game ends when the team is successfully in order!

Looking for more team building ideas to energize your group? Browse our full guide for more inspiration.

How to play Matching animal game

This game requires some light preparation, but it’s easy to execute. First, you’ll need to come up with pairs of cards, each with a matching animal (so two tigers, two elephants, etc). Hand the cards out randomly and make sure everyone keeps them a secret. The goal is for players to find the animal that matches theirs without using words - instead, they should make animal noises or movements to hint as to their species. The first “animal team” to pair off wins.

How to play 1-2-4 share

Everyone learns differently, and some people learn best by quietly absorbing information, while others need to talk through ideas. For this activity, start by asking a question and having everyone quietly contemplate the answer. Then, have them get into pairs and discuss their answers. Next, have two pairs sit together (forming a group of 4) and talk about their takeaways.

Finally, have each group present their ideas to the larger team as a whole.  This ensures that no matter what type of learning style each attendee has, they get a chance to absorb information in that way.

Learning how our colleague's minds work enables us to see things from their perspective. Blind Drawing tests your employee’s abilities to interpret the instructions provided by their partner.

Great for: Communication, observation, listening

Duration: 10 minutes

Players: 6+

You’ll need: Pen, paper, reference images

How to play Blind Drawing

Setup: Divide your group into pairs and ask them to sit back to back. Give one player from each pair a reference image and give the other player the pen and paper.

To play: The player with the pen and paper must attempt to draw the reference image by listening to the instructions provided by their partner. The drawer cannot speak or communicate in any way—they must do their best with the instructions they’re given. When the time runs out, ask each team to present their drawing. The team whose drawing most resembles the reference image wins.

Here’s a fast-paced improv game that encourages creative thinking and imbues energy into the room. It’s ideal for those Monday morning meetings when everyone’s feeling sluggish, or as a warm-up exercise on a team-building retreat!

What Are You Doing revolves around miming – i.e. using gestures, body movements, and facial expressions to act something out. That’s one reason it’s so fun! It’s light-hearted, silly, and gets people moving.

How to play What are you doing?

To play, you get everyone to stand in a circle, then ask one person to imagine a certain action and start miming it. The action itself can be anything they want! Washing the dishes, taking the kids to school, throwing a baseball, brushing their hair, cleaning their teeth…the world is their oyster.

After a short while, someone else steps forward and asks, “What are you doing?”

The twist is that whoever’s miming must say a completely different action to the one they’re doing! Instead of cleaning their teeth, for example, they could say they’re putting their shoes on or amputating someone’s leg. Whoever stepped forward to ask what they were doing must then perform that action.

This process continues until everyone has had a turn miming. Try to keep the game moving and encourage people to be creative with the actions/responses.

Oh, and feel free to add another element to the game, whereby you decide who goes next. Rather than going around the circle or jumping in whenever they want, you could point at the next mime – or make eye contact with them.

Heads up, this game is best for smaller groups if you don’t have much time to spare. You want everyone to have a go miming an action, which can take a while when you have dozens of people on the team!

Dabble is another great letter game that combines elements of Scrabble with crossword puzzles. 2 or more players compete to create five unique words. These words must be 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 letters long each, using 20 tiles. Easy to pick up, difficult to master!

How to Play:

1. Each player receives 20 letter tiles
2. Race to create a 2-letter, 3-letter, 4-letter, 5-letter and 6-letter word using your tiles.
3. The first player to finish all five words wins the race, but then scores are counted depending on the value of each letter.

This one is fast, fun, and utterly addictive!

This is a light-hearted team game that’s great for improving communication skills. Before you can start playing, you’ll need to divide the players into small groups, say 2-3 players per team—any more than this and things can become chaotic.

How to play the drawing challenge

To play the drawing challenge, each team must first designate one player to be “the drawer,” while the other players will be “the describers.” The describers will be shown an image which they’ll have to describe to the drawer within a given time limit. The more accurate the description, the more accurate the drawing will be.

The game is guaranteed to spark some laughter among your group while encouraging the players to develop their communication and listening skills.

Our final minute-to-win-it cup game is a hilarious way to round off the list. It also takes a steady hand and a surprising amount of patience! You’ll need a few rolls of toilet paper, some cups and refillable water. Here’s how to play:

Set-up:

1. Prepare your contestants: Each player should be given 1 roll of toilet tissue. At the end of a long table, place one cup per contestant. Fill the cups up (it shouldn’t be too heavy, as the paper will rip). Under the filled cups, place the end of the toilet tissue roll, and let the toilet tissue unravel all the way to the other end of the table.

2. Wind the cup towards you: On your mark, each player then carefully rerolls the toilet tissue, slowly dragging the filled cup toward them. Things can get really fun when a player is losing halfway through the race. They start to panic and speed up the rolling process. This often causes a bit of spillage, tearing the paper. When that happens, they need to clear up and reset their roll.

This super simple game is a barrel of laughs, so try it out with your teams today. It’ll bring team members closer together and keep everyone on a roll!

