Library of teambuilding games & icebreakers

How to play Team bingo

This is a really fun way to break the ice in a competitive way. Participants can get information on each other in a more engaging way. To begin, create a bingo card with a statement or question in every square. Make sure they are things that will apply to at least one person in the gathering. Try to pick a few things that are aligned with your work or the event. Every player will get a bingo card and then they should mingle around chatting with the other participants. The goal is for them to find people to sign each square based on what they learn. Pro tip: the signatures should only be from one or two people each, to avoid having the same people filling up all the squares for an instant bingo. When everyone has reached bingo (or is close), stop the game and have everyone share something they learned about their colleagues.

How to play Pitch tournament

An important part of selling is understanding customer needs: what they want or what drives them to buy something. Help your team to hone these skills by pitching items to you or another panel of judges. Pick a few regular objects, such as things from around the office. Then, pair people up (or work as individuals if your group is already small) and have them take turns pitching the item to your judges. Give everyone a few minutes to come up with a unique presentation and make sure they understand the product. Add a prize for the winner to up the ante a bit.

One of the benefits of working in a team is that you always have someone to offer their support when you need it. Whether you feel down and need an emotional lift or have too much to do and need some practical input, a sympathetic colleague can step in to ease the burden. This is teamwork and collaboration at its finest.

Unfortunately, Fortunately draws on that supportive reality by asking teammates to reframe each other’s problems into something positive.

Here’s how it works:

Ask one person on the video call to say something they’re struggling with. It shouldn’t be too heavy or serious – nothing that’s going to be uncomfortable to disclose. Next, go around the virtual circle, taking turns to reframe their “problem” in a positive light.

For example, Brian might start by saying, “Unfortunately, I’m finding it hard to wake up on time at the moment.” Upon hearing this, Sheryl might say, “Fortunately, you have such a comfortable bed to sleep in!” And Anthony might follow up with, “And fortunately, you need a good night’s rest to perform at your best!”

It continues from there until everyone has disclosed an issue and received a bunch of positive reframes from their colleagues. By the end of the task, everyone will have practiced their listening skills and offered/received support to/from their teammates.

How to play Backward ABC

This is a great one because no supplies are required! If you’re tight on space or budget give this game a try. For this activity, each player must attempt to say the alphabet in reverse. They only have one minute to complete the task and whoever can say the full alphabet backwards in the shortest amount of time wins.

How to play Thread it

The goal is for contestants to thread as many needles as they can in just one minute. This game can become highly competitive (and even frustrating). Make sure to have enough needles and thread set out for everyone.

Expressing gratitude to employees by offering them continuing education through online training courses can be a great way to foster a positive work culture and boost employee morale. By offering to fund workshops and classes, employees can refine their skills and be better equipped to do their work.

• Communication and de-escalation course
• Emotional Intelligence Training
• Team building methods
• Diversity and Inclusion Training
• Leadership Development
• Mindfulness and stress reduction

Many of these courses are found on popular online learning platforms like Coursera, edX, and Udemy. If your team prefers an in-person learning session, contact professional development and HR organizations for tailored training programs. Tailoring your training to your organization's specific needs and culture is essential for practical gratitude expression.

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.

5-minute energizers don’t get much better than this one. Got Your Finger is fun, fast-paced, suitable for groups of all sizes, and sure to lift the mood. Oh, and it requires no prior planning or preparation either.

Here’s how to play:

Ask the team to stand in a circle, close together, and face inward. Next, tell each participant to stick their right hand out with their palms facing the ceiling. They then have to put their left index finger on the open palm of whoever’s standing to their left.

Now the fun can start! When you shout “Go”, each participant must try to close their hand around their partner’s finger before they escape. It’s multi-tasking at its finest – trying to stop the colleague to your left from catching your finger, while simultaneously trying to grab whoever’s on the right.

How to play Panty Hose Game

Have you ever heard of “Minute to Win It” games? They’re exactly what they sound like! 60-second games that are over before you know it.

You can play for longer if you wish, but the idea is to keep things fast-paced and free-flowing. They’re ideal games for warming up, setting the tone for the day, or for whenever you want a quick-fire activity to fill a gap (or be part of another one – such as in a relay race or obstacle course).

