Think about a time you had to work in a team. How well did it go? Had you and the rest of the team worked together before? No matter where you’re at in your life, you’re likely to have worked in a team of some sort and it’s important to have good team chemistry. That’s where team building comes into play. Not only is leading a team a great leadership quality but knowing how to create team chemistry is important too. You want the members of your team to feel comfortable and trust one another. Check out our list of awesome team building activities:
Impaired Trust
Pulled straight from our TYRO Youth program, impaired trust is an excellent team-building activity. One member of the team will be “impaired,” which means you must blindfold them or have them close their eyes. The objective will be for the impaired person to retrieve an item somewhere while the rest of the team guides them to it. If you have a large team, you can split separate them out into smaller groups. This team-building activity is perfect for building trust, demonstrating taking instructions, and finding leaders within your team.
Glass Half-Full/Glass Half-Empty
Split your team in half or into groups of two. Have one person or side share a negative story. It can be both a personal or school/work-related story. Have that side focus on the bad things (glass half-empty) that went on and why it was a negative experience. When that side finishes, have the other side try to see the positive takeaways of the experience (glass half-full). When the two sides finish, switch the roles of each side and repeat the process. This teaches team members how to find positives in negative experiences.
What makes you Tick?
Bring the team together and have them share two things that make them “tick.” Now tick means two things in this case: what motivates you and what makes you ticked off. This allows you to see the different personality types within the group. It’s important as a leader to know that you will encounter different personalities. Not everyone reacts the same way to a specific leadership style. This will help the team know how to communicate with one another in a way that motivates everyone while highlighting the diversity in personalities among the group.
Building Blocks
Present a problem to your team. Ideally, this problem is a fictional problem that this team has not faced before. Then, have each member of the team write out an idea on how to solve this problem. However, the trick is to expand on the idea that was written by the person before you. This allows each member of the team to contribute to the solution and gives everyone’s ideas equal value. Additionally, it gives the team great experience in creative problem solving together.
Scavenger Hunt
Last but not least, scavenger hunts. This requires you to split your team in half or into smaller, equal groups. After the teams are split, send them out to find a list of items. Give the teams an allotted amount of time to find as many of the items on the list as they can. Don’t be afraid to add in clues and twists to make the scavenger a little more challenging and exciting. Scavenger hunts work as great team building activities because they promote working together to complete an objective with creative ideas from everyone on the team.