Three Popular and Fun Team Building Exercises for Small Businesses

It is important for the employees working in a business to trust each other and communicate effectively with each other so that they can become a more cohesive group. One way of accomplishing this is through team building activities. The three team building activities described below are just some of the many exercises that business can utilize to encourage trust and communication between employees.

The “Two Truths and One Lie” Game

This activity is a great way for employees to get to know each other while having a lot of fun in the process. The game starts out with everyone in the group writing down two truths about themselves and one lie on a piece of paper. The next step is to then go around the room and have each person read their three statements out loud to the group. The group will then vote on which of the three statements they believe is the lie. The employee who gets the least number of votes for their “lie” statement wins the game. This game can get hilarious and employees think it’s a lot of fun. Even though the object of the game is to lie to your co-workers, the activity results in employees learning a lot about their fellow employees.

The Classification Game

This activity is a great way to show employees that labeling or stereotyping people is not always accurate or very useful. The participants should be first split into teams of four members. The exercise starts out with the participants introducing themselves to the group and providing a quick overview of their various likes and dislikes. Following the introductions, the teams will be told that the goal of the activity is to decide how they should classify themselves – as a team and then into two or three sub-groups by utilizing only positive and nondiscriminatory criteria or methods. Examples of these subgroups could be people who prefer steak and people who prefer chicken, or people who like vanilla ice-cream and people who prefer chocolate ice-cream. This activity encourages employees to get to know each other in detail so that they better understand all of the attributes and characteristics of each member within the team.

The Sneak a Peek Game

This activity is a lot of fun and can become pretty funny at times. This is basically a problem solving activity that requires the use of children’s building blocks, Legos, or something similar. The activity’s facilitator will construct a small sculpture or pattern with the building blocks and then place it so that the participants cannot see it. The participants will then be divided into teams of four. The participants will be given enough blocks so that they can duplicate the sculpture or pattern that the facilitator has created with blocks. Next, one team member from each group will approach the facilitator and be allowed to view the sculpture for 10 seconds and attempt to memorize the pattern before they rejoin their team. Upon returning to their teams, they will have 25 seconds to verbally instruct their other team members how to duplicate the block sculpture/pattern with the group’s blocks. After the team has attempted to duplicate the sculpture for one minute, a different member from each team will get a chance to come and look at the facilitator’s sculpture and try to instruct their team how to duplicate it. Each group member should get a turn and go around though the rotation until a team successfully recreates the exact pattern of the facilitator’s sculpture. The purpose of this activity is to demonstrate how important it is to communicate clearly and effectively when dealing with other people and in a group setting.