We recently discussed the importance of teambuilding in organizations, as well as some strategies to prepare employees and managers in advance of such activity to make sure they are as successful as possible.
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Here, and in two follow-up posts, we’ll review some recommended teambuilding activities that can help build trust among your workforce.
Pet Projects
We are so much more than our jobs. Everyone has some hobby, side hustle, or other passion he or she pursues in his or her free time. Those avocational pursuits can be the basis of a fun communication activity that can help build bonds between team members.
This teambuilding activity can involve everyone taking turns explaining to the group what his or her pet project is and answering any questions the group may have about what these projects entail.
Pest Projects
This is somewhat related to the first activity but goes a bit deeper. “A pest project is a part of someone’s life that they want to improve,” according to Science of People. “It can be a skill someone is dying to learn. It can be a weakness someone wants to overcome. It even can be a source of anxiety someone is hoping to solve. A great team building exercise is sharing vulnerability.”
We all have them. Why not get together to share—and, perhaps, come up with some crowdsourced solutions to get rid of the pests?
Teambuilding Games
This is a pretty easy one for those leading the teambuilding effort. Why recreate the wheel when there are plenty of existing, old-fashioned board games that can be used to help break the ice?
For example, the game Apples to Apples allows participants the opportunity to get to know their team’s personality preferences.
Start, Stop, Continue
Start, Stop, Continue may not be familiar to many readers. Basically, it involves selecting a topic—it could be anything, but consider using something work-related. Then have the team write down everything that comes to mind related to that topic.
Next, the team places these into three buckets—things they should start, those they should stop, and those they should continue—with the goal of improving performance on the selected topic.
These kinds of activities can also be built into virtual meetings and L&D opportunities. Scenario-based learning is also a great tool to boost online engagement; it’s a topic that will be addressed at our annual conference, Workforce L&D.
Teambuilding isn’t as simple as having a quick tell-the-group-about-yourself session. You need to think about the dynamic of the group and the goals for the team and then select the right activity. Here we’ve covered the first 4 of 12 activities that are great for teambuilding. In our next two posts on this topic, we’ll look at the final eight.