Library of teambuilding games & icebreakers

Imagine a team that rolls with the punches. That's adaptability—being cool with change and helping colleagues navigate the twists and turns of work life.

Adaptability activity - "Change challenge" brainstorm:

• Present a hypothetical or real work-related change that the team might face in the future.
• Divide participants into groups and provide them with markers, flip charts, or whiteboards.
• Instruct each group to brainstorm creative ways to embrace and adapt to the change, focusing on positive outcomes.
• Encourage groups to discuss their ideas and strategies for effectively navigating the proposed change.
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This brainstorming activity enhances adaptability skills, encourages innovative thinking and promotes a proactive approach to change management.

How to play Workplace trivia

You can’t go wrong with workplace trivia, because it’s a great way to reiterate facts while having some fun. You can even bring out peoples’ competitive side which can be extra entertaining. Workplace trivia is especially helpful for new team members or as part of an onboarding process. Prior to your training session, come up with a list of questions to use in a trivia game. They should relate to the training material, your company, or your industry. You can also use trivia games in virtual training sessions.

How tall can you go? In spaghetti towers, teams use dry spaghetti and marshmallows to build the tallest structure possible within a set time limit. It’s a challenge of creativity, problem-solving, and a little bit of engineering.

This game encourages teamwork, planning, and resourcefulness, as teams work together to build a stable tower. Plus, it’s hilarious to see which towers soar and which ones collapse in a heap of spaghetti and marshmallows!

How to play:

• Split into teams and give each team dry spaghetti and marshmallows.
• Teams must build the tallest tower possible within the time limit.
• The tallest (and most stable) tower wins!

Your team is transforming into urban explorers armed with cameras, ready to capture the essence of the city. The Urban Photography Expedition is a creative challenge that combines sightseeing with storytelling. As you traverse the streets, squares, and alleys, you'll not only snap stunning shots but also collaborate to craft a visual narrative of the city's soul. It's an opportunity to flex your artistic muscles, enhance your communication skills, and develop a keen eye for detail—all while fostering camaraderie within your team.

Instructions

• Form teams, ensuring a mix of photography skills.
• Provide a list of themes or subjects for the photos.
• Teams interpret themes creatively and capture captivating images.
• Collaborate to curate a photo collection that tells a compelling story.
• Share your insights and learnings from the photography experience.

This team-building activity allows individuals to express themselves playfully and creatively. It’s an excellent game for helping team members get to know one another more intimately. It would be well suited for an onboarding exercise or bringing together teams that typically work remotely.

How to play:

‍Split up into small teams and give each participant a piece of paper and drawing materials. Have them fold their paper into four sections and spend five to ten minutes drawing their responses to four questions. Questions can be personal or related to a workplace topic, such as “What do I expect from my team” or “What do I see in my professional future.”

After players finish drawing their responses, have them regroup with their team and discuss their visual answers.

Materials you’ll need: Paper and makers, general art supplies. Tables and chairs for drawing surfaces

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

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.

Office FM is an ongoing team-building activity that boosts morale and encourages employees to collaborate.

Great for: Company culture

Duration: N/A

You’ll need: Access to a music streaming service (Apple Music, Spotify, etc.)

How to organise:

• Create a collaborative playlist and invite everybody as a contributor. If you like, you can create a theme such as “90s Party Classics”.
• Ask each employee to contribute a maximum of two songs to the playlist.
• Hit “play” on the playlist whenever a morale boost is needed!

Everyone knows the classic TV phenomenon of Wheel of Fortune. Add your own corporate twist onto it to bring TV show vibes to the event.

Set up:

1. Wheel it up. You’ve got to get craft and create the biggest, most standout wheel you can. Add workplace pictures to it too.
2. Create your list of winning answers, and make them workplace-themed, or popular mottos among your staff Use some brain teasers for SOS clues.
3. Create teams and get spinning. Your teams can shout out letters to fill in the blank space letters in the answer.
4. Add the occasional bonus round for double points, and create your finale with a one-on-one showdown. Who will wager big and take home the ultimate prize?

Looking for an energizer that’s great for enhancing the group dynamic as well? This one should do the trick.

How to play Walk and stop in sync

Simple and sweet, start by asking everybody to stand side by side in a line – preferably in a large space – before issuing a simple instruction:

“Walk forward together and then stop at the same time.”

