Library of teambuilding games & icebreakers

How to play Pretty windy

This game is fun because it’s so active and engaging, it makes for a lot of laughs! To play, you’ll need balloons and plastic cups. The goal is to blow plastic cups over using only air from an inflated balloon. You can start by lining up 5 or 10 plastic cups on an empty table. Then give each player a balloon. Everyone has one minute to blow up their balloon and then release the air from the balloon to knock the cups over or off the table. Whoever has knocked over the most cups in one minute wins.

How to play Kid photo guessing game

This game is pretty easy to put together at the last minute - everyone will just need time to print a childhood photo of themselves. To play, you’ll post each of the photos and then have staff guess which baby picture belongs to which employee. You can also pass around the photos and have everyone keep track of how many guesses they got correct. To make a competition out of it, announce a winner based on who got the most photo guesses right.

Imagine your team deciphering riddles and tackling challenges to uncover hidden city gems - that's the essence of the City Scavenger Hunt. It's like a real-life puzzle where everyone's brainpower combines to crack codes and overcome obstacles. As you explore the city together, you're not only having a blast but also boosting your problem-solving and teamwork skills. It's a chance to unravel mysteries while strengthening bonds among your teammates.

Instructions

• Form teams of players.
• Distribute riddles or clues that lead to hidden city locations.
• Players decipher riddles, solve challenges, and reach each location.
• At each location, complete the challenge to earn points.
• Document progress with photos or videos.
• The team with the most points at the end wins.
• Encourage teamwork, problem-solving, and exploration.
  ‍

Bonus tip: Make sure to choose a city with a lot of history or landmarks- the more the city has, the more options you have to choose from!

How to Desert Island Exercise

For a quick and easy icebreaker that doesn’t require any materials, try this simple question and answer exercise. Simply ask what each person would bring if they were stranded on a desert island. Then go around the room and have everyone introduce themselves, along with the one item that they would choose. They should pick one thing and then offer a brief explanation of why they chose it.

You may have played Word Association to pass the time on long journies. Well, funnily enough, it also works brilliantly as a quick team-building game!

Great for: Quick thinking, communication

Duration: 5 minutes

Players: 4+

You’ll need: Nothing

How to play Word Association

Setup: Position your group in a circle facing inwards. Players can be sitting or standing.

To play: To start the game, somebody starts with a one-word prompt. Then, play moves around the circle as each player replies with a word they strongly associate with the previous word. For example, if player one starts with the word “tree,” player two might say “leaves” and player three might follow up with “autumn.” Play moves around the circle until the time runs out.

On the subject of intimate activities, here’s another quick trust-building exercise that packs a punch. This time, all each team member has to do is maintain eye contact with a colleague for 60 seconds.

Give it a shot! Although it can feel a little awkward in the beginning, the simple act of looking into someone’s eyes can have profound effects. According to Healthline, for example, eye gazing has been shown to:

• Evoke feelings of love between strangers
• Increase the sense of connection between people (lifting the boundaries of “self” and “other”)
• Build trust between people (you’re more likely to believe someone who’s looking straight at you)

How to play Eye contact

This exercise could also be useful – not to mention challenging – for team members who are shy and struggle to hold people’s gaze. They should start to feel more comfortable making eye contact, which is a surefire sign of confidence.

At the end of the 60 seconds, follow the activity up with a discussion about the experience. What thoughts were they having throughout it? How did people feel? And how did they feel about the person they were looking at? Can they take anything from it to apply in the workplace?

Top tip: if you want to stretch this exercise out, you could have people repeat the process with a few additional teammates!

What you need:

• Stopwatch

A challenge that appears simple on the surface, which involves food and is great for teambuilding? Sign us up for that!

The spaghetti and marshmallow challenge uses common items for an experiment in creativity and communication.

Whether used for a team offsite, workshop warm-up, or an onboarding icebreaker, this game reveals how your group thinks, collaborates, and adapts under pressure, one spaghetti strand at a time.

