Library of teambuilding games & icebreakers

How to play Sinking ship

This is a fun, physical game for people who aren’t afraid to get close. It works best for about 10 - 20 people. Create a boundary on the floor with tape, and have everyone step inside it. Make sure they are standing close, but not totally on top of each other. Then, each minute, pick up one side of the tape and move it further inside the boundary. The idea is that it gets smaller and smaller, just like a ship that is gradually filling with water. The group will likely get into funnier and more creative configurations as the space gets smaller. Again, please be aware of the comfort of your team in close physical proximity before executing.

How to play Resource scramble

In this game, teams will have the opportunity to practice some critical thinking and problem solving skills (as well as collaboration). Put people into groups of no more than 8, and give everyone a basket of simple supplies. For example, markers, paper clips, glue, and clay - things you have around the office are fine. Provide each team with a problem and have them use their set of resources to solve it.

Obviously this game works better if the resources could actually be applied to the problem, so you might want to suggest something like “Design a new logo” or “build a prototype of a new seasonal product”. Ideally, the group will come up with a few solutions and decide on their favorite, but they may only produce one if everyone is in agreement and timing is tight.

Think fast! In action reverse, simple commands like “walk” mean “stop,” and vice versa. Players must respond with the opposite action to what’s being instructed. It sounds easy—until your brain starts overthinking!

This team building game for work is perfect for getting everyone alert and sharp while throwing in some unexpected laughter. It’s a fun way to test reaction time, focus, and coordination in a lighthearted setting, and it’s guaranteed to shake up the office routine.

How to play:

• One person gives simple commands like “walk” or “sit.”
• Players must do the opposite action (e.g., walk means stop, sit means stand).
• The game continues until someone makes a mistake!

Instructions:

1. Divide players into teams.
2. Provide each team with a set of materials such as blocks, cards, straws, cups, and tape.
3. Set a time limit of 10-15 minutes for the teams to build the tallest tower.
4. Ensure that each team follows the same rules and uses the same materials.
5. Once the time is up, measure the height of each tower and declare the winner.
6. Discuss the strategies used by each team and how they could improve in future rounds.
7. Repeat the game with different materials or variations to continue challenging the players' leadership skills.
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This game unleashes potential leaders' creativity, teamwork, and strategic thinking. Just like a tower, leadership requires a solid foundation, balance, and the ability to reach new heights. It challenges leaders to allocate resources efficiently, communicate effectively, and inspire their team to elevate their performance.

How to play:

‍Play a game Simon says with a safety theme added to it. Choose a leader to give safety-related commands (e.g., "Simon says put on your safety goggles," "Simon says find the nearest fire exit"). Employees must only follow the commands that begin with "Simon says."

Safety Simon says is a playful way to reinforce safety habits and quick response times. It keeps employees alert and engaged while reinforcing important safety behaviors in a fun and interactive manner.

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.

This or That questions force your employees to choose between two equally appealing or unappealing scenarios. As each player explains their choice, you’ll gain insight into their values, moral code and priorities.

Great for: Communication, decision-making

Duration: 10 minutes

Players: 6+

You’ll need: Nothing

How to play This or That

Setup: Start by compiling a list of This or That questions that you can ask your employees.

To play: Playing the game is very simple. After hearing the question, players must vote for which option they would prefer. The questions could be serious, funny, thought-provoking or silly—it doesn’t matter, as long as they force the players to think. The best questions split the crowd and cause a debate.

Rotating roles in your teams can immerse them in healthy agile practices while developing their adaptability, and giving a fresh perspective on the tasks their colleagues perform. By rotating through positions like designer, developer, and tester, they’ll be gaining insights on team contributions and will be more empathetic of task ownership.

Set up:

Assign every member an initial role, and give them a small hypothetical project, like designing an app feature. Let them play out their roles for a few minutes before rotating. Encourage each member to build on the contributions of those before them. Shifting from role to role comes with a perspective shift, so reflect on how each rotation improved on the last to reinforce agile principles of incremental improvement.

Visual puzzles are all about teamwork through description. One person describes an object, and their teammates sketch it based on those instructions - without seeing the original object. The results? Usually hilarious, but also a great way to test communication skills.

This teambuilding activity is perfect for enhancing your team’s ability to give and follow clear directions. Plus, the unexpected drawings add a bit of fun and laughter, making it an enjoyable way to break up the workday while sharpening those communication skills.

How to play:

• One person describes an object (e.g., a mug or a bike).
• Teammates sketch the object based only on the description.
• Compare the drawings to the original for some laughs!

