Library of teambuilding games & icebreakers

Regardless of how cohesive your team is, at some point, you’re going to encounter disagreements. Online office debates are a playful way of developing public speaking, communication and listening skills that will come in useful during real-life debates.

How to play Online office debates

To organise an online office debate, select two people to go head-to-head in a meaningless debate. The topic could be silly, such as “No one should ever tell a lie” or “Pineapple belongs on pizza.” One person argues “for” the topic while the other argues “against.”

The two presenters can argue their case using any means necessary, they might want to create a PowerPoint presentation and share their screen or back up their points with YouTube videos. After the presentations have been delivered, it’s time for the audience to decide the winner.

This game is another version of story-telling, but with a few twists that make it a little more involved. This game is really more of an improv exercise.

How to play Late for work

1. Begin by choosing a “stage” where the game will play out - it should be a spot that everyone present has a clear view of.
2. The first person will kick things off by entering the space and pretending to be late for work. They should come up with a funny or outlandish reason why they are late, and elaborate.
3. A second person will play the “boss” and ask why they are late. Here again, the more personality they show, the better. Once those two complete their “scene”, they sit down to observe the others, and the process begins again.
4. Two more volunteers will come up and improv the late to work scene, using a new work venue and new excuses. The game is complete once everyone has had a chance to pair off and do the exercise.

Dabble is another great letter game that combines elements of Scrabble with crossword puzzles. 2 or more players compete to create five unique words. These words must be 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 letters long each, using 20 tiles. Easy to pick up, difficult to master!

How to Play:

1. Each player receives 20 letter tiles
2. Race to create a 2-letter, 3-letter, 4-letter, 5-letter and 6-letter word using your tiles.
3. The first player to finish all five words wins the race, but then scores are counted depending on the value of each letter.

This one is fast, fun, and utterly addictive!

How to play:

Choose thought-provoking topics or issues and divide the team into two groups: one supporting the topic and the other opposing it. Engage in a lively 1 minute debate where participants use their creativity and persuasive skills to make their case. Choose a judge to pick a winner.

Example: a poor person stealing food to feed their family.

Materials needed: None

Benefits:

• Critical thinking champions: Sharpen your team's critical thinking skills as they analyze and present arguments with a creative twist. This game is your intellectual battleground, where creativity becomes your secret weapon.
• Confidence boosters: Embrace the art of persuasive communication and witness your employees' confidence soar as they present their arguments with flair and creativity. It's like a TED Talk where your team members become eloquent speakers with powerful messages.

At the office, heavy workloads and busy schedules can prevent friendships from blossoming. Therefore, from time to time, it’s critical to leave the hubbub of the office behind and escape to the beach for some well-earned chill time.

Great for: Interpersonal relationships, stress reduction

Duration: As long as you like!

You’ll need: Various beach games like frisbee, volleyball, etc.

How to prepare:

• Mark a day in your employees' calendar for a relaxing beach day. It could be a one-off event, or you could integrate recurring beach days as part of your employee benefits package.
• Head to the beach for a day of tanning, beach games and swimming. If there are waves in your region, you could arrange for your team to join a surf lesson!

How to play Story cubes

Another worldwide classic game that has stood the test of time is “Story Cubes.” There are hundreds of variations of stories available, from simple daily scenarios to extravagant and epic fantasies.

The game is open-ended and revolves around a collection of cubes. Each side of a cube has an idea that continues a story, in a chain of events. Scour online resources for some templates, or create your own. Sometimes, the more random, the better!

How to play Solving a riddle

If you don’t have time for an entire case study resolution, start simpler: a riddle. Check our article with plenty of riddles that don’t take a lot of time to solve. You might want to make it a little contest, and begin by sharing the riddle and seeing which team can solve it first. Need some inspiration? This one is from the classic book, the Hobbit: “This thing all things devours; Birds, beasts, trees, flowers; Gnaws iron, bites steel; Grinds hard stones to meal; Slays king, ruins town; Beats the high mountain down. What is it?” The answer is time!

‍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.

There’s no shortage of reasons to play Pass the clap. A genuine crowd-pleaser, it’ll energize the team, get people into a focused mindset, and put smiles on their faces – all while bringing everyone together without putting too much pressure on any individual. Oh, and it’s so short and sweet that it’s suitable for any occasion!