What you’ll need:

The setup for this teambuilding activity is simple. You won’t need a full-on kitchen, but you will need some level tables. Each team should have:

• 20 sticks of uncooked spaghetti
• 1 yard (or meter) of masking tape
• 1 yard (or meter) of string
• 1 marshmallow (full-sized, not mini!)
• Scissors
• Measuring tape or ruler
• An adjustable timer on display

‍

Divide participants into teams of 4–5 people and give each group the same set of supplies. Clear a flat workspace for each team, as the towers must end up freestanding (no walls, chairs, or extra support) and hold the marshmallow at its peak for at least five seconds.

Before starting, check that every team understands that the materials are limited. Once the spaghetti breaks or the tape runs out, that’s it (sorry, no refunds or exchanges!).

How to play (step-by-step instructions)

Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how to start this teambuilding challenge:

Step 1: Brief your teams

Invite your teams into the construction site (aka the office or cafeteria) and explain the challenge clearly. Their task is to build the tallest freestanding tower possible that can hold a marshmallow on top. They’ll also be working against the clock, and the amount of time is up to you. We find that 18 minutes works best, as 15 feels too short, and 20 is a bit too long. In those 18 minutes, teams need to plan, build and test their structure. The marshmallow must be placed at the top of the tower and remain intact at the end of the countdown.

Step 2: Give out your materials

Hand out the same materials to every team (no favoritism and no extras) once they start. Encourage groups to check their supplies carefully and to delegate their roles in the group. They might get the best results if one person cuts, tapes, or tests. The key to this is collaboration right from the start, so make sure each person has a role before the building begins.

Step 3: Start the clock

Give them the countdown, then let’s get to building! The moment the countdown begins, you’ll see some teams get stuck straight into building, while others will plan more carefully. Both are fascinating to watch. Remind everyone that the marshmallow is a bit heavier than it looks, so they might want to test their structure as they go, instead of going into panic mode at the final minute.

Step 4: Check stability

When time runs out, tell each team to keep their hands off, and have them all step back. Each tower must stand on its own for at least five seconds while supporting the marshmallow. Any tower that collapses or leans on outside support is disqualified (no exceptions!).

Step 5: Measure and celebrate your noodle champions

Use your measuring tape to see whose tower stands tallest. Take a moment to consider your chosen winner, and once you’ve decided, start saying what you like about the non-winning towers. Every team should get a little shoutout for their designs, even if they are super wonky! This is a light-hearted teambuilding challenge, so keep it light with cheers for losers and team photos. Those crooked towers are often the most memorable.

Facilitator tip:

Encourage participants to iterate quickly and test early. The most successful teams usually build, break, and rebuild rather than overanalyzing. As the facilitator, resist giving design advice, as the discovery process is where the real teamwork happens.

Debrief: What did teams learn?

The challenge is playful on the surface, but there’s a whole lot of teambuilding happening in a short amount of time. Watching towers rise and collapse in real time sets the gears in motion for communication and being able to adapt when faced with uncertainty.

• Prototype beats perfection: The most successful teams are the ones that try new ideas and test them early, not those who spend 15 minutes planning and 3 minutes building. Early prototypes bring flaws to the surface and teach teams that feedback and iteration matter more than rigid plans.

• Communication makes or breaks the build: With the clock ticking, good communication becomes a team’s strongest tool. Actively listening to each other and sharing decision-making can turn chaos into collaboration. Those who communicate most often have the greatest output.

• Leadership and flexibility: Strong leaders will emerge naturally, but the best leaders are able to delegate, encourage and adapt, without trying to control everything. Every failed tower is a reminder that shared ownership leads to better outcomes than one-person command.

• Embracing and iterating on failure: Try as we might to stop it, every first attempt is likely to tumble. That’s the whole point. Your teams will learn quickly that recovery and rebuilding are as valuable in games as they are in your office projects. 

FAQs

How long does the challenge take?

