Library of teambuilding games & icebreakers

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.

Instructions:

1. Share inspiring leadership quotes and allow people to individually reflect on their meaning.
2. Make sure you are the one to lead a lively group discussion around the quotes and their relevance to leadership.
3. Encourage people to share personal experiences related to the themes expressed in the quotes.
4. Foster an inclusive environment for exploring different perspectives and insights.
5. Summarize key takeaways and encourage people to apply the wisdom gained to their leadership journey.
6. Provide resources for further exploration of leadership quotes and their authors.

Who says leadership can't be profound and thought-provoking? This game sparks intellectual conversations and encourages your team to explore different perspectives. By diving into the wisdom of great minds, they'll gain new insights, expand their horizons, and ignite their leadership spark.

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.

The devil is in the detail, they say. At the workplace, misinterpreting instructions or being unclear with your instructions can have detrimental knock-on effects. Copy Cat teaches your employees to listen more carefully.

Great for: Listening skills, comprehension

Duration: 5-10 minutes

Players: 2+

You’ll need: Various sets of identical office items, something to use as a barrier i.e a flipchart.

How to play Copy Cat

Setup: To prepare for Copy Cat, separate players into pairs and position them on either side of a solid barrier—the players should be able to see their partner. Hand each player a set of matching office items. You can use things like a wastepaper basket, stapler, pens, sticky notes, etc. In each pair, one person needs to be the Leader and the other needs to be the Copy Cat.

To play: When the timer starts, the Leader begins building his structure with the materials provided. The Leader is allowed to iterate his actions, saying things like “I’m going to lay the wastepaper basket on its side,” and “I’m sticking two sticky notes to the bottom of the basket.” Based on these comments, the Copy Cat must attempt to create an identical structure to that of their Leader. The Copy Cat cannot ask any questions, forcing the Leader to be precise with their commentary.

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 Angry customers

This is a simple and popular activity that involves real-life scenarios and role-playing. Have your team divide into pairs, with one of them playing the role of “angry customer” and the other being the employee trying to appease them. Have them go through a conversation where the customer is upset about something, and discuss the potential resolution. Then they switch places and come up with a new scenario. If time allows in your training session, have each pair present to the group and share which conflict resolution measures they took and what they learned.

How to play Blind drawing game

Similar to a live-action game of Pictionary! In pairs, one person describes an object, and the other person must draw it without seeing it.

How to play Typing race

Who would have made the best 1950s receptionist? You can find out with this fun activity. Anyone who is interested should gather in one space with their keyboards or laptops. Announce the words that people should type (or write them on a white board) Set a timer and see who can get the typing done the fastest. This is helpful for developing typing skills and is also a great refresher for hand-eye coordination during a monotonous day.

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.

In match quest, everyone has the name of a famous pair (like “Batman” and “Robin”) stuck to their back, but they don’t know who they are. Players ask each other yes/no questions to figure out their identity and find their match. It’s a race to see who can complete their pair first!

This game is perfect for encouraging interaction and getting people mingling. It’s a lighthearted, playful way to break the ice and get the team laughing together, making it ideal for building connections.

How to play:

• Write the names of famous pairs on cards and stick one to each player’s back.
• Players ask yes/no questions to figure out who they are.
• The goal is to find your match as quickly as possible.

‍How to play:

Ask team members to individually envision and design their ideal workspace. Provide art supplies and encourage them to create visual representations of their dream work environment, including furniture and decoration.

Materials needed: Art supplies (paper, markers, colored pencils, etc.)

Benefits:

• Visualization for inspiration: Let imagination take the lead as your team members sketch out their dream workspaces. This activity transforms ordinary offices into extraordinary spaces, all while inspiring a culture of creative thinking.

• Alignment of values: Take a tour through the team's creative designs and uncover the common threads that weave their visions together. This activity fosters a sense of shared purpose, creating an environment where everyone's design dreams harmonize, resulting in an inspiring and collaborative workspace.

