Whether your team is fully remote or in the office, a great way to bring your team members together, promote deeper employee relationships, and increase productivity is through quick team building activities. Not all team building techniques require a weekend away or hours in a seminar. Instead, invest in your team members with quick, effective team building activities right in the office or online. It's no secret that teams who work well together, stay together. As your team’s leader, it's up to you to facilitate a healthy work environment and foster meaningful relationships with your team members.
Remote Team Building Activities
For remote teams, it can be difficult to feel connected. Physical distance can often translate into emotional distance, leading to communication struggles and loss of coordinated productivity. Even apart, you can implement quick team building activities that foster cooperation and create a space for team relationships to grow.
Victory/Struggle Activity
At the beginning of a work day or right before your team signs off for the evening, have your remote team come together and share the pros and cons of their day. Have each team member go around and share one win they experienced that day and one struggle they encountered.
This allows remote teams the opportunity to cheer on their fellow team member’s successes and offer support for tough issues. Through the positives, each remote team member will have the opportunity to acknowledge the victories they are accomplishing as a team and experience a reward for their own successes. Through the negatives, team members may foster support through finding others with similar struggles or finding solutions through team problem solving.
Get to Know You Activity
It’s easy to get to know a team member’s work style or what they each for lunch break, but how well do the remote members of your team really know each other? Take slips of paper and write simple questions on each one, like ‘What’s your favorite food?’ or ‘What was your best childhood birthday present?’. Choose a slip of paper for each team member and have them answer the question.
This team building activity is quick, but it provides the opportunity to get to know more about each member in a fun and light hearted way. Some might find they have a lot in common with their team and others might discover many unique qualities about those they work with.
Remote Competition Activity
Get your remote team out of their desk chairs with exciting competitions and team building tasks. These competitions can come in many forms, so get creative. For example, have each team member grab a package of toilet paper rolls from their home. Have the host time a toilet paper stacking competition where everyone can race to create the tallest tower before time runs out. Enjoy some laughs and maybe a prize for the winner.
If interactive competitions won’t work for your team, find a remote team building game website. Many sites offer games and challenges where your team can log on together and compete.
In-Office Team Building Activities
Even when teams can come together in the office, communication and cooperation still take work. Dedicating some time to team building activities can create a lasting impact for your team productivity and workplace environment.
Describe and Guess Activity
Effective communication is one of the most important aspects of a healthy team. Create quick opportunities for your team members to work on how they communicate with one another. Write random nouns, on slips of paper. They can be office related, funny, or themed to add some excitement to the game. Have your team split up into two competing teams. Each team member will have 30 seconds to try and describe the noun on a slip of paper without saying the word. Their team will try and guess off of their description. The team who guesses the most words, and communicates the most effectively, will win!
This team building activity can emphasize the personal dynamic between team members and highlight areas of communication that can be improved. In addition, your team will have fun!
Team Scavenger Hunt
While it may take a little more time and effort, sending your team on a scavenger hunt around the office, or even around town, can provide a range of positive benefits. Let your team work as a whole or have each member team up with a partner. Create your own riddles to find clues or find an online company that can create scavenger hunt steps for you to enjoy.
This type of team building activity allows team members to work on key problem solving skills, foster cooperative and engaging relationships with coworkers, and communicate effectively as a team.
Human Knot Activity
Connect with coworkers while communicating and working together. Have each member of your team stand shoulder-to-shoulder in a circle. Each member will reach out their right hand and take the hand of anyone across the circle. They will do the same, grabbing a different hand, with their left hand. Set a timer and have the team work together to untangle their knot without releasing their hands.
This team building activity will create laughs, team work, and communication between team members. Beyond the productivity improvements, this task can also help identify leaders by who takes charge of the tangled mess.
Quick team building activities incorporated into your in-person or remote workplace can help improve productivity, foster meaningful relationships, and promote connectivity for your team members. Don’t spend hours listening to an un-engaging speaker or take a budget breaking trip for your team. Instead, invest in team building right from the office in ways that make a big impact in little time.