The session usually lasts around 25 to 30 minutes, including the setup, build and short debrief at the end. It’s perfect as a warm-up activity or energizer during a workshop or offsite.

Can the challenge be done virtually?

With the right preparation, yes, the challenge can be done remotely. Each member can build their own mini tower at home while joining a shared video call. Materials can be mailed in advance or substituted with what people have on hand.

‍What’s the ideal team size?

Generally, groups of four to five work best. Smaller teams communicate faster, while larger ones can quickly become tangled in too many ideas.

How to play Keychain Sharing

Sometimes bringing a physical object into play can add a new and more personal element. For this activity, have everyone sit in a circle and then place their keyring in front of them. Everyone should talk about which keys are on their ring and why.

They can also talk about any keychains they have and why they are meaningful. Go around in a circle clockwise or counter-clockwise and make sure everyone has a chance to share uninterrupted. If you want to take things a step further, take another spin around the group and have everyone share one insight they gained by hearing about others’ keys.

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.

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.

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.

Letter game masters will enjoy this one. Wordwheel is a vocabulary game that really gets your brain into gear. Wordwheel relies on quick thinking and seeking the jackpot word. You need to look up some 9-letter words beforehand. These words will be used inside your wordwheel.  

How to Play:

Draw a wheel on the board that has 8 segments on the outside, and one circle in the middle for the 9th key letter. 2 teams need to create as many as possible using the middle letter and any of the others. Set a timer and see how many words your teams come up with. Remember: there is one 9-letter word that’s worth 5 points, so encourage your teams to find this one too!

How to play Value vs. feature

Knowing the difference between a feature and a benefit is essential, especially for more complex offerings like technology or industrial supplies. To begin with, everyone will need to review a document or a matrix that lists features as well as the benefits associated with each (obviously this is something you’ll need to prepare in advance if you don’t already have something like this created). Then, bring your group together for a virtual meeting and run through the different features or benefits. Pick them randomly so there’s no pattern.

After you share one, participants should chime in with whether that was a feature or a benefit. Finally, host a discussion about how easy or difficult the process was, and how people can better differentiate in the future.

Taking the principles of Kanban we learned earlier, now is a great time to make a personal version that prioritizes focus and streamlines workloads. Kanban boards are usually used for team projects but work just as well for a single person. This activity reinforces the Kanban concept: tracking work in stages to keep workflow steady.

Set up:

Each person needs a basic Kanban board, either on a physical whiteboard or on their computer. Each board needs three columns, just keep it basic for the first version. Try “To Do,” “In Progress,” and “Done.” Get them to write every task for that day or week onto a sticky note (electronic ones are available too) and move each one slowly onto the board. Encourage them to keep a holistic view, so as not to overload the “in progress” section. Simple activities like this can help staff who may feel overloaded. Ask everyone to reflect afterward on how their tasks are managed, and record the insights.

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.

You know that friend who's always got your back? Consistency is like that—being reliable, so colleagues know they can count on you. It's the secret ingredient for building trust and teamwork.

Consistency activity - Recognition raffle:

• Establish a recognition program that rewards consistent behaviors and contributions.
• Introduce a system where colleagues can earn tickets or tokens for displaying consistent positive actions, such as punctuality, collaboration, or going the extra mile.
• Collect the earned tickets and hold regular raffle drawings where participants have a chance to win small rewards or incentives.
• Celebrate the winners and highlight their consistent efforts to reinforce a culture of reliability and teamwork.
  ‍

This activity motivates colleagues to maintain a high standard of performance and contributes to a harmonious and supportive work environment.

As well as being a good energizing activity for large groups, Your North is a great exercise for sparking conversation about the importance of team alignment and direction. Even better, it’s also simple and fun to play.