Anyway, this Panty Hose Game is one example of a minute-to-win-it game that always goes down well. Here’s how to play:

• Lay rows of 5+ water bottles on the ground, with one row for each person/team
• Give everyone playing a small ball (e.g., a baseball) and some pantyhose
• Tell them to shove the ball into the foot of one pantyhose leg
• Tell them to pull the top of the pantyhose over their head, so the ball dangles at the other end like a strange antenna
• Their task is to move up the line of bottles, swinging the ball (no hands allowed!) to knocking each one over as quickly as possible
• The first person/team to knock their bottles over wins

How to play Riff off

This word game is for all the music aficionados in the office. Riff Off is a popular game that plays on famous song lyrics. If you need a little help, search for the online lyrics to a really popular song. Tell your teammates one word from the song. We’ll make an example, the first lyric is “never.”

If your partners can’t guess it, give them another word (our next example is “give”) until someone shouts out the song. Hopefully, nobody gave up and you guessed ours; “Never Gonna Give You Up”!

Kanban is a Japanese word literally meaning “visual card.” It is one kind of agile methodology first developed by Toyota, and in this system, teams use visual cues to keep all tasks flowing in a process. One of the best ways to make an agile game with this system is by creating a simulated pizzeria. Let’s break it down:

Set-up:

Create a pizzeria with stations for each pizza-making step (e.g., dough rolling, cheese sprinkling, baking), represented by sticky notes as orders move through. Your teams will iterate with each order to speed up every round. Improving each round and redesigning how many workers are at each station makes great practice for agile methodology.

How to play Paper airplane race

Like the pencil javelin, the paper airplane race centers on how far you can get your paper airplane to fly. Each team constructs their best engineered plane and marks where they ultimately land. Each person on the team should have a chance to fly the place and the team that gets the furthest is declared the winner.

How to play Team story weaving

Start with a random sentence, and each person in the group adds one more, crafting an unpredictable and often hilarious story. The key here is to embrace the absurdity and let creativity flow without overthinking it (or without using any materials!). As the story moves around the room, everyone gets a chance to contribute, which often leads to surprising twists, unexpected endings, and lots of laughter. It’s a great way to loosen up the atmosphere and let everyone feel comfortable being a little silly, which can lead to more open communication down the line.

This is perfect for breaking down communication barriers and showing off everyone’s quirky sense of humor. It’s especially great for larger groups, as it gives everyone a chance to participate, without putting too much pressure on any one person. The beauty of this game is that no one knows where the story will end up, and sometimes it goes in directions no one could’ve predicted!

How to play Musical quiz

It can be hard to keep everyone engaged when managing virtual teams, so try this game using Spotify or Apple Music playlist with a musical quiz to get things lively. All you need to do is share your screen, with sound, and of course, hide the artist and song title. Begin a song and ask listeners to stick their guesses into the chat box, awarding a point to the first correct guess.

You might want to narrow genres down to Pop music for more engagement, or you might have some real music aficionados in your teams. In that case, create a world music playlist and ask them to guess the country the song comes from! Get funky for your next virtual happy hour.

A gratitude board is a physical and visual representation of gratitude, which can be anything from notes about specific moments to vacation photos. The board can be set up in an office as an ongoing reminder of the positive aspects of the workplace and can be an excellent tool for promoting a positive mindset during the workday.

Here are some of the ways to create and maintain a gratitude board:

1. Provide your employees with materials, such as a backboard made of cork or cardboard, paper, writing utensils, pins, and plenty of room for positivity. If you're a remote team, consider a digital board or chat space dedicated to gratitude.
2. Create a list of the things you're grateful for. These can be big or small, from personal achievements in the workplace or something unique. Give employees a chance to write these reflections, or ask them to bring photos or keepsakes that can be placed on the board.
3. Keep up with the board and ask employees to add new items once a week or make updates on professional achievements when they happen.

Gratitude boards can be a simple but effective way to bring employees together and boost morale in the workplace. Regularly engaging with a gratitude board in the workplace can promote work-life balance.

How to play Defy gravity

For this game each player needs two balloons. Using only one hand, each player tries to keep them both from touching the ground for a whole minute. If you want more of a challenge, increase the amount of balloons to three per player. No holding onto the balloons! Tip: Use different colored balloons so you can better keep track of which have touched the ground.