Picture a world where all the lights go out and the only people on the entire earth that can see are your work colleagues! Enter "Blind Maze," a game that brings these skills to the forefront while adding an exciting twist. It's all about navigating blindfolded, relying on your team's guidance to find your way.

How to play

1. Direct your colleagues in a suitable office space or any area with enough space to draw a maze on a whiteboard.
2. Use the whiteboard to draw a maze with a clear starting point and a challenging path leading to the end. Make sure it's complex enough to require teamwork.
3. Choose one team member to be blindfolded. Give them the whiteboard marker.
4. The remaining team members take on the role of guides. They must verbally instruct the blindfolded person on how to navigate the maze without touching the walls.
5. Guides provide clear, concise instructions while the blindfolded participant listens attentively and follows the guidance.
6. The objective is for the blindfolded person to successfully navigate the maze and reach the end without hitting the walls.
7. After a round, switch roles so that everyone gets a chance to be the navigator and the guide.

Explanation:

Each team member describes themselves using traits from a famous movie or book character, without saying who they are. The rest of the team has to guess the character based on the clues.

This game is perfect for hybrid teams! Whether remote or in the office, everyone gets a chance to participate. Each person describes themselves using personality traits or quirks of a famous character via video call or chat, and everyone else guesses who they are. It’s an easy-going virtual icebreaker that gets people laughing, thinking creatively, and learning more about each other.

Our final activity can be best applied by taking what you’ve learned from our other games and applying the lessons to a real-world setting, including your current projects. It involves iterative development and working with your remote staff to create a group consensus that optimizes results.

Set up:

To create an agile mind map, use an online whiteboard, like Miro or MindMeister. Use your central theme or challenge. Let everyone collaboratively create branches of ideas or suggestions on the main topic. Review the map after gathering your input, group similar ideas, and prioritize the final items together.

An example might be improving your onboarding process. Together in a virtual setting, your remote workers add insights and areas for improvement in onboarding, such as setting clear expectations, first-week check-ins, and onboarding buddies. Agile mind mapping can be an extremely valuable.

How to play Letter to myself

This is another great activity for ending a large group event. Instruct everyone to write a letter to themselves that involves what you just did. For example, if part of the event was creating new goals, ask them to write how they’ll accomplish that. Then, depending on the size of the group, have people either pair off to share their letter or read their letter aloud. Opening up this way is a nice step toward getting everyone to bond and collaborate.

How to play Lucky Charms

Give all players a large bowl of Lucky Charms cereal. Have everyone sort the charm marshmallows into categories as fast as they can (for example, all hearts together and all clovers together). Whoever sorts through the most cereal in a minute wins.

Last but not least, we have Alphabets. It’s another improv game that’s as simple as it is fun, making it ideal for virtual meetings. All participants have to do is work together to create a story from scratch, contributing one line at a time. However, the complicating factor is that each line must begin with the next letter of the alphabet!

How to play Alphabets

For example:

• Participant 1: “A long time ago, in a distant land…”
• Participant 2: “Benjamin the Brilliant was building his next great invention.”
• Participant 3: “Crikey, said the inventor…”
• Participant 4: “Don’t people know the world is on the brink of collapse?”
• Participant 5: “Especially now that aliens have landed in America.”

Keep going until the end of the alphabet, or when everyone’s spoken at least once.

Oh, and encourage the team to be as creative as possible. The more random details and unexpected plot twists, the better. The exercise should be about having fun and getting everyone involved – not necessarily about creating a world-class story!

Consider setting a general topic to guide the task too. Maybe it should be a story about pirates, for instance, or dinosaurs…or the team’s next Christmas party.

You can also mix things up by giving people less and less time to contribute the next line. The added pressure keeps the game moving, stops it from getting dull, and requires your employees to think on their feet.

In this physical activity, there will be a facilitator instructing the larger team. You’ll also need ample space so make sure you are in a location that can accommodate a large group moving around. Have the facilitator start by instructing people to do some simple, engaging activities. For instance, they could start by saying “stand up”. Then, the facilitator says “stop” and then the instruction is flipped to its opposite. So, if they say “stand”, that really means “sit”. If they originally had said “walk”, that would now mean “stand still”.

As you can imagine, this leads to pure chaos and a lot of laughter. This is helpful for getting more physical but also in encouraging people to communicate better throughout the day.

Think you know your coworkers' texting habits? In emoji detective, you’ll have to guess which team member’s recently used emoji board is being shown. It's a fun, lighthearted way to test your knowledge of your teammates’ messaging style.

