There are many reasons why companies decide to take part in teambuilding trainings: improved communication, increased morale among employees, increased motivation, better integration in the team, effective planning skills, increased team productivity, getting to know one’s strengths and weaknesses and much more.

When planning the training, it is important that proposed teambuilding exercises are more than just an entertainment. First of all, it is necessary to take care of their “side effect”, educational value, aimed at improving the efficiency and productivity of the team.

Below we present 4 examples of effective team-building exercises, which can be used in any conditions, both in the training room and, after appropriate modifications, also in the form of outdoor.

 

True or false

The participants write down three information about themselves – two true ones and one false, without revealing to anyone what they have written. During a 10-15 minute cocktail party conversation, their task is to convince others that each of the information they provide is true. The others have to guess what is true and what is not by asking questions. Finally, again in the full group, a vote is held and the truthfulness of the information is checked.

This exercise can be modified by introducing an element of competition and awarding points, for example, for discovering a lie. This teambuilding exercise improves communication in a team and, above all, allows team members to get to know each other better.

 

One question

This exercise develops the ability to communicate and cooperate in a team. The trainer gives participants situations for which they have to come up with one question. These situations may concern e.g. the choice of a babysitter, life partner, running a company, etc. The trainer gives the participants an idea of the situation, which they must then come up with one question each time. Then he divides the participants into two-person teams and gives an example question: “If you could check if a person is suitable for being …. asking one question, what would this question sound like? If, for example, the situation concerns the choice of a life partner, each person in a pair has to come up with one question to determine whether the person will be a suitable candidate for a husband or wife.

Depending on the invented situations, this exercise may cause amusement, but its main aim is to make the participants aware of the importance of asking precise questions in different situations.

 

SneakPeek

In order to do this exercise, you need several sets of children’s bricks or other materials from which you can build any structure. The trainer or one of the participants in a given team builds something out of the bricks, without showing to the others what they have built. People who are allowed to see the building are liaison officers chosen from among the team members. The task of the teams is to reconstruct the building on the basis of information provided by the liaisons. The time of looking at the building and providing information can be freely modified by the trainer depending on the conditions in which he works.