In last month’s blog, we explored the benefits of team-building activities for your organization. Those benefits range from enhancing motivation to boosting productivity to amping up creativity and helping your team develop a deeper level of trust as they communicate with each other. Team building exercises can also make a world of difference when it comes to employee job satisfaction.

While we realize that you may be sold on adding team building into your approach to leadership, we also recognize that it may be challenging to know where to start. So, today we’re sharing some of our go-to ideas for team-building exercises to help you begin to brainstorm some interactive sessions that might work best for your company culture. (And of course, you can always reach out to our team for support in exploring, improving, or implementing these approaches if you’d like some help!)

1. Scavenger Hunts

One of the keys to designing your team building experiences is to decide what the overall focus or purpose of the activity or set of activities will be. 

For example: Are you focused on developing communication, collaboration, alignment on goal setting, or team problem-solving? Or are you looking for the opportunity to evaluate your employees potential for leadership roles or unique skill sets you may need for new team roles as they evolve and emerge?

When it comes to scavenger hunts, the activity itself allows you to address a number of these areas at once including assessing leadership capabilities (who takes responsibility for the list of prompts?), critical thinking abilities (who is actively engaged in the riddles themselves?), and collaboration (how well do the teams work together?).

Scavenger hunts often work best when teams are in the same location but may be adapted for remote working teams with some forethought and creativity. So, don’t feel that you can’t make this activity work for you if you lead a hybrid team. To make it easier, check out Scavify as a great online tool you can use to build out your scavenger hunt. 

2. Escape Rooms

Escape rooms are a fun experiential way to get all team members involved in deep work and problem-solving. They often require multi-step, high-stress critical thinking rather than the more playful approach that most scavenger hunts take. 

These challenges can help you to see how your teams function together under pressure, lead one another, express themselves when dealing with frustration, and address novel circumstances. While you may eventually see these skills on display in an employee during the course of business, it’s often during a crisis or challenging business event, and understanding ahead of time how they may handle that experience can be of great value to you and your team.

Escape room outings for in-person teams can also include dinner or other events to connect the team if such events are deemed appropriate. Getting the team together in a relaxed atmosphere before or after the challenge to prepare or to celebrate.

While this suggestion may at first glance appear to work only for teams that are on-location, there are digital escape room puzzle games that organizations can take advantage of if they’d like. While it may not offer the same experience as the in-person event, it is a fun approach that gets remote teams connecting and brainstorming together. Check out Escapely as a great virtual recourse to build out your next escape room team builder. 

3. Office Trivia

Getting your office together, whether in person or virtually, for a round of office trivia can be a great team-building activity. 

You could create questions based on the history of the company, the handbook, company procedures, what each department is responsible for, and the like. Or, you could play a typical trivia game like Trivial Pursuit or a pop-culture-based trivia game instead of one based on your own organization.

Playing in teams for this activity fosters collaboration, supportive communication, and trust. This is also a great chance to see how your teams work together and whether any rifts may be evident even during a fun and friendly competition.

Plus, creating a tradition like this, whether annual or quarterly, is also a great way to build company culture and friendly competition. And for remote working teams, check out The Go Game to learn how you can make a virtual game show your next team building exercise. 

4. Office Book Club

One team-building exercise that’s ever-growing in its popularity is the office-wide or department-wide book club. Whether you have a distributed or in-person team, this activity is simple to implement and can occur year-round with monthly or quarterly events or check-ins.

The book club allows participants to connect, learn in the community, use higher-order thinking skills, reflect, engage with one another, and share their perspectives respectfully. 

It also allows you to ensure that members of your organization are growing professionally throughout the year as books can be chosen by department or organization leaders for a particular purpose.

The book club could also lead to additional events or get-togethers throughout the year which enhance the camaraderie of those who choose to join and participate actively. The possibilities are expansive. 

5. Team Value Exploration

If you have a team that is multidisciplinary or one that’s new or evolving, you know: it can be challenging to develop cohesion across the group. 

One way to help your teams develop a sense of connection is through a team-building exercise or set of exercises focused on value alignment. 

Values form the foundation of the team and relate to their employee responsibilities more effectively. After all, they arrive to work in your organization with personal values, then they join a team and are expected to adopt that team’s values and goals.

So, they must understand what those values are. That way each team member can take on their role with greater clarity of purpose as they work toward the organization’s goals.

Whether you have your teams map their values on sheets of paper, list them and share them, or circle up and share them in a discussion format, there is value in creating space for value-defining and value-exploring exercises for team building. For some inspo on which value exploration games make sense for your organization, check out this list of ideas from Indeed. 

6. Volunteering

You’ve probably heard how our Revelation Creative team lauds the benefits of giving back to the community through charitable giving, but did you know that you can even make a difference with your team building experiences? 

Volunteering is a great way to give back and enhance team cohesion. Not only can you see who takes the lead, how teams work together, who accepts responsibility for what role, and how certain people’s personalities and skills shine throughout the day’s activities, you also get the opportunity to provide support to a worthwhile cause in the process.

Volunteering with an organization that aligns with your company values can enhance your team members’ job satisfaction and instill in them a sense that they’re a part of something bigger than themselves. It can also help them to feel really good about the role they play in your organization. It also signals to your employees that your company cares about more than just the bottom line. 

In the end, the volunteering team building experience is a valuable one for a myriad of reasons.

Would You Like Support in Making Team Building a Part of Your Company Culture?

We’d love to help. 

Contact our Revelation Creative team to get started!