Games that teach teamwork

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This problem-solving activity will help students learn to communicate effectively. Before the game begins, build a small sculpture with LEGO bricks or building blocks and keep it covered in an area that is of equal distance from all the groups. Divide your students into teams of four or five, and give each team enough blocks to duplicate the structure. To begin the game, reveal the structure, and one member from each team is allowed to come up to look at it closely for 10 seconds, trying to memorize it before returning to their team.

Once they return to their team, they have 25 seconds to instruct the group on how to build a replica of the structure. After one minute of trying to recreate it, another member from each team can come up for a sneak peek before returning to their team and trying again.

The game continues until one of the teams successfully recreates the original structure. Divide students into groups of six or eight or larger if you want to make the task more difficult. Provide each team with an image and blank pieces of white card stock, one per team member.

First, each team must cut up the image into the same number of pieces as there are group members. Then, each player will take one of the pieces of the image and reproduce it onto their blank piece of card stock with pencils, colored pencils, or markers. If the team cuts the image into irregularly shaped pieces, each team member must then cut their blank paper into the same shape.

When every team has created the pieces of their puzzle, they will switch pieces with another team. The team will work together to solve the puzzle. This activity helps kids work on listening, coordinating, and strategizing skills. It works best with smaller students. Have your students stand in a big circle.

Ask all the other students to join hands to close up the circle. The objective of the game is to pass the hula hoop all the way around the circle without unclasping hands. Students will have to figure out how to maneuver their bodies all the way through the hoop to pass it on. This is a great activity to support nonverbal communication skills. Choose ten students to participate in the first round.

The others can gather around the edges and watch. Designate a player one. To begin, player one makes eye contact no words or hand motions with another player player two and gives them a signal that means go.

When player two says go, player one starts moving slowly toward them to take their place in the circle. Player two then makes eye contact with another player player three and gives them a signal meaning go and starts moving toward them. After the first round, switch out the teams until everyone has had a chance to play. In this game, your students stand in a circle and raise their arms with only their index fingers extended.

Tell the students they must maintain a fingertip on the hula hoop at all times, but are not allowed to hook their finger around it or otherwise hold the hoop; the hoop must simply rest on the tips of their fingers.

The challenge is for the children to lower the hoop to the ground without dropping it. To make this more challenging, you can place communication constraints on the children—no talking or limited talking, for example.

Watch the video for a demonstration. This activity is good for encouraging kids to mix it up. Students must break into groups of that size. The goal is to form different groups of individuals every time. If a person tries to join a group with whom they have already partnered, they must find a different group.

After a few rounds, the process may take a bit of rearranging. This is a fun name game that requires quick thinking! Students stand in a large circle. One student comes to the middle. That student walks around the inside of the circle, stops in front of one person, and gives them a direction.

The student who was given the direction races to say the name of the correct person before the student finishes the phrase. This activity requires coordination and communication. Divide students into groups of between four and six people. Have the students in each group stand in a straight line with their right hand on the shoulder of the person in front of them and their left leg forward so that the person in front of them can hold their ankle.

The group then sees how far they can hop along together without toppling over. Once groups get the hang of hopping, you can hold a competition to see who can hop the farthest or longest. Source: Nick Cornwell. This hands-on group challenge is an exercise in patience and perseverance, not to mention a total blast! Decide how many students you want in each group and tie that number of strings to a single rubber band, making one for each group. Each person in the group holds onto one of the strings attached to the rubber band, and, as a group, they use this device to pick up the cups by expanding and contracting the rubber band and place them on top of each other in order to build a pyramid.

See detailed instructions here. This activity helps students negotiate and work together toward a common goal. Make a list of tasks on chart paper, assigning a point value for each job.

For example: Do 25 jumping jacks 5 points ; make up a nickname for each member of the class 5 points ; get every person in the class to sign a piece of paper 15 points ; form a conga line and conga from one end of the room to the other 5 points, 10 bonus points if anyone joins you ; etc.

Make sure you list enough tasks to take up more than 10 minutes. Divide your students into groups of five or six and give them 10 minutes to collect as many points as they can by deciding which tasks from the list to perform.

You need a large open space for this game. Have students spread out and guide them through a few rounds of forming letters with their bodies. Start with two-letter words, then three, then four. If students want a challenge, come up with a phrase that will take the whole class to complete.