How to play Postcard drawing

Sometimes also called “doodling together”, this activity is a fun and creative one where the group works collaboratively together to draw using postcards started by others. Have everyone get a blank postcard and then the moderator should give some direction about what to draw. Then, they lay the postcard down and the next person adds their postcard, continuing whatever pattern or drawing was started by the previous person. The process keeps going until a large drawing is completed using the postcards. You’ll need to do this in a very large room or outdoors, and have plenty of postcard-size paper and markers or crayons available.

Fun, chaotic, and surprisingly difficult, Attract and Repel is a fantastic game for making people laugh and for breathing life back into the room.

Here’s how it works:

After clearing a space in the office, gather everyone together and ask them to start walking around the room. Next, tell them to choose 2 colleagues (without saying anything out loud), one of which they must stay as close as possible to and the other they have to stay as far as possible from.

What follows often borders on bedlam! People will giggle with glee and squeal with dismay as they attempt to juggle these two competing goals. Try playing this game for 5 to 10 minutes before a morning meeting or after lunch – traditional low points in terms of energy levels – to feel an instant boost in positivity.

After gathering everyone together in a remote arena, a game of Emoji Communication is a great way to get teams working together. This game highlights how easy it is to misinterpret digital messages and the importance of thoughtful communication. It helps members build agile skills where tone and context need extra clarification.

Set up:

One person in the remote meeting is chosen as the messenger. They create a message, a clear and cohesive sentence using only emojis. No words allowed! Everyone else works by a timer and writes down their guesses. Dish out points for correct guesses and rotate the messenger. Some example sentences to start you off could be:

"Let’s grab coffee and chat" ☕👫💬
"Team celebration tonight!" 🎉🍻🎶🕺
"Emergency! Need a quick solution" 🚨🧠⚙️⏳

How to play Knowledge-based quizzes

If your company is especially reliant on customer loyalty, then anything you can do to increase dedication is a smart move. You can put together a quiz for your biggest fans to take to prove they know your business better than anyone. For example, an athletic shoe brand may have a timeline of shoe designs going back 20 years, and whoever can properly label the timeline is a winner. Or, a television show might put together a quiz about the TV characters and their history.

Though radio is not as popular as it once was, many stations used to engage in a form of this loyalty testing by sharing codes throughout the day. If someone could call in with all the codes (to prove they listened all day), they were a winner. This adds another layer of fun and excitement for customers, and works particularly well for consumer goods that tend to have high degrees of repeat business.

It's time for the Goal Reflection Circle – a huddle of progress, challenges, and collective wisdom. Allow participants to form a circle, each taking a turn to share one of their recent exploits. It's a chance to share challenges, reflections, and receive constructive feedback from your cohesive team. This activity is like a group therapy session for your goals, promoting a sense of community

Top Tip for Facilitator:

• Foster an atmosphere of trust and support. As the facilitator, guide the circle with a gentle hand. Encourage active listening and constructive feedback. This activity is about building a community where vulnerability is a strength, and everyone is not just cheering for success but helping each other navigate the hurdles.

Frostbite’s an effective trust-building exercise that encourages strong communication and listening skills – not to mention teamwork as a whole. Like the other activities in this section, it works best if you’re in an open space, so head on down to the local park (or clear an area in the office!).

How to play Frostbite

When you get there, break your employees into smaller teams of 5 to 6 people and ask each group to choose a leader (or do this for them if there are certain people you think would benefit from this role). Their objective?

To build a makeshift “tent” using newspaper, string, tape, and other office supplies*! But there’s a catch...

The leader of each group has “frostbite” and can’t move. And, to make matters worse, the other members have “snow blindness” and can’t see. In reality, this involves asking the leader not to do anything practical and putting blindfolds on the others. The only way to pitch the “tent” is to listen to the leader’s directions.

Spice things up even more by setting a time limit. The team with the best tent at the end wins a prize.

*Of course, this same principle can apply to any task, which is good news if you’re short on time and/or want an easier activity!

What you need:

• Blindfolds
• Office supplies to build the “tent”
• Stopwatch

How to play DIY Disc Golf

Disc golf is a sport where you sling flying discs (AKA Frisbees) at special targets made of metal chains and buckets. Like golf, the idea is to get your disc in the target in the fewest possible throws.

