Quick Team Building Exercises that Strike a Balance between Exploitation and Exploration

The role of quick team building exercises is improving team unity for quick efficiency and productivity gains.  The exercises you find here are quick and enjoyable.  Choose a team building exercise today for your next meeting and see the difference of livening your next gathering.

Paper Darts

Create a dartboard on a piece of paper.  You will than provide each group with a sheet of paper and straws.  The job of the team is to use the straws to blow paper balls into the various scoring areas.  In this instance, the team is trying to score the most number of points.  As additional paper balls are introduced, the game becomes more challenging.  Players must utilize teamwork and think strategically to keep the balls in higher scoring areas of the board.  After a set amount of time, teams will count their scores on the board depending on the areas the paper ball resides.  The team that scores the highest amount of points wins.

Brainstorming Session

This might not be a team building game but it is an exercise nonetheless.  Brainstorming in groups is an opportunity to gather and receive input from different perspectives.  Group brainstorming is advantageous as it is an opportunity to take a good idea and make it better.  During these sessions, it is important to have one person do the writing while others are free to shout out ideas.  The only rule during brainstorming is that there are no bad ideas.  What seems like a potentially bad idea can generate additional thoughts that are in close connection.

Book of Questions

Using a book of questions, have one person select a question from the book.  They will read the question aloud.  After having read the question, this individual state why the question was chosen or provide an answer himself or herself.  Each participant will than take turns answering the question.  These prompts can be an excellent way to get to know each other at a deeper level.  Using the book of questions can also lead to discussions by breaking up the monotony of the day.

Show and Tell

Before anyone arrives for the group gathering, ask everyone to bring an item from his or her work environment.  Instruct people that job is great to create a marketing proposal for that item.  First, they should consider the formation of a business logo.  The second challenge is to write a slogan or a jungle for promoting that product.  Third, think about the audience and those use the item. Have them construct a marketing plan for reaching these individual users.

The objective of these exercises is to push the limits.  Working with the same coworkers and performing the same tasks can eventually lead to boredom.  The introduction of group team building exercises builds team unity all the while pressing the reset button.  In the workplace, you need to reach a balance between exploitation and exploration.

 

Resources

10 Team Building Activities for Work Small Groups