5 Team Building Activities to Formulate Productive Teams
Behind every successful company is a hard-working team of productive employees. For a team to work productively, every member needs to have exceptional collaborative skills.
Team building exercises are an excellent way for your employees to improve these skills. In addition, they encourage your employees to work together to solve a problem.
Strong peer relationships at work supply numerous benefits for businesses, especially when it comes to your company’s organizational culture. That said, team building activities can improve company culture.
Most individuals prefer to have friendly relationships with their coworkers. In fact, having friends at work influences on job satisfaction, employee retention, engagement, and productivity.
To build a culture of collaboration and guidance, your employees must feel comfortable with their team relationships. Truth be told, this is a priority. Negative team environments drive employees out faster than poor wages, so strong teams are a necessity.
Chemistry is a powerful factor that can generate better results for collaborative assignments and projects.
When your employees can trust one another, they’re bound to accomplish a lot more because the entire party understands each other’s strong suits, which naturally increases output.
With this in mind, it’s time to improve your company’s employee experience through a series of team building activities.
1. Post Daily Questions and Icebreakers
All it takes is a powerful question that can spark meaningful conversations amongst your employees. You can do this through your company’s messaging tool of choice.
Observe some examples of thought-provoking questions that will get your employees communicating with one another:
- What is one thing you appreciate about your coworkers?
- What inspired you to follow your chosen career path?
- What is something you enjoy about working with a team?
- What motivates you to come to work every day?
- What’s the most recent movie you’ve seen? What were your thoughts on it?
This exercise can reveal unknown commonalities amongst your employees and can even spark lighthearted debates.
Aside from daily questions, intimate posts are an effective way to help your employees build empathy for one another. It also builds a line of trust between coworkers based on personal experiences.
Dedicate one of your communication channels to sparking conversations. Think of it as a safe space for your employees speak about things outside of the office. This is important for building strong peer relationships.
It’s also an excellent way to get to know more about your employees. Here are some “get to know you” questions that can kickstart conversations:
- Share your favorite photo from your weekend.
- What’s the best book you’ve ever read?
- Share a photo of the person who motivates you the most.
- Give kudos to one of your coworkers today.
- Write a poem that describes your mindset for the day.
- Share some helpful tips for a healthier mindset.
2. Host a Class or Course
When people learn together, they’re growing together. Host a class or a course that your employees can attend. It could be in-person or remote. They’ll give your employees a chance to focus on something fresh.
In addition, it will encourage them to ask questions and collaborate with one another. Consider hosting a class or a course that does one of the following:
- Contributes to your employee’s professional development goals
- Teaches your employees new skills
- Teaches better mindfulness and wellness habits
3. Host a Brainstorming Session
Once a week, encourage your employees to participate in a brainstorming session. Because team building is work focused, your employees should frequently exercise their mind.
Getting your employees creative juices flowing as a team is a great collaborative exercise that can generate fantastic results. These brainstorming sessions should revolve more around your employee’s team goals.
If your employees are relying on a stale strategy to get things done, this exercise is an opportunity to find ways to refresh it. Take a look at some of our suggestions for brainstorming sessions:
An Idea Board: The good old-fashioned way of brainstorming! Give your employees an agenda ahead of time and have them attend the meeting with three to five ideas prepared.
Have them talk through them with each other, and encourage people to contribute helpful thoughts, questions, or concerns.
What Went Well, What Could’ve Been Done Better: This exercise encourages critical thinking. Have your employees jot down on a piece of paper things they thought went well, things that didn’t go well, and things that could have been done better.
Once everyone’s ideas are written down, advise them to openly discuss their ideas and brainstorm ways they can solve certain issues.
Fist to Five: Have your employees brainstorm solutions to a problem, then carefully go through each of them. They should start by either holding up five fingers or a fist. Five fingers up signifies that the employee love the idea. A fist means they’re not on board.
After that, have everyone discuss their case and explain their reasoning.
4. Host a Personality Test
First, have your employees fill out a personality test that sheds light on their character. Then, get them together and encourage them to discuss their personality test. By the end of the exercise, your employees should have an idea of their coworker’s strengths and weaknesses.
Pair similar personalities together and have them discuss ways they can utilize their strengths at work.
5. Create a Shoutout Circle
Encourage your employees to express their appreciation for one another. Gather your employees together in a conference room or virtually and ask them to shoutout one of their coworkers.
They should stick to encouraging statements that make their coworkers feel appreciated and respected. Some examples include:
- “Big shoutout to Gabriella for making a sale this week!”
- “I wanted to tell Andy that I was beyond impressed with his presentation on Tuesday!”
If you prefer, you can have each of your employees address the coworker to their right. That way, everyone gets an opportunity to shine.
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