How to play pass the clap

Start Pass the clap by getting the team into a big circle, facing inward. Their task, as the name suggests, is to “pass the clap” from one member to another.

To do so, whoever begins with the clap (feel free to take this role for yourself or assign it to someone else) must make eye contact with a colleague. When they return it, you both clap your hands at the same time, while maintaining eye contact.

They now have the clap and have to make eye contact with another teammate (clapping as they do so) to pass it on again. And so it continues! Keep going for as long as you want, speeding up the whole time. To make things more interesting, you could also introduce another “clapper” so that 2 separate claps get passed at once.

Now, you might be wondering how standing around and clapping is going to help with team collaboration! But you’d be surprised…

Not only are you making eye contact with each other, which is known to improve relationships, but you’re also staying in sync with the entire group – especially as you speed up. As a result, you’re in tune with each other, communicating non-verbally, and working hard not to make mistakes.

It’s a useful lesson in how to keep up and work together in fast-paced, high-intensity environments.

How to host Video game projection

Do you have some gamers in your crew? If so, set up a large projection screen, some comfy seating, snacks, and drinks, and let everyone go nuts. Make sure you have a variety of controllers and games available and plenty of space for everyone who is not actively playing a game at the moment. Keep things really comfortable and casual. This is a great activity for an office-takeover type of event or a fun Friday activity to close out the week.

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 Paper Plane Contest

Instructions: Each participant creates their own paper airplane using a standard sheet of paper. Measure the distance or time each plane stays in the air. The person with the longest distance or longest airtime wins.

Materials needed: Sheets of paper.

Prepare to fold, fly, and fiercely compete in the epic Paper Plane Contest. It's a creative extravaganza that will take your team back to childhood dreams of aeronautical glory. Bring your finest folding skills, unleash your inner innovator, and get ready to soar to victory in this friendly battle of airborne awesomeness.

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 well do your team really know each other? Team Trivia is a fun and simple game that will put your employee’s relationships to the test.

Great for: Interpersonal bonding

Duration: 10 minutes

Players: 6+

You’ll need: Nothing

How to play Team Trivia

Setup: Before you can play Team Trivia, you need to compile interesting facts about your employees. The easiest way to do this is to send out a survey designed to extract as many cool facts as possible.

To play: Team Trivia can be played online or in person, making it a great solution for remote teams. Bring your team together and start asking questions to your team. These can be things that they might already know, like, “Who is the tallest member of the team?” Or things they will need to guess at, like, “Who in the office has eight siblings?” The player with the most correct answers is the winner!

If you’re looking for a serious game that teaches the value of collaboration in a plain and no-nonsense manner…then this one definitely isn’t it!

Hello kitty’s a super simple improv game that’s all about being silly, getting involved, having fun, and making each other laugh. And, ultimately, that’s what improv games are all about. The fact they forge tighter bonds between teammates is a bonus.

How to play Hello kitty

Hello kitty couldn’t be easier to play either. Suitable for groups of any size, you start by dividing employees into two teams: kittens and puppies. Next, separate everyone into pairs, where one partner’s a kitten and the other’s a puppy.

The puppy’s job is to say hello with one goal in mind: to make their partner smile, chuckle, laugh out loud – anything that shows they’re amused. The kitten’s job is to keep a straight face. Expect all sorts of funny voices, impressions, and gestures to follow! What happens if/when they succeed, you ask?

The kitten turns into a puppy, of course! They can then both turn their attention to any remaining kittens who are yet to laugh. The game ends when everyone has joined the puppy team. By then – having exercised your creative sides and laughed a lot – you should all be feeling energized, light, and closer to your teammates.

Can you imagine a scenario where the TV is on mute and you lose the remote? Well, as horrific as this may sound, there may be some fun in this. Welcome to TV On Sound Off - an engaging activity that sharpens your active observation and interpretation skills.