The catch is that they’re not allowed to talk! Whether they communicate through body language, facial expressions, and/or entering some sort of group consciousness, they have to walk and stop in sync, without speaking.

Keep going until they achieve the goal and consider debriefing when they’re done. What did they learn? How did it feel? What lessons will they take forward?

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.

Explanation:

‍Office and remote workers team up to match pairs of items. Remote workers describe their items, and office workers try to match them without seeing them.

Remote participants start by picking an item from their home (like a weird-shaped mug or a funky pen), but instead of showing it, they give the office team a detailed description. The in-office team then tries to find a matching item in the office based on that description alone. It’s all about great communication and attention to detail. Once both teams think they’ve found a match, they reveal the items on camera to see if they actually paired them correctly!

It’s a light-hearted, fun way to boost listening skills and teamwork between remote and in-office employees.

Extreme rock, paper, scissors takes the traditional playground game to a new level. This time, Instead of battling it out in pairs, your employees will attempt to overthrow the competition in teams.

Great for: Energization

Duration: 10 minutes

You’ll need: Plastic hula hoops (approx. 15)

How to play:

• Lay the hoops in a line on the ground and leave a gap of 50cm between each one.
• Divide your group into two teams and position them at either end of the line of hoops.
• When you shout “Go!” one player from each team starts hopping through the hoops towards the opposition.
• When they meet in the middle, they play rock, paper, scissors.
• The loser exits the hoop and jogs back to their team. Meanwhile, the winner continues hopping forward towards the opposition and a player from the other team steps in to replace their fallen comrade.
• When the two players meet, they play rock, paper, scissors again.
• Play continues until a player reaches the opposing team’s starting hoop. The first team to land in their opponent's starting hoop wins.

Many people might remember this game from their childhood. Commonly used as an exercise to get kids to enhance their listening skills, this simple yet effective game still works just as well in adulthood!

How to play:

‍Gather everyone on your team and have them line up or sit in a big circle. There is a group leader who whispers a sentence into the first person’s ear. That next person whispers that same (hopefully) sentence into their neighbor's ear, and the game continues as such.

This is a perfect game for large teams, as not much is needed, and it’s more challenging to get the message across perfectly the more people it goes through.

Materials you’ll need: Just your team and space to the lineup, or sit in a circle.

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

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.

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!

Also known as Battledecks or Powerpoint roulette, Powerpoint karaoke’s a creative improv game where you ask people to give a presentation on a topic they haven’t seen or been able to prepare for.

How to play PowerPoint karaoke

Start by choosing a theme – such as vacations – and creating simple slide decks on it. In this example, the first slide would be a location/destination; the slides to come might include inside jokes, company references, random details, and activities.

To play, you invite a volunteer to the front of the room and ask them to say, “Let me tell you the story of the crazy trip I recently took to…”

You’d then reveal the first slide with the location on it, at which point the participant must improvise a fictional tale about their recent visit! After a little while, you’d move to the next slide and they’d have to incorporate whatever’s on it into their story. Keep going like this for a few minutes or until the story comes to a natural end.

You’d then invite someone else to the front, ending the game when everyone has had a go (although don’t force anyone to present if they don’t want to).

There are countless reasons to play PowerPoint karaoke!

For one thing, it always leads to fun and laughter. For another, it’ll make your team feel more comfortable standing up to give a presentation – if they can do it on a whim, they can definitely do it when they’ve had time to prepare. And finally, it reveals individual personalities and brings the team closer.

Remember the “3-headed expert” game we talked about before? One-word stories is similar in the sense that participants can only contribute a word at a time. Rather than answering questions, though, their goal is to tell a story.

How to play One word stories

Start by gathering the team together and sitting in a circle.

Next, decide on a general topic to help guide the conversation. It can be anything you like – what you’re having for dinner, for instance, where you’re going on vacation next, or what you’re planning to do at the weekend.

From there, invite someone in the group to say the first word of a sentence. The person next to them then contributes the second word, and so on until the sentence is complete. Keep going until you’ve told a mini-story or it reaches a natural conclusion. You can then play again with a new topic/situation.

FYI, this game works best when you encourage everyone to be creative, spontaneous, and articulate. You can make it more interesting by adding a time constraint. If someone doesn’t say a word (that makes sense and adds to the story) in a given time frame, they’re out!

Feel free to put your own spin on this game to make it more work-related. For example, why not turn your team’s “story” into a pitch? Word by word, their task is to build a persuasive argument to win a new client for the business!