How to play Boxes and bells

This is a great one for holiday events! You’ll need five boxes and 15 small round bells. In each box, place between 1 and 5 bells (so 1 bell, 2 bells, and so on). Make sure they are in random order, and then task each player with picking up and shaking the box, then guessing the number of bells. Their ultimate goal is to reorganize the boxes based on the number of bells inside. Have each player try and whoever does it fastest wins.

How to play the ball point game

The Ball Point Game is a simple way to visualize agile and scrum concepts in action. It starts out easy enough, teams just stand in a circle and pass a ball to one another. Complexity can be ramped up over time, like introducing more balls so that your teams rethink their layout. Here’s a breakdown of the rules:

Teams start in a circle, pass a ball so each member catches it once (no adjacent passes allowed). Over time, add more balls, requiring teams to rethink their layout. The game involves three planning sessions and three 2-minute sprints, where each round starts with the "Starter" and ends with the "Finisher" for points.

Focus your teams into an agile mindset with a game of Iteration Auction. The game moves quickly and helps employees to prioritize, negotiate, and adapt quickly, which are all core staples of agile methodology.

Set up:

Give each player a set amount of “iteration dollars” to spend on actions (tasks, improvements or project features) on a shared board. These actions will apply to a basic project you give them, such as delivering a product to a certain market. Assign each action a cost based on its complexity or value (how much you think it will help their project). Let them bid, apply the action and review after each round, letting them bid again in the second round. These are the “project updates.” By bidding on tasks, team members are getting used to weighing impact and urgency in iterations, much like in real agile sprints.

How to play Travel back in time…

In this creative exercise, ask everyone to imagine that they are able to travel back in time to a singular event. Where would they go, and why? Most important: what would they change? What would they make sure was done differently? And, with those differences, what would the outcomes be? Would our lives be different today if their version of events had happened?

In business, an important part of strategy is thinking multiple steps ahead, and understanding “if this/then that”. This exercise asks everyone to think ahead about various repercussions of certain events. It’s a great game to play if you want to flex those strategic muscles, and also leads to some really interesting conversations.

How to play Brain teaser challenge

Test everyone’s problem-solving skills with some fun riddles. Put together a list of brain teasers for everyone to take a crack at. This is a great activity to take a team approach to. Break everyone up into small groups and share the list of questions with a time limit. Highest score wins!

Executing agile principles usually requires your team members to be flexible and growth-oriented. Why not throw them a (light) curveball while they’re deep into an example project to let them practice adaptability? Rethinking your first approach keeps you on your toes and ready for changes as a project develops.

Set up:

Set a scenario with a challenge, such as drafting a basic project plan or sketching a concept product. Each person has a few minutes to get started. Then, introduce a sudden change in the “requirements” like shifting the target audience, adding a new feature, or changing the project scope. Each member needs to adapt to these new conditions, and hopefully, each twist in the tale creates a new opportunity. Regroup at the end to informally reflect on how curveballs in the project affected their work to build core agile strengths.

Some of the simplest trust-building exercises for new teams involve asking good old-fashioned ice-breaker questions. Case and point?

“You Get One Question”.

This super quick and easy game requires minimal preparation, which makes it ideal whenever you want the team to connect and/or unwind. It’s a good way to kick off morning meetings, for instance, or to use when onboarding new employees.

How to play You get one question

To play, you need to create or acquire some cards with different scenarios or roles written on the back. Examples might include “starting a company”, “babysitting your nephew”, or “being a world leader”.

You’d then split your team into pairs and let them choose a card from the deck. Their task is to come up with one perfect question to determine if the other person would be a good fit for that specific role.

After a few minutes of thinking and talking, you can then reconvene and discuss the questions and the process of creating them as a group. By the end, your team will have had a stimulating chat in which they learned more about each other.

What you need:

• Pre-written cards with different scenarios on them

How to play “I expect”

You can kick off a training session and spur engagement with this simple exercise. You’ll need a blank wall and a few colored post-it notes. Break the white board or chalkboard into 4 quadrants and label them “the training”, “the trainer”, “from myself”, and “from attendees”. Each participant should take a turn filling out 4 post-its that begin “I expect”. For example, “I expect from the training to learn how to better resolve customer conflicts.” Everyone should place their sticky notes in the appropriate quadrant. Then the moderator should go through and read them, highlighting which ones are repeated often.