Form groups of between three and five students. One person from each group the finder steps out of the classroom. The rest of the group picks an object for instance, the pencil sharpener in the classroom for the finder to find. Before your regular staff meeting, break your team into groups. Instruct the groups to find out one commonality among themselves.

It might be a hobby or an interest they all do, or having the same favorite genre of music or favorite food. Once they discover a commonality they can agree on, they create a list of what might be stereotypical qualities of such people. Then, the groups come together to announce to the rest of the groups who they are.

The Roller Coaster Buffs, for example, might periodically raise their arms and holler, or the Jane Austenites might rephrase all of their speech to co-workers as quotes from Jane Austen books. At the completion of the meeting or day , talk about stereotypes that we assign to people. Talk about how people managed to find a commonality, and the process it took to dig it up.

Purpose: The idea is to force your team to confront the foolish nature of stereotypes and how, if people really behaved as we casually write them off to be, the office would be much different. The game also reveals the ability of a seemingly random group of people to find a commonality.

To do this, remove key nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Create a worksheet in which the removed words are shown as a blank line with instructions on what kind of word is needed. In groups of two, have one team member ask for the correct type of word and the other team member supply the word.

Or, if you do not want to break the team into groups, ask the team as a whole to supply one word at a time.

Once there are enough words, read the mission statement back. It will sound silly. Now that the team knows what the goal is, ask them for the same word types. See what kinds of words they supply. Repeat the exercise until you get a mission statement that the team feels is correct. A variation is to categorize the types of words before the first round. So, tell them you are looking for words that apply to the team without telling them you are working on a mission statement. By stripping away the jargon and stiffness and allowing the mission statement to go through several rounds of nonsense, you allow your team to help you craft a statement that is more relaxed and honest.

Using wooden blocks or an actual Jenga game, mark blocks according to the hierarchies present in your company. For example, you might have some blocks denoted as the IT department, and others as HR. Divide your team into groups, giving them an equal number and kind of blocks. From here, either specify the type of structure each team must build, or provide guidelines and allow them to build any structure they want. When the time limit has been reached, each team, taking turns, must begin to remove a block at a time without destroying their structure.

Do not inform them ahead of time that you will be asking them to do this. If time allows, you may ask them to repeat the exercise. See if they find a way to build a structure that can withstand removal of blocks. Purpose: This exercise is meant to show how each department and the various managers and staff positions are necessary to complete the task, and that without everyone in place, things fall apart.

Divide your team into groups of two each. Have each person sit with their back to the other. One person will have a picture. The other person will have a blank sheet of paper and a pen. The team member with the picture must not show the other person the image.

Instead, the are to describe the image without using words that give it away, while the other team member is to draw what is being described. For example, the picture might be of an elephant standing on a ball. After a set time limit, the drawing time ends and both team members view the original picture and the drawing. Purpose: This is an exercise that focuses on communication and language.

While the final drawing will seldom look like the picture, it is revealing to participants to see how different the interpretation of instructions can be even when they are supposedly talking about the same thing. Gather your team in a circle, and have them sit down. Each team member should then put on a provided blindfold.

Leave the circle. Instruct them to form a perfect square out of the rope without removing their blindfolds. You can introduce variations into this game. For example, you might, at random, instruct a team member to not speak. One by one, members of the group are muted, making communication more challenging. Or, let the team come up with a plan before putting on the blindfold, but once they cannot see, they also cannot talk.

Purpose: This exercise deals with both communication and leadership styles. There will inevitably be team members who want to take charge, and others who want to be given direction. The team will have to work together to create the square, and find a way to communicate without being able to see. On name tags or similar labels, write down the name of a famous person, or write down people types e.

For a set amount of time, the entire group should mingle, and ask and answer questions. They should treat each other according to the stereotypical way based on what kind of person they have been labeled. Each team member can use that treatment, as well as the answers to questions, to figure out what the label is. As each team member figures out who they are, they can exit the game and let the rest continue.

Purpose: By confronting stereotypes in both how people treat us and in the questions and answers used, the team can get a better sense of how we mistakenly see people as well as how it feels to be so narrowly defined. This is also a good ice-breaker activity if you have team members that do not know each other yet. Using masking tape, create a large polygonal shape on the floor.