Here’s how it works:

1. Ask the group to stand up, leaving plenty of space between them (everyone should be able to put their arms out to the side without touching anyone or anything)
2. Show the team where north is (this could really be north if you have a compass on your phone, but feel free to make it up otherwise!)
3. Tell everyone to cover their eyes with their left hand and spin around 10 times, keeping their eyes covered the whole time
4. When they’re done, ask everyone to stretch out their arm and point toward where they believe north is now (their eyes should still be shut)
5. The team can then open their eyes to see the many different directions in which people are pointing

How to play Group Map

Are you hosting an event where people come from various locations? Try laying out an imaginary map in a room representing all the areas people may have come from. Have them stand in their “place of origin” and share a bit about where they came from. You could also print a large map and have everyone place a pin on their area. The important thing is to share some information about where they’ve come from.

How to host Food drive competition or poll

There is great joy in helping the community around you, and your staff surely agrees. Invite your staff to bring in nonperishable food that counts toward a prize. You can make things really straightforward and provide small incentives for every item donated, or you can make things a little more fun. Setting up a “food pantry poll” is a fun idea that is more interactive. Create a poll about something that impacts everyone in the company, where they can share an opinion, and then have the non-perishable food items be “votes”.

So, for example, you might have a poll regarding where to hold the company holiday party. Offer a few choices, and then have people bring in canned goods toward their favorite option. Set up boxes with the choices written on them, and have people drop their items in the box. In the end, the box with the most items is the winning option. This is a fun way to make some non-critical decisions and a great way to help others.

How to play:

Divide the team into small groups and provide each group with art supplies. Assign a theme or topic and ask the groups to create a collaborative artwork together.

Materials needed: Art supplies (paper, paints, brushes, etc.)

Benefits:

• Masterpieces fueled by teamwork: Prepare to be dazzled by the artistic symphony that unfolds before your eyes. Each stroke of the brush and every imaginative idea blends together like a symphony, resulting in a collaborative artwork that's a testament to the creative genius lurking within your team.

It’s time to see who’s the office know-it-all with trivia smackdown! Split into teams, answer rapid-fire trivia questions, and see who can come out on top. You’ll cover everything from history to pop culture—and probably learn who’s been secretly binge-watching obscure documentaries.

This is a laid-back activity to get the team thinking and laughing, and maybe stir up some friendly rivalry.

How to play:

• Form teams and answer trivia questions in rounds.
• Keep track of points, and the team with the most correct answers wins.
• Bragging rights are included in the prize.

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.

Effective collaboration is all about working together to achieve a common goal. It involves putting your ego to one side for the good of the team, listening to what others have to say, and responding positively instead of dismissing their ideas.

We love the Ad game because it hones in on each of these aspects of collaboration – as well as many others!

Here’s how it works:

After dividing your team into groups of at least 3 people, you give each group a particular item, such as a chair, plant pot, or cup. Feel free to tell them what they have, rather than literally giving something to them!

Each group then takes turns to provide extra information about their item, adding more and more details until they’ve turned it into a revolutionary new product.

Let’s say you gave a coffee cup to someone in Group 1. Someone in the group will start by making a statement about it, such as, “This mug has a giant handle”. Everyone in the room then yells “YES!” as if it’s the best idea they’ve ever heard.

Someone else in Group 1 then says “and”, before adding another detail (“And it has a special lid on it that functions as a coffee plunger”).

This process continues, with each group member adding further details and the entire team agreeing with their idea, until they’ve fleshed out their product and decided on a name for it. You can even take it a step further by getting them to create a tagline and identify a celebrity to endorse it.

Do this for each group until everyone’s had a turn. By the end of the game, you’ll have giggled, groaned, exercised your creative sides, and worked together in a wholly positive fashion.

How to play Bean Bag Toss

Instructions: Set up a bean bag toss board with different-sized holes and assign point values to each hole. Participants take turns throwing bean bags and aim to score the highest points. The player with the highest score after a set number of rounds wins.

Materials needed: Bean bag toss board, bean bags.

Bean Bag Toss is a versatile game that suits all ages and skill levels. It promotes hand-eye coordination, focus, and friendly competition. It encourages social interaction and allows participants to engage in casual conversation while playing.