Library of teambuilding games & icebreakers

This game takes a little more precision than the others and needs a steady hand. Cup Tower Jenga can be played in teams or as a solo cup game. You’ll need some medium-sized index cards. If you can’t get index cards, try cutting up some A4 paper. Make sure the paper has a similar weight, around 150gsm. If the paper is too light, it won’t support the cups’ weight. Each sheet needs to be big enough to fit an upside-down paper cup. Now let’s set the game up.

Set-up:

1. Stack up a tower: Each participant needs four cups and a table in front of them. On the table, they need to build a tower of upside-down cups, four cups high. Between each upside-down cup should be placed 1 index card.
2. Carefully deconstruct: One at a time, players need to slide out an index card, so that the cup above neatly falls over and contains the cup beneath it. Precision beats strength here. If the construction is rushed, or cards aren’t pulled perfectly, the whole tower is likely to fall down. If the tower falls before the 4 paper cups are perfectly stacked, they need to rebuild and try again.

Try this one out in pairs, with one person being the builder and one as the demolition expert. They’ll likely strategize together. The first pair to stack 4 wins!

How to play Don’t laugh

This activity is great if you have some especially funny team members. Start by having all attendees stand in a circle, and then have a volunteer stand in the middle and make some jokes. The attendees should not laugh, no matter how funny the person inside the circle is being. This is a great way to lighten the mood during heavier topics or serious meetings. One caveat: make sure that the “joker” is based purely on volunteers only. It’s not easy to stand in front of a group, particularly when it comes to trying to be funny. Not everyone will be up for this, so you need to know your team before you proceed.

Corporate Castaways puts your employees’ ingenuity and teamwork skills to the test as they attempt to solve various group challenges.

Great for: Teamwork, communication

Duration: 2–3 hours

You’ll need: Various equipment depending on the games chosen

How to play:

• Find an open outdoor space with plenty of room to move around, such as a park or a beach.
• Set up each game (physical challenges and puzzles). Leave plenty of space between them. You should have as many challenges as you do teams.
• Divide your group into teams of about 5–8 players.
• Assign each team a challenge and have them stand around or next to it.
• Set a time limit for each game. When you say “Go!” teams set about trying to complete the challenges. Assign an “official” to each challenge to tally the scores.
• Teams have a turn to complete each challenge. The team with the most points after completing all of the challenges wins.

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:

‍Set up a relay race course with different safety-related tasks at each station (e.g., putting on personal protective equipment, bandaging a wound, fire extinguisher drill). Divide employees into teams and have them race to complete each task as quickly as possible.

The safety relay race combines physical activity with safety training, making it a fun and dynamic way to learn. It encourages teamwork and quick thinking, all while reinforcing essential safety skills. A great way to get the blood pumping and learn.

Note: Make sure this is in an outdoor setting! We don’t want accidents whilst playing a safety-based game… Facepalm…

How to play Team Building Relay Race

Instructions: Set up a relay race with different stations representing team-building activities, such as trust falls, problem-solving puzzles, or communication challenges. Each team member completes a station before passing the baton to the next person.

Materials needed: Various team-building activity props.

Brace yourselves for the Team Building Relay Race, where sweat, laughter, and team spirit go hand in hand. It's a rollercoaster of physical activity infused with mind-bending challenges. As teammates make their way through each activity, they'll forge unbreakable bonds of collaboration, trust, problem-solving, and communication.

Here’s one you may have played with family over Christmas, or as a drinking game with friends at university! This time, though, it’s strictly professional – a trust-building exercise that teaches the virtues of communication and teamwork, while also providing some good light-hearted fun.

Sticky Notes (otherwise known as “Who Am I?”) involves giving each employee a sticky note and pen and asking them to write down the name of a famous person or character. These people can be alive or dead, real or fictitious (e.g. from a movie), but should be a name that everyone in the group will recognize.

How to play Sticky notes/Who am I?

Each team member then takes their sticky note and puts it on a colleague’s forehead – ensuring they don’t see who’s written on it! Their task is to figure out the name on their note by asking “yes/no” questions to their colleagues.

For example:

• “Am I male?”
• “Am I alive now?”
• “Am I on TV?”
• “Am I an historical figure?”

You can play the game in different ways, depending on the size of your team. For smaller groups, it’s fun to sit in a circle and take turns asking questions. For larger teams, it may be easier to walk around as if you’re at a networking event, mingling with others and asking questions as you go.

What you need:

• Sticky notes and pens

How to play Spray balloons

This is a really fun game for beating the heat. If you will be doing any outdoor activities, this is a good one to add. All participants will need a balloon, a spray bottle filled with water, and some form of receptacle like a trash can or box.

