22 great team building games

Team building games are the salt in the soup of most team building measures. The success of your team building depends largely on the selection of the right team building games.

What are good team building games?

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Choosing the right team building game for your team building activity is a prerequisite for its success. The following factors determine the selection:

  • Objectives – how should the team building games support your process? Creating momentum – Creating transparency – Uncovering conflicts – Creating motivation – Getting to know each other – Strengthening the “we” feeling
  • Duration – how much time is available for your team building games? There are a variety of options within a time frame of 10 minutes to 180 minutes
  • Team size – How many participants does your team building have? Not every team building game is suitable for every team size. Can the group be divided if necessary?
  • Location – where do the team building games take place? Indoor, outdoor, online – consider the general conditions such as weather, available space, equipment
  • Participants – which group of participants do you have? Take into account previous experience, handicaps, positions, age structure….

The best team building games are the ones that suit your team and their needs. We have listed our 22 recommendations for you.

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Moderated team event games or team development games?

The 8 best outdoor team building games

1. the whole egg

Duration: 60-90 minutes
Number of participants: Two or more people
Resources: one raw egg per team and various office supplies
Rules of the game: Participants are divided into teams of 3 to 5 people and each team receives a raw egg. Useful office materials for this game such as adhesive tape, pencils, straws, plastic objects, paper, newspapers and rubber bands are provided for everyone. The teams now have 15 to 30 minutes to wrap the egg with the office supplies provided so that it does not break when it hits the floor. After the time has elapsed, the egg is dropped from the second or third floor to check whether the “egg rescue system” works.

Objective: The teams learn to coordinate and achieve a great effect with limited resources. A classic team-building game.

2. plogging

Duration: 30-90 minutes
Number of participants: from two people to unlimited
Resources: bin bags, gloves, (grabbing tongs)

Description: Plogging originally meant doing something good while jogging and collecting garbage in nature. Determine an area in nature or the city with the teams and set a fixed duration. Which team has collected the most pieces of garbage (or the most weight) at the end?

Aim: To promote communication within the team and focus on the topic of responsibility

3. minefield

Duration: 10-30 minutes
Number of participants: 2 – 20 participants
Resources: various objects and blindfolds

Description: Objects are distributed in an open, traffic-free area. In this team-building game, the participants are blindfolded and have to cross the area from A to B without touching any of the objects. Each blindfolded participant has a sighted partner at their side who gives them verbal instructions. The blindfolded person is not allowed to speak.
Aim: To strengthen trust, communication and listening skills

4. scavenger hunt

Duration: min. 60 minutes
Number of participants: from 3
Resources: Paper, pens

Description: Divide the team building players into two or more teams. Create a list of fun tasks for each team to complete in the allotted time. Possible tasks are based on the teams having to move around a certain area to complete the tasks. Possible tasks could be: take a creative photo of your team at a bus stop, collect 5 business cards from hairdressers,… There are no limits to your imagination here. The team that completes the tasks fastest or the most tasks wins!

Aim: Getting to know each other, building networks (if the teams are mixed)

5. geocaching – treasure hunt

Duration: 60-180 minutes
Number of participants: from 3 people
Resources: GPS device or cell phone with corresponding app
Description: Search for a route in the vicinity on the Geocaching.com website, for example. Divide the group into teams and you are ready to go. Which team comes back first and has found the cache? Pay attention to the information on difficulty level and geocache type; multicaches are particularly interesting.

Aim: getting to know each other, cooperation

6. spider’s web

Duration: 60-80 minutes
Number of participants: 5 or more
Resources: Ropes, possibly small bells
In this outdoor team-building game, two ropes are stretched between two trees (or poles). One rope is fastened as high as possible, the other close to the ground. This creates a large rectangle. Further ropes are then pulled criss-cross into this rectangle to create a spider’s web. The holes must be large enough for the team members to climb through without touching the “spider’s web”. Attach a bell to as many holes as there are team members. The whole team now stands on one side of the spider’s web. Now all team members must get through the spider’s web to the other side without touching the spider’s web. BUT only the marked holes may be used and each hole may only be used once.