Take this approach – or anything like it – and you can improve team collaboration while simultaneously honing another vital operational element.

How to play Jump over the imaginary ball

This is a warm-up game for many theater groups. It involves leaping over an imaginary ball. Everyone should stand in a circle and the leader will throw “the ball” to a participant. They jump over it and pretend that it rolls to another person for them to jump over. The game goes until everyone has had a chance to jump.

There’s something to be said about being kind and spreading positive vibes. While it may seem like “good vibes” is just tossed around flippantly, there is compelling evidence that being excellent and complementary is good for your health.

How to play:

‍One person, likely the team leader, gets the ball rolling and asks team members to go around the circle and give a compliment to someone on their team. It can be as simple as thanking someone for being so knowledgeable and helping you figure out a computer malfunction, or more specifically, to a project the whole team is working on together.

Materials you’ll need: Just your team and, ideally, outdoor space

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

This fun and interactive game helps employees to collaborate and polish their problem-solving skills. If you want to make it even more challenging, then you can set up obstacles or choose materials that will be tricky to pick up.

Here’s how to play the game:

1. Break a larger group into smaller teams of 3.
2. Hand each team a bucket of water filled with small objects (to represent radioactive waste). Grab things like tennis balls, blocks, clips, etc.
3. Put a smaller bucket on a table a few feet away from each team.
4. Participants need to use a rope with a square knot (or whatever other method they work out) to transfer the “waste” from the larger bucket into the smaller one.
5. The team that moves all of their waste first, wins. If everyone is moving at about the same pace, then the winner will be the group who moved the most in the amount of time you allocated.

Ever had a tough day and just needed a friend to get it? Empathy brings out the warm fuzzies, letting coworkers connect on an emotional level. When folks get each other's vibes, teamwork gets a boost and bonds grow stronger.

Empathy activity - "Walk in my shoes":

• Prepare several work-related scenarios involving challenges or team conflicts.
• Pair up colleagues and assign each pair a scenario.
• Each pair takes turns playing the roles of the people involved, expressing thoughts, emotions and perspectives.
• After both roles are played, partners discuss their experiences and insights from both sides.
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This immersive role-play activity fosters a deep sense of empathy and helps colleagues better understand each other's viewpoints.

This activity is perfect for the office and smaller teams! It can be great at showing your team everyone’s role in the workplace and how everyone is connected in some way or another.

Materials needed:

• Get some yarn in different colors.
• List down tasks or roles that are team tag-teams.

Instructions on how to play:

1. Match tasks with yarn colors.
2. Pass the yarn around to show how tasks connect.
3. Talk about how communication is key.

Why it's a great team building game:

• See the ties: Makes teamwork visible with a colorful yarn masterpiece.
• Team-up time: Gets everyone working together and feeling like a united force.
• Spot the stars: Shows who the key players are in your team's success.

Top tip to help the game run smoothly: Before diving in, explain why you're doing it. Let everyone know this web thing is about teamwork and strong connections.

A classic getting-to-know-you game, Twenty Questions is fun and easy to play, taking up minimal space and great for after-work activities or as a bar game on a company retreat.

How to play:

‍Split into a team of two or small groups and assign one person who will think of an object, animal, etc. The other team members can ask twenty questions to determine the person's feelings.

Another way to keep score is to time how long it takes for those asking the questions to figure it out. If you ask 20 questions and still don’t know the answer, you lose, and the other person wins. Those who find the solution in less time are the winners and get a higher score.

Materials you’ll need: A list of topics and a timer

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

Popular in interview settings and among new teams, Pass the ball is an effective ice-breaker that both unites and energizes employees. It couldn’t be simpler to play either.

How to play Pass the ball

Standing in a circle, one person starts by throwing a ball to a colleague and asks them a question as they do so.

The catcher answers, then repeats the process with another teammate. This continues for as long as you wish to play. Potential questions include:

• “What’s your fondest childhood memory?”
• “Where did you grow up?”
• “What was the last movie you watched at the cinema?”
• “If you could have a superpower, what would it be?”
• “Would you rather have legs for arms or arms for legs?”
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To keep people entertained and inject more energy into proceedings, try to pass the ball and ask/answer questions as quickly as possible. You could also set rules (e.g. “if you drop the ball you have to do a dare” or “only open-ended questions allowed”) to add another level of fun to the game.