It’s an easy, amusing game to throw into a virtual meeting, and it’s always fun to see who’s been overusing the laughing-crying face.

How to play:

• One team member’s recently used emoji board is shown.
• The group guesses which team member it belongs to.
• Whoever guesses correctly wins the round!

If you're looking for more fun team-building activities to liven up your next meeting, explore our full list for extra ideas.

How to play Shout Out

In this game, members collaborate and contribute by shouting out some ideas. You’ll need some sort of white board or flip chart, and plan for 3 - 10 people in a group. First come up with a problem that you want to discuss. For example, “How can we reduce waste in our production process?” or “How can we bring that new product to market one week faster?” Give each person the opportunity to yell out an idea so that the whole group can hear. Once everyone has had a chance to speak, ask the group to come to a consensus on the best option, and then hold a discussion about it. Why is it the best idea? What makes it workable, etc? Also, did everyone feel listened to? How did the results from this process differ from just speaking to each other?

This gives your employees a chance to learn more about problem solving processes and cooperation, in addition to potential solutions to real business issues.

John: Hey, what’s your favourite superhero movie?

Jane: 🕷👨

John: Really? Batman’s my favourite too!

Jane: 🤦

If you’re like John, you won’t be any good at the Emoji Quiz. But if you’re like the other 99% of the population, capable of deciphering emojis without a second thought, then we have the perfect game for you!

Great for: Creative thinking, problem-solving

Duration: 5 minutes

Players: 4+

You’ll need: A list of movie, book or song titles written in emojis

How to play Emoji Quiz

Setup: Before playing Emoji Quiz, you need to create a list of movie, song or book titles written in emoji form. Here are a few examples:

• ⚫ 🦅 ⏬ = Black Hawk Down (film)
• 🍍 🚄 = Pineapple Express (film)
• 🐦 🐦 🐦 = Three Little Birds (song)

To play: Separate your group into equal teams. Then, display each title (written in emojis) on a screen and ask the teams to write down the name of the movie, song or book. Once you’ve asked all your questions, go back and reveal the answers. The team with the most correct answers wins!

How to play Boggle

The letter game Boggle has been around since the early 70s. It was designed by Hasbro and uses letters printed onto multiple dies. There are 3x3, 4x4, and 5x5 boards that make a game more or less challenging. This one works great for 4+ players.

All of the letter dice are placed into the square-ish grid, with a clear dome over the top. Every player gets a pen and pencil. The letters on the grid get scrambled, and each player gets three minutes to write as many words as they can. The key is, each letter must be touching vertically, horizontally, or diagonally in a chain. You can't skip or "jump" across letters. Try this one out with your teams today!

How to play Wanna spoon

Using only a spoon, players should attempt to transfer as many ping pong balls as they can from one bowl to another - no hands! Hands would be allowed if you drop the ball on the ground but then they should be placed back into the original bowl for another attempt. Whoever moves the most ping pong balls in the minute timeframe wins.

In acts of kindness quest, teams race against the clock to complete as many random acts of kindness in the community as possible. Whether it’s helping a stranger, picking up litter, or donating items, the goal is to spread positivity and do good.

This activity brings the team together for a feel-good mission while making a difference in the community.

How to play:

• Create a list of random acts of kindness for teams to complete.
• Set a time limit, and send teams out to perform as many acts as they can.
• The team that completes the most acts of kindness wins, but everyone feels great!

How to play Social media shoutout

A social media shoutout on internal workplace channels and public ones (as long as the person getting appreciation is okay with that!) in the workplace is a great way to show gratitude and appreciation for your employees.

A shoutout is a simple yet effective way to boost morale and strengthen the sense of community within your workplace. Make sure when doing a shoutout you are prioritizing using a gratitude-focused message that shows appreciation. This message highlights specific achievements, projects, or team efforts that the company is grateful for. Encourage Engagement with team members and customers if applicable, but always ensure dialogue remains professional.

By publicly acknowledging hard work and dedication in the form of gratitude, organizations can foster a positive and collaborative work environment.

This trust-building game is simple and requires only a blindfold and players willing to work together. While you don’t necessarily need a big field to play this in, it would be better to have an open area to avoid too many hazards getting in the way.

How to play:

‍Break groups into small teams of two. One player is the leader, and the other wears the blindfold. The leader has to guide the blindfolded player to the endpoint while making sure they avoid bumping into objects.

For example, pick a start and end location; players start in the office and end at an outdoor seating area.

Materials you’ll need: Blindfold(s)

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

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