How to play

1. Assemble your colleagues in a comfortable space with a TV or projector where you can watch a show or movie of your choice.
2. Turn off the sound completely, no subtitles allowed. You're going to rely solely on visual cues.
3. Start with a scene from the show or movie. Make sure it has a mix of dialogue and action.
4. Each participant takes turns guessing what the characters are saying and what's happening in the plot. Keep it concise and imaginative.
5. After everyone has had a turn, unmute the sound and compare your guesses with what actually transpired in the scene.
6. Discuss what you've learned about active observation, interpretation, and the value of non-verbal cues.

How to host a video contest

Short-form videos have become extremely popular - just look at the success of platforms like TikTok. Let everyone bring their inner influencer out by creating their own video to share with everyone. This can be a really exciting competition and great for team-building. It works best with smaller teams. Break people into groups and give them one hour to script, produce, and polish their video content.

You can either let their imaginations run wild or choose a theme for everyone to work with. Make sure everyone has access to necessary video editing software or other tools so that they can make their video even if they’re beginners. Have a great prize ready for the winner - bonus points for a movie-themed gift like theater tickets or “movie night basket” with an Amazon card, popcorn, and snacks.

How to play Times tables

This one will take everyone back to third-grade! Print out the old-fashioned multiplication or division worksheets that you can find online. You can find many of them with 100 problems. Set the timer for a minute and see who can answer the most (correctly).

How to play Cookie monster

Who doesn’t love cookies? In this game, each player puts a single cookie on their forehead and tries to get it into their mouth using only their facial muscles - no hands. This is tougher than it looks but leads to a lot of comical moments.

Ever thought puns could be more than just a groan-inducing joke? Enter the Pun Battle, where quick wit and humor go head-to-head in a hilarious showdown. It's the ultimate test of pun prowess!

How to play

1. Assemble your colleagues who are up for a punny challenge. Make sure you have a clear space for the contest.
2. Participants pair off for 1v1 battles. Decide who goes first, perhaps with a coin toss.
3. The first punster delivers their pun, aiming to make their opponent laugh. The opponent must maintain a poker face.
4. The puns can be on any topic or theme (within reason), and the goal is to be as clever and funny as possible. There's no room for mercy in this pun war!
5. If the opponent laughs, even just a giggle, the punster who made them crack up wins the round.
6. The victor stays in the ring for the next challenger. Keep the laughter going until you have a reigning pun champion.
7. After the contest, discuss the power of puns in breaking the ice and improving active listening.

How to play:

Write down various safety scenarios on slips of paper (e.g., "using a fire extinguisher," "performing CPR") and place them in a hat. Divide employees into teams and have them take turns drawing a slip and acting out the scenario without speaking, while their team guesses what it is.

Safety charades showdown adds a playful twist to learning important safety procedures. It encourages teamwork and creativity while reinforcing vital safety knowledge. Watching coworkers try to mime "emergency exit plan" is always entertaining.

How to play Role reversal

This game is all about understanding conflicts from different perspectives. We're going to act out conflict scenarios and then swap roles to see how the other side feels. It's like stepping into someone else's shoes, but without the actual shoe-swapping part! It's a great way to build empathy and gain fresh insights on how to overcome teamwork challenges in the workplace. Get ready to embrace different perspectives!

How to play Share your superpower

Another easy variation on an icebreaker is to share what your superpower would be. As everyone stands and introduces themselves, ask them to include some information on the special talents that make them unique. They can use their imagination for most desired superpowers like teleporting, or they can list some actual talents such as speedy present-wrapping or fantastic filing. It’s a nice way to learn a bit more about the people around you and what makes them special (plus, you might learn about who you can go to when you need some help with certain tasks).

Nine times out of 10, asking your team “How are you guys doing?” returns this answer: “Good, thanks.” If you’re looking for an alternative way of checking in with your team, Draw Your Mood is a great solution.

Great for: Expressing moods

Duration: 10 minutes

Players: 6+

You’ll need: Paper, pens

How to play Draw Your Mood

Setup: Draw your mood is another game that can be played in person or online. If you’re playing in person, hand each player a piece of paper and a pen. If you’re playing online, players can use the integrated whiteboard feature on their video conferencing software such as Zoom Whiteboard.

To play: Ask each player to draw a visual representation of their mood. They can use words, images and symbols—you name it! After 5 minutes or so, ask your employees to present their drawings one by one.