Team building is key when it comes to integrating your employees and helping them form strong work bonds. But according to Dave Antrobus, picking the right exercises is equally as essential as running these sessions at all. Not only will the right team-building exercises encourage employees to connect, but they’ll also help your team understand how each other work best, learn new skills, and boost morale.
Of course, COVID-19 has brought a new barrier to team-building exercises. Or so you may have thought. Many of us have been working remotely over the last 12 months – and some will continue to phase back to work in the coming months. This doesn’t mean you can’t involve remote workers in team-building exercises, though. In fact, it’s important that you do involve them. While remote work comes with its benefits, some homeworkers feel invisible and/or isolated, especially as they tend to have less access to colleagues and managers. However, virtual team-building exercises can prevent remote workers from feeling disengaged. These exercises are a great way to get everyone involved, even if some of your team work in house and others from home.
Here, Dave Antrobus, technology director of business collective Inc & Co and independent capital investment organisation Fresh Thinking Group (FTG), explains the importance of team building and introduces digital exercises you can use to include both remote and in-house workers in your team-building initiatives. Dave Antrobus cultivates people-focused working methods and fosters healthy teams in each of his business initiatives.
Why Team Building Is Important
Team-building exercises can help you identify your team’s strengths and weaknesses. Choose the right sessions for your team, and you can use your findings to identify who works well together and decide how you delegate roles for your next project. During team-building exercises, you can observe and ask yourself the following questions.
- Are there any conflicts between certain team members? Are these conflicts dividing the rest of the team?
- Are some members only focusing on their own success? If so, how is this affecting the rest of the group?
- Does the team need a morale boost?
- Do your employees need to learn how to work together instead of independently?
- Do your employees need to know each other better?
- How are your employees communicating? Is this communication effective or is it hindering team progress?
- Are some employees affecting the team’s ability to move forward?
The answers to these questions can be incredibly insightful when it comes to planning your team’s approaches to client projects.
Choosing Your Team-Building Exercises
Poorly planned team-building exercises can feel pointless and boring. But if you organise exercises that have real purposes and benefit your employees, you can help your team to improve their working relationships and wellbeing.
Here are Antrobus’ 13 team-building exercises for boosting morale amongst your in-house and remote teams. When selecting team-building exercises from this list, think about how the activities you choose could improve your teams’ skills, overcome conflict, or realign visions. Every team-building exercise should have a clear purpose.
Skills Matrix
Time: up to an hour
You will need: collaborative software
The best teams include people who bring different skills to the table and integrate effectively. When each team member has a specific role and understands their individual responsibilities, conflict is less likely to arise.
If you want to cultivate this kind of team, it can be helpful to ask employees to draw up a skills matrix using collaborative software of your choice. Whether you opt for Google Sheets, Trello, or something different, creating a skills matrix will encourage your team members to audit their abilities and training needs. This way, they can identify the best approaches to projects, pinpoint progression opportunities, and take on roles that best suit them.
Icebreaker Questions
Time: 5 minutes
You will need: video-conferencing software
Icebreaker questions can feel like a chore, but they won’t if you prepare questions that provoke real interest. Dave Antrobus recommends asking an icebreaker question at the beginning of every meeting (whether virtual or in house) to get the conversation flowing. You could try asking questions like:
- Who was the last music artist you searched for on your chosen music-streaming service?
- In which order would you do these morning routines? Breakfast, coffee/tea, opening your laptop.
- What frightened you most as a child?
Your ice-breaker questions should stimulate interesting conversation, not stunted round-the-circle answers.
Virtual Lunch Dates
Time: 60 minutes
You will need: Slack or Zoom
The social element of work is essential for wellbeing, and a virtual lunch can promote healthy relationships while teams are working from home. You might even allow your team members to expense a certain amount so they can join their colleagues from their favourite cafes, order deliveries, or purchase ingredients to cook at home. Alternatively, you might encourage your team to take part in virtual coffee chats or happy hours.
Non-Work Group Chats
Time: varies
You will need: Slack, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, or another group-chat app
Teams are less likely to bond if they only talk business. So, try setting up a group chat where your team can discuss anything (except work). Whether they’re swapping recipes, comparing standing desks, or chatting about their weekend plans, non-work discussions cultivate healthy relationships.
Messy-Desk Face-offs
Time: 5 minutes
You will need: Slack, Microsoft Teams, or another group-chat app
The messy-desk faceoff is a great team-building exercise for remote teams. While those who work in an office usually keep their desks tidy – at least most of the time – either to comply with rules or avoid judgement, home desks are often quite the opposite.
Asking your remote teams to share photos of their home offices often gives everyone something to laugh at: stacks of cereal bowls, used tissues, and coffee rings galore. Meanwhile, tidier teammates can brag about their comparatively beautiful home-office spaces.