The goal is for players to guide the balloon into the container using only the spray bottle to propel it. Contestants can spray the balloon with the water to guide it off the ground and where they want it to go. Challenge everyone to complete the challenge in one minute!

How to play My Superpower

This activity is great for bigger groups as well as teams that don’t know each other very well. Each participant will state his/her name and then share what their “superpower” is. This can be a special skill, a curious fact about their lives, valuable knowledge they can share, etc. You can choose to make it more professional, or keep things more personal as a way of getting to know each other better.

To make it even more fun, use a ball to signify which person is speaking. The person will then toss the ball to another player at random, keeping things spontaneous as the game progresses.

Explanation:

‍Teams create a movie poster that represents their remote work experience using an online design tool like Canva. The poster can be as funny, creative, or wild as the team wants.

For the hybrid version, remote workers and in-office teams collaborate to create a movie poster that captures the essence of remote or hybrid work life. Everyone can contribute ideas through online brainstorming, and both remote and in-office team members use design tools like Canva to put it all together. Maybe it’s a comedy about juggling work and life or an action-packed poster showcasing the chaos of virtual meetings. It’s a fun, collaborative way for employees to show off their creativity and storytelling skills.

How to host Book exchange

Make everyone a bit smarter while they quench their thirst. Request that at your next happy hour, you bring a book to share. Ask people to bring their favorite book, or to choose the professional development book that’s been most helpful. Everyone should share a bit about what makes that particular book so special. At the end of the event, people can borrow the books available or just remember the title so they can find it on their own later on. This is a great way to learn more about your colleagues and learn some new things at the same time.

Here’s a game that demands timing and cat-like reflexes. It’s a rework of musical chairs, something that we’ve all played in childhood at least once. The game is fast-paced and competitive, making it a perfect team energizer. You’ll need a group of 4 to 10 people, a table and an amount of cups that is one less than the number of players you have. Basically, one person is going to be eliminated each round!

Set-up:

1. Get the music started! Get your Bluetooth speaker and an upbeat playlist ready. On the table place a number of cups that is one less than the amount of people playing. Most people will recognize the rules instinctively; you play the music and each player walks around the table clockwise. When the music stops, each person needs to grab one cup with lightning-fast speed. Whoever is without a cup at the end of this round is eliminated. Remove one cup and move to the next round.

2. Whittle down the competition: Continue eliminating one player per round. Make the music more intense and crazy as each round passes by. Eventually, only one person will be left standing (and sipping!), so crown this person as the winner of Musical Cups!

Cups can be full or empty as people play, and as with our other drinking games, choose a beverage that’s easy to clean up and applies to your work setting. Organize it during a work happy hour to get the party started. We’ll say cheers to that!

Instructions:

‍Pair people with different levels of experience in a reverse mentoring relationship. The less experienced individuals mentor the more experienced ones, sharing fresh perspectives and knowledge.

It's like flipping the leadership script and giving the underdogs a chance to teach the old dogs some new tricks. By pairing less experienced individuals with seasoned leaders, reverse mentoring unleashes a whirlwind of fresh perspectives, innovative ideas, and the wisdom of youth. It's a leadership shake-up that challenges status quo and ignites mutual learning, making it a win-win for all involved. Perhaps consider involving yourself in this activity and allowing a newbie to mentor you. You never know, you could be mentored by the rising stars of tomorrow!

How to play Kiss, Marry, Kill

Looking for a quick and funny way to start a meeting? Try Kiss Marry Kill. A perennial crowd-pleaser, this question game involves choosing which of three people you’d rather kiss, marry, or – you guessed it – kill.

They can be fictional (e.g. characters from well-known movies) or real (e.g. singers, sports stars, or people in the office) and you take turns presenting three names for the other players to choose from. Expect light-hearted debate to rage as each participant justifies who they’re kissing, marrying, or killing!

If you want to make this game slightly more PC, then consider the alternative: “Kiss, Marry, Avoid.” The process is the same, just with slightly less offensive language.

Prepare your taste buds for a tantalizing adventure in the Culinary Exploration Challenge. Your team will explore diverse cuisines, test their culinary skills, and learn the art of teamwork in the kitchen. From preparing exotic dishes to mastering cooking techniques, this challenge is a feast for the senses. As you whip up delectable creations, you'll not only bond over food but also discover the recipe for effective collaboration.

Instructions

• Form cooking teams, ensuring a mix of culinary levels.
• Assign each team a unique cuisine to explore.
• Create challenges that involve cooking specific dishes or techniques.
• Teams gather ingredients, cook, and present their creations.
• Judge based on taste, presentation, and teamwork.