Objective: To strengthen trust, cooperation and communication or recognize deficits

7. perfect square

Duration: 15-30 minutes
Number of participants: 5-25 people
Resources: long rope and blindfolds
One of the best-known and best team-building games. The participants line up in a circle and hold a rope. Now ask all participants to place the rope on the floor and blindfold themselves. Now ask all participants to take 3 steps backwards and swap places with their left neighbor (you decide where the line starts). Now set the task of forming a square with the rope without removing the blindfold. It is best to set an additional time limit of e.g. 15 minutes to make the task more difficult. To make the game even more difficult, you can specify that all but two participants must remain silent

Aim: To promote leadership, trust and communication

8. Outdoor Open Air Cinema

Duration: 90-180 minutes
Number of participants: from 2 persons
Equipment: screen, projector, laptop, deckchairs
An outdoor team building activity to thank your team for a special achievement, for example. Invite your team to an open-air cinema evening and stream a current movie for your team. Provide chilled drinks and a snack and your movie night is guaranteed to be a complete success.

Goal: Recognition, team bonding, communication

 

Moderated outdoor team building games

Team Olympics
6 – 3000
120 – 240 minutes
Face to Face

Team Olympics

Experience a top-class company party with the BITOU Team Olympics! Look forward to unique and exciting activities such as pipeline, tower building and aerial rocket shooting, which not only provide a lot of fun but also strengthen team spirit. At BITOU, we take care of …
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Wind park - innovative & cooperative
4 – 500
90 – 150 minutes
Face to Face

Wind park – innovative & cooperative

Experience teamwork at its best: practical and lively! The construction of the BITOU wind farm brings people and teams together in a variety of ways and creates an event where a wide range of talents are in demand. Every participant has the opportunity to get …
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The 6 best get-to-know-you games

1. speed dating

Duration: 6-20 minutes
Number of participants: Four or more people
Tools: none
Rules of the game: The participants quickly get together in pairs and introduce themselves very briefly. After the team leader gives a signal, the participants tell each other something about each other for one minute. At the end of the minute, a signal sounds and the participants move on to the next partner. Information is then exchanged for another minute. This is repeated until everyone has spoken to each other once. Topics could be: Best experience in the last week, biggest professional success, hobby …. Be careful not to include controversial topics such as politics, religion etc. You can use this classic team-building game anywhere.

Aim: The participants get to know each other personally in order to build trust.

2. puzzle

Duration: 30-90 minutes
Number of participants: from four to unlimited
Resources: several different puzzles with the same level of difficulty

Description: Divide the players into teams of equal size and give each group a puzzle. The team that completes their puzzle first wins. However, some of the puzzle pieces are mixed up with those of the other teams. Each group must now develop a strategy to get their missing puzzle pieces back – be it by negotiating, swapping or replacing team members. All decisions must be made jointly within the group.

Objective: To test and strengthen communication, negotiation skills and leadership qualities

3. card quartet

Duration: 20-60 minutes
Number of participants: 4 – 100 participants
Resources: Index cards and pens

Description: Divide the group into teams of 6-8 people each. All participants now receive 4 index cards and a pen. On these index cards, the participants write down their name, a distinguishing mark and interesting facts about themselves. Now all the cards of a team are collected and shuffled. In the next step, each person draws a card from the pile and looks for the person from whom the card originates. Now the card holders are asked questions by the card drawers for another 2 minutes. After 4 rounds, all participants in this team building game have their quartet together.

Aim: Getting to know each other and building a network

4. lies and truths

Duration: min. 30-80 minutes
Number of participants: 3-15
Resources: Paper and pens

Description: All participants write 2 truths and 1 lie on a piece of paper. The participants then read out their truths and lies one after the other. Ideally with a short story to go with each one. The rest of the team now has to guess which is the lie. Example:
– I own 2 dogs
– I love spaghetti with red wine
– I go jogging in the morning before work

Aim: to get to know each other better and practise creativity

5. stand up – sit down

Duration: 5-10 minutes
Number of participants: 5 or more
Resources: one chair per person
Description: All participants sit down on their chair. The facilitator now asks various questions and all those who answer yes to the question stand up. Questions could be: Have you ever been to the Caribbean? Do you have children? Are you interested in soccer? etc.

Aim: to get to know each other and get an overview of the team

6. names backwards

Duration: 8-25 minutes
Number of participants: 4 or more
Resources: piece of paper and pen
All participants write their names backwards in capital letters on a piece of paper, e.g. Sepp Mustermann writes “NNAMRETSUMPPES”. The slips of paper are folded, collected and shuffled. Now one slip of paper is drawn after the other and the team has the task of identifying the name and the person by name within 10 seconds. The person in question naturally holds back.