Nine times out of 10, asking your team “How are you guys doing?” returns this answer: “Good, thanks.” If you’re looking for an alternative way of checking in with your team, Draw Your Mood is a great solution.

Great for: Expressing moods

Duration: 10 minutes

Players: 6+

You’ll need: Paper, pens

How to play Draw Your Mood

Setup: Draw your mood is another game that can be played in person or online. If you’re playing in person, hand each player a piece of paper and a pen. If you’re playing online, players can use the integrated whiteboard feature on their video conferencing software such as Zoom Whiteboard.

To play: Ask each player to draw a visual representation of their mood. They can use words, images and symbols—you name it! After 5 minutes or so, ask your employees to present their drawings one by one.

Bring a little mystery into your next event with this game. This one can add some comedy, but also become a sort of brain-teaser. It's fun for teams who don’t know each other that well (yet) since you don’t need to really know anything about each other to play. Obviously, as the name suggests, gauge your audience before playing - a game with pretend murder in it might not appeal to all audiences.

To play:

1. Create a circle with room for people to move around, and have one person in the center of it.
2. Secretly, select one person who is part of the circle (not in the center of it). You can just pick someone at random or maybe draw names in advance. Regardless, remember this should be a secret.
3. Once the game is started, the selected person is the “killer”. They “kill” people by winking at them. When they make eye contact and wink at someone, that person is down and should fall over onto the ground. They can be as dramatic as they want, but obviously bigger reactions will get more laughs.
4. The person in the middle is going to try and figure out who the “killer” is by observing the behavior of the group. They can have three guesses on who the culprit is. If they guess correctly, then the previous murderer is up in the center role. If they guess incorrectly, then they stay in the center and play another round.

You may have played this party game as a child, but it also works brilliantly for breaking the ice at work-related team events. It’s particularly convenient because it doesn’t require any equipment, all you need is a group of people and an open area to move around in. Wink murder can be played with 10-30 people, any more and the game can take too long, any less and the game becomes too easy.

How to play Wink Murder

To prepare, arrange your group into a circle and ask them to close their eyes. At this moment, a moderator will move around the circle and select one player to be the ‘murderer’ by tapping them silently on their shoulder.

When the game starts, all the players start to walk around the room. It’s the task of the ‘murderer’ to catch eyes with a player and wink at them, eliminating them from the game. When a player gets winked at, they must ‘die’ as dramatically as they see fit and leave the game.

It’s the role of the players to identify who the ‘murderer’ is and to make an accusation. When a player wants to make a guess, they say “I accuse [name].” The accusation must be supported by at least one other player by saying “second”. The accused player must then respond with “yes” if they are the murderer or “no” if they are not.

If the accusation is wrong, the two players that made the guess must ‘die’ and leave the game.

Ready for a fun, 5-minute energizer that’s suitable for groups of all sizes and you can do via video call? This one ticks all the right boxes.

How to play Up, down, left, right

Start the activity by asking everyone on the call to stand up – ensuring they’re still visible on the webcam. Then all you do is say the words “up”, “down”, “left”, and “right” and tell the team to point their heads in the corresponding direction.

Do this for 30 to 60 seconds at a fairly rapid pace. Next, change the rules so that people have to look in the opposite direction to what you say. So when you say “down”, they should point their heads toward the ceiling, and vice versa.

Keep going for another minute, gradually speeding up as you go. The light physical movement and mental challenge involved should invigorate and focus the group before your meeting; the mood should feel brighter too.

How to play Shrinking circle

Adaptability and flexibility are huge in the business world. One way to focus on both of those items is by playing this simple and silly game. Start out by using a rope to create a large circle that everyone can fit in. Then, every few minutes, make the circle a bit smaller. Depending on how large the circle is in the first place, you can take away an inch or a foot each round. The challenge is for everyone present to stay inside the circle. This will require some serious innovation once the circle gets small, and lots of laughs almost always ensue. Note: People are likely to end up touching each other in this exercise. It’s difficult not to once the space gets small, like a game of Twister. You know your colleagues best - if that level of closeness would make anyone uncomfortable, it’s probably best to try a different exercise.

How to play Wordle

Another word game great for a motivational boost is Wordle. It can be played individually or with teams. Wordle is a letter-based guessing game, in which players need to guess a five-letter word within six attempts. Teams need to use letters of the alphabet to figure out what the chosen word is. Every guess needs to count!

There is usually a category to make things a little easier, like “films” “sports” or “animals.” A team chooses 5 letters from the alphabet, and the game host lets them know if they’re right or wrong.

After you guess a word, tile colors provide feedback:

• Green means the letter is correct and in the right spot.
• Yellow means the letter is in the word but in the wrong spot.
• Gray means the letter is not in the word at all.

Keep going for 6 total guesses and strive to find the Wordle of the game!

How to play Moral dilemma

Similar to a “would you rather” game, this activity centers on ethical dilemmas. Players should try to flex their moral problem-solving muscles by tackling a social issue. For example, Scruples is a popular board game that can be played. Or, you can look online for versions of games like Dilemma or Quandary. This is a great way to learn more about your colleagues while getting a peek at the way they think.