20+ exercises designed to bring your whole team together.
DEEP DIVE EXERCISES
OBSERVATIONS | 2 mins per person + 5 min reflection
Prep: Everyone must be assigned a person | Supplies Needed: None
Activity: Each person completes three sentences about the person they were given 1) One thing I see in you is..., 2) One thing I appreciate about you is..., and 3) One thing I see in you that you may not see in yourself is...
I’M MOST LIKE... | 3 mins per person
Prep: None | Supplies Needed: None
Activity: Give everyone three minutes to find something in their environment that best represents them. Each person shows their item and explains why they picked that item.
THEY ARE MOST LIKE... | 3 mins per person
Prep: None | Supplies Needed: None
Activity: Same as “I’m Most Like...” exercise, except ask another person to find an item most like the person to their left.
YOU THINK YOU KNOW THEM | 10 mins
Prep: None | Supplies Needed: None
Activity: Have each team member share their Favorite Quote. Ask them to talk about how that quote has transformed with them through their life and how it applies to their life right now. You’ll learn something new about people you thought you knew every time!
SONGS OF NOSTALGIA | 15 mins
Prep: None | Supplies Needed: None
Activity: Ask your team members to share a song that sparks a strong memory or evokes an emotional response.
EST GAME | 30 mins
Prep: Set even teams, words in hat | Supplies Needed: Bucket or hat
Activity: Put words that end in “-est” in a hat and draw one out. i.e. - Longest, fastest, strongest, coolest, etc. Each team then takes turns choosing a member to represent them for each round. If you pull out the word “Coolest”, the chosen people have to react to what follows; could be coolest purse, coolest tattoo, coolest place they’ve ever been, etc. The team who everyone feels best answered the question wins a point. Sometimes you can get to know people more. For instance “longest” could be followed by “marriage” or after “oldest” can be “parent”!
JUST FOR FUN EXERCISES
WHAT’S IN YOUR FRIDGE? | 3 mins per person
Prep: None | Supplies Needed: None
Activity: Give everyone three minutes to find the oldest or most unusual item in their refrigerator. Spend 1-2 minutes per person presenting the item and the story behind it.
MADGAB | 3 mins
Prep: None | Supplies Needed: None
Activity: Play a number of MadGab exercises with your team. Have a large team? Use breakout rooms in Zoom.
REBUS PUZZLES | 8 mins
Prep: Create a slide presentation | Supplies Needed: Rebus puzzles
Activity: Rebus Puzzles are essentially little pictures made mostly with letters and words that represent popular phrases. Head to the link above for good examples. The host of the game will pull up a slide with one Rebus Puzzle. The first person on the team to guess gets a point. The most points wins.
PHONE TAG | 10 mins
Prep: None | Supplies Needed: Everyone needs a cell phone
Activity: The first player takes out their cell phone, opens their Contacts and starts scrolling through. The person on their left tells them to stop scrolling at random. Then, the player announces who they landed on. By way of describing their personality, the player then has to explain which team-member reminds them either the MOST or the LEAST of their selected contact. i.e. “Roger was the cool guy in high school. He reminds me of how laid-back Denise is.”
ONE WORD STORY | 5 mins
Prep: None | Supplies Needed: None
Activity: Choose the order in which people will take turns on the call for the activity. Starting with the first person, ask them to say just one word. Go around the group asking others to build on the previous word to create a story. i.e. “Monkeys” - “swing” - “towards” - “the” - “Costco” - “because” - “they” - “want” - “their” - “bananas” - “in” - “bulk”
CHILDREN’S BOOK | 5-10 mins
Prep: None | Supplies Needed: Your favorite children’s book
Activity: Some of the best ideas come to us when we keep it simple. Have a team member select one of their favorite children’s books to host a story time. We recommend imagining the audience is a group of attentive kindergartners so you share your story expressively and with gusto!
90’s or 00’s NOSTALGIA QUIZ | 5-10 mins
Prep: None | Supplies Needed: 90’s quiz example, 2000’s quiz example, every member needs pen & paper
Activity: Have the facilitator administer a quiz to all team members on a certain decade. Have them write down their answers (there will be plenty of table talk along the way. Trust us.)
FAMOUS DATE | 10 mins
Prep: None | Supplies Needed: None
Activity: If you could have dinner with one living (or dead for second round) celebrity who would it be and why?