When it comes to Field Day games for adults, disc golf is awesome. But unless you have an actual disc golf course on-site, you’ll want to do things the “DIY way.” Create your own course by making targets out of big buckets of water (washing baskets also work) and placing them at different points around a playing field. You can then proceed around it, taking turns throwing Frisbees at the targets.

The goal? Get your Frisbee in the bucket with as few throws as possible! Each throw represents a “stroke.” Keep track of how many strokes it takes to hit each target, and then add them up at the end. The lowest score wins.

How to play Group order

Start with everyone mingling in a large area, and instruct them to arrange themselves in order of something like height, number of pets, time with your company, etc. This way, everyone can learn something new about each other and the line organization is helpful for team-building. This is a quick game and you can get as creative as you want with it. Try some other get-to-know-you games from our list!

This Pencil Drop activity ticks all the right boxes. Short and sweet? Check. Fun-filled from start to finish? Check. Great for breaking the ice and boosting bonds between colleagues? Check!

Oh, and it’s nice and easy too…

How to play Pencil drop

All you need is a ball of string, a bunch of pencils, and some empty water bottles. With the supplies sorted, you can crack on with the task itself.

Start by dividing your team into pairs and asking them to stand back to back. Next, tie one end of both pieces of string around the eraser end of a pencil and the other end around their waists. They then have to walk forward (i.e. away from each other) until there’s no more slack in the string and the pencil’s suspended in the air.

Now the fun can begin! Their job is to work together, walking backward in a bid to lower the pencil into a water bottle that you’ve placed on the floor between them. To make things trickier, they’re not allowed to use their hands.

Want to add some fuel to the fire? Make it a race! Pit 2+ pairs against each other at the same time, awarding prizes to whoever wins.

What you need:

• Ball of string, cut into enough lengths for each pair to have two pieces
• One empty water bottle and one pencil between two people

Explanation:

‍One team writes the first half of a story, and the second team finishes it—often leading to hilarious and unpredictable twists.

The remote team kicks things off by writing the beginning of a story. It can be anything—an adventurous quest, a mystery, or even a funny office tale. Once they’re done, they hand it off to the in-office team, who has to pick up where they left off and complete the story. The catch? The teams can’t collaborate, so the second half is entirely up to the in-office group’s imagination.

Both teams come together to share the full story, often leading to laughs over the unexpected direction it took.

It's a creative way to bring different perspectives together while keeping things fun and engaging for everyone!

That’s right, the classic race from your childhood is just as fun for adults! In fact, it’s probably even better. After decades of being bipedal, strapping your leg to someone else’s and having to move in unison is a significant (and hilarious) challenge – especially when you make it a race.

How to play Three-Legged Race

As you can probably remember, you don’t need much for a three-legged race. Some simple strips of fabric or lengths of rope will suffice. From there, you divide the group into pairs, stand each team side-by-side, and use the fabric/rope to tie Person A’s right leg to Person B’s left leg or vice versa.

Next, mark a start and finish line, get everyone to stand at the start, and blow a whistle for the race to commence. Expect chaos and laughter to ensue as they make their way as quickly as possible down the track!

Got lots of people coming to your Field Day? Try a three-legged relay race instead.

This time, you’ll need to create a longer track with four individual sections before splitting everyone into pairs like before. Assign four pairs to each team then set them around the track to run different sections of the relay. Each “starting pair” needs a baton, which they’ll pass to the next pair in their team, whenever they reach them. The first team to reach the finish line wins!

In this game, players will need to work together to untangle themselves without letting go of each other’s hands. It’s a fantastically simple game for improving communication and collaboration skills.

Great for: Communication, problem-solving

Duration: 10 minutes

Players: 5-8

You’ll need: Nothing

How to play Human Knot

Setup: Ask your group to stand in a circle, shoulder to shoulder, facing inwards. Then, ask each player to reach out their left hand and take hold of somebody else’s hand opposite them. Repeat this action with the right hand. Players should not take the hand of the person to their immediate left or right.

To play: Players must now work together to untangle the knot without letting go of each other’s hands. To do this, players will need to turn, twist and step through each other’s arms.

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.