Building a strong and efficient team doesn’t have to feel overwhelming, tedious or challenging. Many of today’s leaders and managers are starting to appreciate that employees perform best when they feel valued and appreciated, instead of being worked to the point of burn out.
In this article, we explore five top energy boosting strategies that you can bring into team meetings to play with colleagues. These are all short activities that will boost team morale and remind your team that you really care about their well-being and health.
These activities are designed, quite simply, to energise and excite the team. To move employees from a state of disengagement and low motivation to a state of vitality and engagement. They can also help to change the mood in the room, bond the team, help the team to get to know each other and to inject some fun into a boring or tired meeting.
Here are the top five energising strategies to improve teamwork
1. Office Trivia
For this game, you will need approximately twenty index cards. This is one of the longer games, taking approximately 30 minutes and can be done in a group of any size.
The idea is to find out who knows the most about the office via a trivia game. Create approximately twenty questions about the insignificant details about your office that may go unnoticed by the team. For example, “what picture is displayed on the wall in the conference room?”, “how many people with the name ‘Daniel’ does our company have on the pay role?”, “what colour is the front door?” and so on. This quiz will test the observation skills of your employees and is bound to create some serious laughs. You should not ask any questions that are too personal and might put an employee into an awkward or embarrassing situation.
2. Penny for Thoughts
This is a great team building activity to help your employees to get to know each other better. For this game, you will need some coins or pennies with listed years on them and a box or bucket. The game takes approximately fifteen minutes and can be done with a group of any size.
“New projects can be challenging when team mates do not know each other well, so this game is a great way of breaking the ice and loosening up the atmosphere in a fairly short period of time,” says Antoinette Clay, an HR at UKWritings and Boomessays. “Collect the coins with listed years on them so that you have one for every member of the group.”
You should ensure that every coin has a date that is not older than the youngest team member. Drop the coins into a box or bucket and ask each team member to draw a coin. Each team member should look at the date on their coin and share a memory from their lives that took place on that year. This helps teams to become familiar with each other, share stories and help bridge future conversations.
3. Sinking Boat
This analogy is often used in job interviews, but can really make an excellent team building exercise as well. The sinking boat analogy helps to improve communication and creative thinking. Start by asking the group: “If a boat is sinking, who would you save, and in what order: a doctor, a priest, pregnant women, a child, an elderly man, a teacher (and other controversial figures you can think off, perhaps Donald Trump?). Allow the group two minutes to discuss what they would choose to do and what their reasons are for that choice.
Once they have finished, ask the team questions like “what was the most difficult problem and how did you solve it?”. Ask them to write down at least three things that they could have done differently.
4. Treasure Chest
“Yet another fantastic team building activity, the treasure chest involves asking each team member to jot down something that they really want in life on a piece of paper,” says Norman Garris, a productivity blogger at Revieweal and Academized. “Once they have written something, all the ideas should be placed inside of a treasure chest and one person can pull out the pieces of paper one at a time.”
As a group, you can discuss with the team how that person could achieve the things that they really want in life.
5. Human Bingo
This game works well for new teams or in very big groups where not everyone knows each other very well. In human bingo, each team member gets a card with characteristics written on them, like “green eyes”, “two children”, “has a pet cat”, “rides a bike” and so on.
The employees can then interact and ask each other questions to find other team members that might match these characteristics. They can then tick these off on their bingo sheet and write the team member’s name in the box. The winner of the game is the employee who creates a full line first.
These are our five best team meeting ideas to energise the team. We would love to know what you have tried and what worked well for your team. To improve your team’s communication, productivity and engagement try Hibox today.