It should be about 12 feet long by 6 feet wide, at least. Mark the start and stopping points. Make the shape a bit convoluted, choosing a shape that is elongated with the idea that people must make their way from one end to the other. Place a few squeaky dog toys inside the shape, and twice as many full sheets of paper with a large X on them inside the shape.

The paper is the mines. At least two at a time, each person on your team must make their way from start to finish blindfolded. They cannot step outside of the boundary, nor can they step on a mine. If they do, they are frozen. They can only be unfrozen if someone else inside the shape steps on a squeak toy. Their only guidance is the vocal commands of those outside the shape who are not blindfolded. Purpose: This game is about communication, and trusting each other.

Players learn to be observant of multiple action as well as give clear and timely advice. On a bulletin board or other surface which accepts thumbtacks, create a blank timeline. The timeline should start as far back as the oldest member on your team was born or when the company was founded, whichever came first.

Mark each year on the timeline. Then, using narrow strips of paper, write down important dates for the company e. Give your team members four slips of paper, and ask them to mark down four important moments in their life. Let them pin them to the timeline.

Purpose: This exercise helps show, in a visual way, the different generations and experiences of your team. It leads well into talking about cultural and generational differences and the effects that has on how people work and communicate.

It is also an opportunity for team members to learn more about each other. Have each team member bring one item from their desk to the exercise. Then, tell them that this item is going to be their new product, and that they must come up with a name, logo, slogan, and marketing plan for that object.

Give them a set amount of time. This could be done individually, or in small groups if desired. Discuss, as a group, which products were successfully sold and why. Purpose: For marketing and design teams, this exercise presents the challenge of seeing old things in a new light.

When combined with groups working together to sell a common object, you introduce teamwork and crunch-time brainstorming. It promotes creativity and problem solving, too. Come up with several scenarios in which a person would be chosen to do something. For example, it might be a new job hire, marriage, leading an organization, or commanding an army. Have each team member write their question down. When all scenarios have been covered, discuss the questions as a group and see what each team member thinks would be the perfect question.

Purpose: Team members quickly learn how each other thinks differently. The perfect question that each comes up with will reflect their motives and what they think matters the most. There are many possible scenarios, but all of them have the same task: keep the team alive for as long as possible. There are many versions, but the end goal is the same. Here are some examples with links to resources: Lost at Sea or Lost in the desert , or Stranded on a Moon.

In all of these scenarios, each team member is given a list of 15 items, which they have to rank according to importance. Once each team member has completed their rankings, the entire team is given a new list. They must work together to agree on the best order for the items on the list.

Usually, the team rankings match the desired outcome more closely than individual rankings do. But sometimes an individual is more successful. In this case, the lesson learned from the game is the importance of working on making individual voices heard.

This game focuses on the importance of sharing information and placing value on individual insights in order to solve a greater problem. Someone has robbed a bank. Green was the only person who had a key to the vault. Team members circulate and read their clues to each other out loud. These games encourage teams to work together to carefully juggle resource allocation, planning, and task delegation to build either a tower or a bridge.

In this scenario, participants are divided into two or more teams. Each team is given resources they can use to build something. Each team gets some money to buy supplies like scissors, glue, paper, etc. For example, if there are 4 teams, there will only be 3 pairs of scissors and 10 sheets of paper.

Here is always pressure to buy materials before the other teams do. Each team member is given a copy of a laminated page. The team must communicate with each other to discover who has the missing pieces. They then have to work together to arrange the pages in the correct order.

This game is about making difficult moral decisions as a team and reaching a consensus. The team gets a list of 14 people who are on a sinking ship in the middle of the ocean. There is only one lifeboat and it only has room for y 8 people. The team has just 15 minutes to decide together who is worth rescuing and who will be left to drown.

The people on the list are morally ambiguous and there is no right or wrong answer. For example, who is worth more? Billy, a year-old who steals? Or Tom, a year-old war hero who hears voices? Expect a lot of discussion on ethics and some strong opinions! The point of the game is for people to reach a consensus through negotiation within 15 minutes before everyone dies.

Download the handout for the lifeboat game. People will hate this game, which is exactly why they can learn so much from it.

There are two teams: those who wait and those who work. While the working group solves a problem, the waiting group waits for the answer, the whole time getting more and more anxious. They have to figure out that part on their own. In this game, the wrap-up discussion is the most important part because it demonstrates how important feedback is. Read more about our experience with this team building game here.

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