How to play Ranking race

Thinking critically - and quickly - is a highly coveted skill in the professional world. This game calls for creating a ranking system, which is a natural way of thinking through information and categorizing it. It’s a really versatile exercise since no materials and very little prep time are required. Start by getting people into groups of no more than 10. Then, set a timer and give each group a list of items to rank, such as the best local restaurants or top movies of the year.

Task each group with coming up with their own ranking system. When the timer goes off, everyone should present their final rankings. They can describe to the group how they came up with their ranking system and why the items are weighted the way that they are. Have teams make notes if they find a certain ranking system particularly helpful - maybe that’s a matrix that more people can use in the workplace going forward.

By challenging your team to guess the answer to a secret question in under 20 inquiries, you'll encourage communication, collaboration, and strategic thinking. Plus, it's a great way to sneak in some team building without resorting to trust falls or awkward trust exercises.

How to play:

1. Think of an object, person, or place.
2. The other player(s) will have 20 questions to ask about your chosen item.
3. They can only ask yes or no questions.
4. After each question, you can only respond with yes, no, sometimes, or I don't know.
5. The players must try to guess what the object is before they run out of their allotted 20 questions.
6. If they successfully guess the object, they win.
7. If they run out of questions before they guess correctly, the player who chose the object wins.
8. If the game ends in a tie, you can play again to break the tie.

To supercharge the fun, try to set a theme for the game to boost the fun factor and creativity, while also allowing employees to learn more about each other. Make sure to check out our other question based games if this tickled your fancy!

How to play Growing sentence

In this game, everyone in the room contributes one word to a growing sentence. You can have everyone stand in a group or in a line, as long as everyone can hear each other properly. Pick one word to begin the sentence and have everyone add one more word to keep the sentence going. Have someone write it down on paper or a chalkboard so you can all get a laugh at the final result.

Office Apples to Apples is a hilarious twist on the classic word game, perfect for bringing some shenanigans to a corporate event. Here's how to get the party started.

Set up:

1. Get your cards ready. A spin on the traditional Apples to Apples card game, you need to create cards with office-themed words or phrases, like “coffee break” or “Monday meeting madness”.
2. Lay Down the Law: Explain that one lucky soul plays judge in each round while the others throw down their wackiest associations to the green apple card played.
3. The judge picks their favorite, and that team scores a point. Set a point limit for winners.
4. Keep the laughs rolling by rotating judges each round.

How to play Word crush

There aren’t many people in the world who haven’t heard of the game Candy Crush. Word Crush is a video game crossover that uses a column-stacking system while challenging the player’s word-building skills.

Each person can play individually, or record high scores and go head-to-head with multiplayer. The game is available for Apple and Android, so download and share on a screen for a competitive, word-building challenge!

How to play Watermelon Eating Contest

Instructions: Provide each participant with a slice of watermelon. The objective is to eat the watermelon slice as quickly as possible without using hands. The first person to finish their slice wins.

Materials needed: Watermelon slices.

The Watermelon Eating Contest is a fun and delicious game that promotes friendly competition and brings out the laughter. It adds a lighthearted and entertaining element to the picnic while allowing team members to bond over a shared experience.

With digital playbook, employees create short user manuals or intro videos explaining how they work best—whether it’s preferred meeting times, communication styles, or favorite work snacks. It’s like a cheat sheet for collaborating effectively!

This activity helps teams understand each other’s work preferences and habits, which can make remote teamwork smoother and more enjoyable.

How to play:

• Each team member creates a short video or document explaining how they work best.
• Share the playbooks with the team so everyone can reference them.
• Use the playbooks to understand teammates' work habits and collaborate better!

How to play Trade-up game

Negotiation is a crucial part of successful selling, and this game is a great way to practice. The objective is to trade for better objects than what you currently have at hand. Start by passing out basic items such as office stationary, a stapler, or a soda from the fridge. Then, let everyone talk to others and try to trade for something they deem as better. Whoever ends up with the best product wins the game - since obviously they were able to finagle their way into better items. Afterward, it’s a good idea to ask the top players how they performed so well and what negotiation tricks they might share.

How to host a Photo caption contest

Pick out a funny meme or cool photo and ask everyone to come up with a clever caption. You can either have one person pick a winner, do so by committee, or share with the company and let audience applause dictate the most popular caption. This is a quick team-building activity and easy to put together, and a good option for when you have a short window of time to bring everyone together. This activity is an ideal choice if your current bandwidth only allows gathering everyone in the breakroom for an hour or so. Simply share the image the night before and let everyone bring their A-game in the morning.