Gift-Guessing Game
Time: 60 minutes
You will need: video-conferencing software and Trello
This gift-exchange team-building exercise is ideal for teams that love Secret Santa, only you can play this game all year round. Every team member buys a small gift and uploads a clue – in the form of a captioned image – to a card on this Trello board. Team members then explain what the gift is in the description, which other team members can’t see unless they click on the card.
During a video call, team members take it in turns to read the hints and click on a card to claim a gift – when they click on the card, they’ll also see what they’ve won. Things can get more complicated though, as it’s also possible to steal a gift someone has already chosen. Once the game is complete, each team member posts their gift to the person who ended up with the matching Trello card.
Self User Manuals
Time: 60 minutes
You will need: Keynote, PowerPoint, or a camera
Everyone works differently. And failing to understand others’ working methods can lead to conflict. Wouldn’t it be great to know how everyone prefers to work from the get-go? With this team-building exercise, you can.
Each team member creates a ‘user manual’ that explains their personal work style so others can get to grips with their preferences. Whether this manual takes the form of a video, PowerPoint, or infographic, ask your team members to include details about whether they prefer live chat or email, what time of day they work best, and whether they mind impromptu video calls etc. Your team can then review all user manuals in a meeting and collate these in a safe place for future access.
Learning Circles
Time: 30–60 minutes
You will need: video-conferencing software and study materials as needed
Training is an important part of continual professional development (CPD), and this is often most enjoyable when shared with teammates. The ‘learning circles’ team-building exercise allows different employees to pursue training relevant to their needs, all while promoting teamwork.
Team members can identify skills they’d like to develop and find like-minded colleagues who’d also like to pursue this skill. This way, team members can form learning circles to study anything from SQL to leadership styles and recruitment practices. Whether these learning circles undertake formal training or simply get together once a month to discuss books and articles, they can develop their knowledge while connecting with others in their field.
Health Monitor
Time: 30–60 minutes
You will need: video-conferencing software, Confluence, or Google Docs
When teams don’t see eye to eye, it can be helpful to shift their focus away from the project they’re working on to consider how they’re working together. In this case, a health-monitoring team-exercise like this variation of the classic agile retrospective can be helpful.
Dave Antrobus recommends presenting team members with a health-monitor framework that lists eight characteristics of healthy, high-performing teams. Team members should evaluate how they are performing in line with this framework to identify collaboration issues and brainstorm solutions. Employees can use the health monitor each time they run into teamwork issues.
GIF Battles
Time: 15–30 min
You will need: video-conferencing software and Trello
Sometimes, your team simply needs a fun exercise to take their minds off work for a few minutes. If you’re looking for a time-out icebreaker, a GIF battle is an easy win. Teams can use this Trello board to share GIFs from Giphy.com or Google Images that fit a given theme for each round. Once everyone has submitted their GIFs, you can vote on the round’s best submission. You might even introduce a prize for the winner once all rounds are complete.
Share Your Superpowers
Time: 30 minutes of individual prep and 60 minutes for the exercise
You will need: video-conferencing software
If your team members are already familiar with each other, a superpower team-building exercise can help your colleagues to know each other on a deeper level.
All team members prepare for a group session by completing an online strength assessment, such as Clifton Strengths. Then, everyone shares their results on a video call. During this meeting, the team should discuss how their strengths contribute to the team and how the team could make even better use of these ‘superpowers’. This exercise can help team members feel valued and find new ways to make the most of their skills.
Mood Monitoring
Time: 5 min
You will need: Trello
This is a simple exercise that encourages team members to look out for one another. Dave Antrobus recommends setting up a simple Trello board in which each team member updates a weekly card to explain how they’re feeling. Team members can be as open as they like and offer support, advice, and praise to support each other through whatever they’re facing or celebrating.
Share Motivational Music
Time: varies
You will need: Spotify, Google Play, or another music-streaming app
Most teams talk about music – it’s a common interest that most of us share. So, why not use tools like Spotify to create collaborative playlists that anyone in your team can curate? You can build motivational, de-stressing, and Friday-afternoon playlists to motivate your team and help them bond.
Sharing a Vision Through Team Building
Team building is a great way to unite your teammates and get them to share a vision. When you use team-building exercises to encourage your team to work towards shared goals, you can cultivate a clear, compelling destination that prevents individuals from pulling in different directions. This way, your employees are more likely to support each other as they all support the same agenda.
Learn more about Dave Antrobus’ people-focused approach to corporate projects.
About Dave Antrobus
As the technology director of both Fresh Thinking Group and Inc & Co, Dave Antrobus curates and motivates software teams that design and develop advanced digital solutions. Not only does he provide the knowledge base for developers to hone their technical know-how and fulfill thriving careers, but he also nurtures productive teamwork environments where everyone gets to prosper and succeed.