Aim: Get to know each other quickly without formally introducing yourself.

 

 

Moderated team-building games to get to know each other

WUP – the quick warm up for big teams
40-1.000
45-60 minutes
Face to Face

WUP – the quick warm up for big teams

Making connections, starting a conversation, experiencing new impulses – the warm up »WUP« brings life into the company event. It was especially created as a networking impulse and quickly makes the colleagues more familiar with each other through the choice of tasks. Because of this, …
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The 3 best Icebreakers

1. answer bingo

Duration: 10-15 minutes
Number of participants: 4 or more people, from 15 people divide into several teams
Resources: Paper and pencil
Rules of the game: At the beginning of a meeting, ask everyone a question, e.g. If you could choose one superpower, what would it be? All participants now have 1 minute to write this down on a piece of paper and hand it in. They then read out the answers and the participants have to guess who gave the answer.

Aim: The participants learn something about the others and get into conversation more easily

2. reading list

Duration: 10-20 minutes
Number of participants: 3 or more people, from 10 people divide into several teams
Resources: none

Description: Ask the participants to take it in turns to tell in 2 minutes what is currently on their reading list and why. This can be a book/text that has fascinated them in the past, the book/text they are currently reading or the book/title they really want to read.
Aim: to get to know each other and start a conversation

3. sound safari

Duration: 5-15 minutes
Number of participants: 3 or more
Resources: Cell phone and loudspeaker

Description: Record different sounds such as a car door slamming, knocking on different surfaces, machine noises. Now play these sounds individually and let the group guess and, above all, discuss which sounds they are.
Aim: to get into communication

 

The 5 best short team building games

1. winner/loser

Duration: 4-8 minutes
Number of participants: Two or more people
Resources: None
Rules of the game: Participant A shares a negative experience from their own life with participant B, whether from their personal or professional life. It is important that the experience is authentic and not invented. Participant A then tells the same experience again, but this time from a positive perspective. Participant B helps to identify further positive aspects of the negative experience. Halfway through the agreed time, the two swap roles.

Objective: The participants learn how they can turn negative situations into positive ones and benefit together from the insights gained.

2. what belongs to whom?

Duration: 10-20 minutes
Number of participants: Two to 16 people
Aids: Box

Description: All participants place a typical personal item in a box without the others seeing what is being placed. Now the game leader places one object after the other on a table and the whole team tries to guess who the object is from and why he/she put it down.
Aim: to get to know each other better as a team

3. turn over the blanket

Duration: 10-25 minutes
Number of participants: as many as can stand on the blanket
Aids: Blanket or piece of carpet

Description: All participants stand on a blanket. This must be turned over without anyone touching the floor.
Aim: To strengthen, test or experience cooperation and communication

4. picture description in a different way

Duration: 5-10 minutes
Number of participants: from 4
Resources: Paper, pens, pictures of objects (+ clipboard)

Description: The team is divided into groups of two. Two people sit back to back. One person receives a sheet of paper and a pencil, while the other person receives a picture of a relatively simple object (e.g. a car, a flower, a house). The person with the picture must describe it to their partner so that they can draw it without revealing what exactly is depicted. Shapes, sizes and textures may be described, but it is not allowed to say directly what the object is. Once the drawings have been completed, compare them with the original picture and assess how similar they are to the original.

Aim: This team building game is a fun way to improve communication skills, especially your listening skills. Innovation and creativity are stimulated

5. receive resolutions

Duration: 2-4 minutes
Number of participants: 4 or more
Tools: None
Description: Before the meeting, ask your team members to stand up, get moving and exchange ideas with each other. They should tell as many colleagues as possible what contribution they would like to make to the meeting today. Optionally, a prize can be awarded to the person who has spoken to the most colleagues and another prize to the person who has successfully made the announced contribution during the meeting.

Objective: To make meetings more efficient by encouraging participants to focus on their own contributions rather than just thinking about what they want to take away from the meeting.

What is important, however, is the return on investment of a team building measure, i.e. do I achieve my goals with the measure and do I get any added value? Of course, team building should be a lot of fun, but it should also provide impetus for day-to-day work that develops the team and personalities.

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Frequently asked questions

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