Seven Fun Team Building Activities

Hello and welcome to our first Laughtercise newsletter! I’m Aaron, the owner (and chief thunderbolt of fun) of Laughtercise. We run team building sessions across the UK for organisations as diverse as the NHS, Amazon and Aviva. 

Are team building activities effective?

Yes, team building activities can be incredibly effective - when done properly! It’s important to make sure your activities are engaging and inclusive, catering to both introverts and extroverts. Team building games are great for boosting morale and de-stressing your team. Great examples of effective team building activities are games like ‘Drawing Ahead’ and ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees & Cup!’

Good exercises, games and skills

Let’s dive straight into today’s topic, which gives you seven good, fun team building activities you can replicate in your workplace. We’ve played all these games in thousands of our Laughtercise Corporate Team Building Workshops and they always go down a treat! Some of them are wild compared to normal (and boring!) team building activities 👇

Head, Shoulders, Knees & CUP!

❌ WARNING! ❌ This game will create huge competition and bouts of wild laughter!

Check out several teams playing this game here.

You can ramp up the fun by adding chocolate! Look how wild it got when a team battled it out for crème eggs!

You will need:

📍 Paper cups (1 per two people)

📍 To line up tables so everyone can be facing each other (like in the videos)

Instructions:

📍 Instruct each person to face another person

📍 Tell everyone that you will be shouting out ‘head’, ‘shoulders’ and ‘knees’ and they have to follow the instruction

📍 Tell everyone that when you shout ‘cup’, they have to grab the cup. First person to grab it wins!

📍 Rotate everyone so they don’t continually face the same person

📍 Tell everyone to count how many wins they have!

This is what your team will look like playing this game 👇

Pencil Pouting & Pencil Pushers!

Which team member is the best pencil pusher? Who has the strongest pout?

Playing these games will answer these questions 😂

Check out several teams having pencil fun here!

Pencil Pushers Instructions:

📍 Step 1 – Split your group into two teams (or more teams if you have more than 20 people)

📍 Step 2 – Place one empty drinks bottle on a table for each team

📍 Step 3 – Give two pencils to each person and instruct them to place the pencil like in the below picture 👇

📍 Step 4 – Instruct everyone that they have to get both pencils into the bottle (like in the video)

📍 Step 5 – Make sure you put some pencils in the water bottles before you start to weigh the bottles down

📍 Step 6 – First team with all their pencils in the bottle wins 😁

Pencil Pouting Instructions:

📍 Step 1 – Split your group into two teams (or more teams if you have more than 20 people)

📍 Step 2 – Place one empty drinks bottle on a table for each team

📍 Step 3 – Give a pencil to each person and instruct them to place the pencil like in the below picture 👇

For both games, you will need:

📍 Two pencils per person

📍 Two empty bottles (non-glass!), more if you have +20 people

 This is what your team will look like playing these games 👇

Thinking Outside The Box & Fast Clappers!

How fast can your team work together? How competitive are they vs each other?! These two games will answer these questions (and create lots of laughter!). Check out teams playing the games here.

Thinking Outside The Box Instructions

You will need:

📍 One tissue box per player (like the kind of box in the video)

📍 Tables for the tissue boxes to be placed on

Instructions:

📍 Step 1 – Decide on whether you’ll play this game 1v1 or as a relay (like in the video)

📍 Step 2 – Make sure you get the first tissue ready to be plucked from each box

📍 Step 3 – Instruct each player that they can only use one hand to remove tissues (one hand to remove the tissues and the other hand on the box)

📍 Step 4 – Instruct everyone that they can only remove 1 tissue at a time

📍 Step 5 – Make sure no one does any digging with their hand to pluck out loads at once!

📍 Step 6 – Get players started on your command and get ready for the mess! 😁

This is what your team will look like playing this game 👇

You will need:

📍 All your team to be standing in a circle (like in the video)

There are multiple levels to this game

Level 1 Instructions:

📍 Step 1 – Tell everyone that they will be timed how fast they can pass a clap around the circle. Pick someone to clap first. As soon as they clap, the person on their left has to clap. Then the person on their left, and so on etc.

📍 Step 2 – Make sure the first person to clap goes exactly on your command to go

📍 Step 3 – Get them started and time them!

📍 Step 4 – Give them 5 goes to post the fastest time

📍 Step 5 – Play the game at a later date and see if they can beat their previous PB!

Level 2 Instructions:

📍 Step 1 – Tell everyone that they will be timed how fast they can pass a ‘low ten’ and ‘high ten’ around the circle (like in the video). Pick someone to go first to pass on a ‘low ten’ to the person to their left. After receiving the ‘low ten’, that person then has to pass a ‘high ten’ to the person on their left. This needs to go around the circle (low to high to low to high etc.) until it returns to the starting person.

📍 Steps 2 to 5 – Same as level 1

Drawing Ahead!

This is a brilliant and bitesize activity. Below are video and written descriptions of how to facilitate this game:

You will need:

📍 1 paper plate (or piece of card) per person

📍 1 pen per person

Instructions:

📍 Step 1 – Instruct everyone to put their paper plate on their head 

📍 Step 2 – Instruct everyone to draw a picture on the paper plate. You can pick what picture they draw. Maybe you’re talking about customer care and you can get everyone to draw a smiling customer. Or if it’s Easter, get them to draw an Easter egg

📍 Step 3 – Instruct everyone to write their name underneath their drawing

📍 Step 4 – Give them 1 minute and get them to draw!

📍 Step 5 – After 1 minute, ask everyone to remove the plate and show to everyone around them 

This is what your team will look like playing this game 👇

So there we have it! Seven team building games guaranteed to get your team energised.

Keen to find out more? Discover more about our team building sessions here. 

And remember to subscribe to this newsletter so you don’t miss the next one!