The team-building events are often associated with relaxing and having fun after work, and while it’s true, their functions go much far beyond. Fostering trustworthy relationships in the team, allowing managers to reveal the individual employees’ traits to find a better personal approach to them, and improving team collaboration are just to name a few.
The importance of team-building activities is hard to be overestimated. Despite fewer opportunities to meet in person now, it’s not a reason to sit and wait for better times since events aimed at boosting team spirit morale can be moved online.
Often, managers and organizes of such events use team games for ice-breaking and team forming, so here are three ideas on how to incorporate them into your online events:
Three truth and a lie
It’s an excellent opportunity to find out more about your colleagues. Every team member needs to provide four facts about themselves, one of which would be a lie. Other participants should guess what fact was not true. This game helps to get better acquainted with one another, feel engaged, find out some incredible life stories, and raise the team members’ mood.
Mafia (Werewolf)
This popular game can be held via Skype or Zoom or even special apps created for these purposes. The rules remain the same, you are randomly given the role of an ordinary citizen, a detective, or a mafia member ( werewolf), and once a game starts, everyone has their own task to play. With modern technologies, groups can communicate through secret chats to draft their strategies and hide their true emotions during the public discussion. It’s a chance to improve psychology knowledge, practice persuasion, and leadership skills, try out different social roles, be a detective in one round, or a mafia member in another one. It helps developping a team spirit by defending your group and diving into interesting adventures letting the working troubles go away.
Unusual storytelling
Pick up some random photos with different objects, divide teammates into several groups, randomly assign photos to each group to make up a story. Once everyone is ready, start the story from the first group. According to the rules, the next group should continue the story using their photo to make the parts voiced by the previous group connected and proceed until the last group that should end this story. Note that the images cannot be shared with other groups before the start. This one is suitable for bigger teams, as the more groups there are, the more parts you have to connect, making unexpected plot twists and sometimes absurd connecting story elements that add even more fun.
Takeaways
Apart from regular team-building events, it’s worth considering bringing more informal communication into the routine work like virtual coffee breaks, before the start of the working day to share news and personal updates to stay connected, or birthday celebrations with everyone wearing party hats and singing happy birthday to create a holiday atmosphere even for those who do not have a chance to celebrate their special day with their loved ones.
Making funny photos in virtual photo booths or randomly caught moments will help save these precious memories.
These simple yet powerful steps will improve the relationship between colleagues, increase their engagement in the working process, and provide them with support from teammates and their management during these times.
Leave a Reply