CHOCOLATE PIE | 10-15 mins
Prep: None | Supplies Needed: None
Activity: This is a spelling game. The goal of the game is to be the first person to fully spell a word. However, words under two letters don’t count. Each player says one letter until a person finishes a word and then they are out. The player going next can always challenge her predecessor if she thinks they don’t have a word in mind. For example: Player 1: ‘r’, Player 2: ‘u’, Player 3: ‘n’. Even if he had “runner” in mind to spell, Player 3 is now out by completing a word.
MOVIE STRING | 10-15 mins
Prep: None | Supplies Needed: None
Activity: The goal is to string together movie titles for as long as you can. Each movie title must have its first letter match the last letter of the previous one. For Example: Terminator → Ratatouille → Edward Scissorhands → etc.
TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE | 15 mins
Prep: None | Supplies Needed: None
Activity: Each team member thinks of two true things and one false thing about their life. Ex: I’ve been skydiving (true), broken my arm (false) and traveled to France (true.) Team members then try to guess which of the three is the false factoid.
ROCK - PAPER - SCISSORS | 15 mins
Prep: None | Supplies Needed: None
Activity: Have each team member take three small piece of papers and draw a rock, paper, and scissors on them. Then pair the participants off, in round robin format - groups of 4, 8, or 16. Then compete, holding up your paper scraps to the webcam at the count of 3, in best-out-of-3 battles, until there’s a winner.
FIRST DATES | 25 mins
Prep: None | Supplies Needed: None
Activity: Go around the group and ask everyone to talk about the first date they had with their significant other. Take it one step further and ask everyone to talk about the most awkward date they’ve ever had!
THE PRICE IS RIGHT | 25 mins
Prep: None | Supplies Needed: Paper and writing utensil
Activity: Ask everyone to use a pen or pencil to draw a line down the middle of their paper and label the left column “guesses” and the right column “retail price.”
Now, ask everyone to grab any item nearby that they know the retail price of (Googling is fine!). Go around the group as each person shows their item. The rest of the team will guess the retail price of that item and write it down in their “guesses” column. Once the whole group has taken their turn, ask everyone to total their “guesses” column, including the price of their own item.
Next, have each person share the retail price for their item, record them in the “retail price” column, and find the total. The winner is the person whose “guessed” column total is closest to the “retail price” total.
COCKTAIL CLASS | 30-60 mins
Prep: A willing bartender | Supplies Needed: Cocktail ingredients
Activity: Way better than another Zoom happy hour! Have a cocktail specialist - whether they’re a member of your team or you hire them through an outside service - to teach your team how to make a fun new cocktail.
GO OUTSIDE YOUR BUBBLE | 30-60 mins
Prep: Choose your experience | Supplies Needed: Airbnb Experience
Activity: Traveling and entertaining is still possible! Take you and your team members on a team building baking class, a virtual city tour of Paris, or attend a live virtual concert.
CRIBS | 30-60 mins
Prep: None | Supplies Needed: None
Activity: So often we only see a single room in our colleagues house - their home office. But what’s going on in the rest of the house? Give your team a tour of your space and let them see the where you call home.
STAY MINDFUL EXERCISES
WHAT’S YOUR WORD? | 20-30 mins
Prep: None | Supplies Needed: None
Activity: Instead of a New Year’s resolution, have your team members pick a word to focus on for the year. It should be a word that encompasses something that they’d like to improve on or begin adopting entirely into their life. For example, the word “gratitude” could be used for someone who wants to start being more appreciative of others or start setting time aside to recognize the good things in their day.
Schedule a small portion of your next meeting for everyone to share the word they chose and why. And, you can read more about this New Year’s tradition on Walt’s blog.
VIRTUAL ESCAPE ROOM | 90 mins
Prep: Arrange a time with your selected service | Supplies Needed: Virtual Escape Room
Activity: There are a few out there, so take your pick, but the idea is to team build through tasks that play to the strengths of everyone in one way or another. Try Puzzle Break for an out-of-the-box experience.
GROUP SERVICE GUIDE | Full-day
Prep: Choose your cause | Supplies Needed: None
Activity: Declare a service day for your team. Choose a non-profit and volunteer your time together.
VIRTUAL NON PROFIT INTERVIEW AND MONETARY AWARD | Half-day
Prep: Tiered donations & structure, willing non-profits | Supplies Needed: None
Activity: Send each team off to virtually interview a non-profit in the community. They get no more than 90 minutes with the non-profit. After they interview, the team assembles a presentation to “sell” the rest of the teams and three outside judges on why their non-profit deserves financial support. Judges take a pool of money the company would donate anyway and award it based on the most compelling presentation. All other non-profits get a tiered donation amount after first prize.