To ask what’s the best team building exercise you’ve ever done?

[Goingonagondola]

I’ve been —told— asked by my employer to run a team building day for my colleagues. I’m not really a team building kind of person - I’m more of a ‘leave me alone to do my work’ kind of person. The internet is giving me tedious sounding ball games and get-to-know-yous and I think my stressed colleagues may actually kill and eat me if I try some of the enthusiastic things I’ve read about.

Help please! What team building games have you done that you genuinely enjoyed? I just want them to have fun and go away feeling it wasn’t as bad as they thought it would be...

Zero budget by the way. Just people, a big room or outdoors (weather dependant) and whatever resources I can drum up.

Ooh or get the Taskmaster book and do some of the things in there.

@5foot5 - sounds intriguing. 😀 Tell me more...

We worked in a city centre and did a treasure hunt. I think it was one from the local tourist office and it was free. Nice to be out in the afternoon as opposed to being cooped up in the office and for after it was a meal and a few drinks.

Get them all in a room and ask them to come up with ways of building the team with no budget.

The only decent team building session i've been on is when we have actually found out about how teams work, who does what, and what we are missing, and how we fill that gap and arrange work so that everyone is doing what they enjoy plus a little bit of what they don't enjoy for the overall success of the whole team.

I am known in our company as a team builder, it's about how you structure the team, how you relate to the team, and how everyone interacts and how the management enable this; it cannot be built by outsiders coming in, it needs to be management driven.

Go and help at your local food bank for a couple of hours.

Get Antony Nolan to send out the bits for their kits that you then assemble for them to send out.

Or rounders

Really depends on the type of team you have...

Last year I got our teams to each make a one minute commercial about what they are great at as business teams. They had about an hour to plan and film them and a few props if they wanted them

They filmed them on their phones and we compiled them into a video show-reel which we played at the end over pizza and beer and they got to vote on the best. There were prizes of course!

They were all absolutely brilliant and really funny and everyone enjoyed making them.

Depends on the group size and what they are like.

We once played a game of Mafia. Everyone sits in circle with their eyes closed and depending on the group size - x number of people become the mafia and one person becomes the angel. With everyone's eyes closed the mafia chose one person to 'kill' and they are out. Each round the angel chooses someone to protect. Everyone else has to guess who the mafia is. You have a narrator who guides the story and says how everyone's been murdered and holds court cases etc. Our narrator was hilarious and it was a great group of people who were really up for it so it was a lot of fun.

We've also done a sports day - egg and spoon race, slow bicycle, sprints etc.

If it's a smaller group you can make your own escape room with puzzles and riddles.

Our work give people time off for volunteering and a couple of times they have done team things like doing a community garden or similar for charities. They have to work as a team and it's free and is a sense of achievement from helping others.

Find a local charity / school/ hospice/ hospital whatever, and sort their garden, help their marketing, paint a room, spend the day fundraising.

Bond through doing and achieving something meaningful.

Preferably chose something where you have skills to offer, and something that is meaningful for your colleagues.

Then go to the pub to celebRate

What is the aim ?

If it is too encourage morale, give everyone the day off. It costs nothing and they will think better of the company for giving them the gift of free time.

If you have to meet up, could you poll the people who will be attending and see what they want to do.

Maybe a kind bring your own "toy" day.

Ask people to bring in some hobbies stuff to share with the group. Knitting, good book, their laptop with favourite computer game, board game, dart board etc.

That way everyone will have something they like to do included ?

I've done Treasure Trails (there seems to be one for most towns and cities), and also an Escape room - that was really good but if you have quieter introverts then it doesn't always work as well as they can feel intimidated.

I once attended an event where there were bingo cards with things like 'has a dog', 'went to America last year', 'drives a black car' etc on them and you had to find people who matched the statements on your card - not sure how long that takes to plan though!

Try having a look on this website, especially on the blog, for some inspiration - there's some really good facilitation information on there too.

Do you have it's a knockout near you?

A narrowboat for the day plus an onboard picnic cost
£15 - 20 each depending on how much wine/food required.

how about a volunteering day? we did one and it was really good. Not strictly team building but still a day out together as a team and you're helping the community

Best team away day involved my small team (6) at a previous job volunteering at a local animal sanctuary for the day. They had just had a Cat and her Kittens arrive that needed names and they allowed us to name them which was lovely! Plus a loads of other adorable dogs and cats to make a fuss of and even cleaning up their poop was sort of funny doing it together - but were a team that was already quite close and got on great, went out together socially for drinks etc so it might not work.

Volunteering based team building days are becoming popular. I work for a charity now and recently a group from a local supermarket came and tidied up a garden space that was in need of a face lift , planting new flowers, jet washing decking and painting a shabby looking bench.

A few things we have done that everyone seemed to love:

Quizzes (everyone’s favourite) can also head out to a pub quiz if you have a BIT of budget as they’re usually only a few quid per head
Had a board game party (Cards Against Humanity was a winner)
Escape rooms which we do every couple of months but does need a budget
Scavenger/treasure hunt

We also volunteer - beach clear up, food bank, etc.

Plenty of things you can do with little/no budget. Perhaps part of the team building would be to split people into teams and ask them to come up with a fun game or activity that can be done on the day?!

We did an escape room. It was fantastic All the ones I have done have been fantastic. But they aren't cheap and the OP has zero budget!

@DameSquashalot It was really, dire. The company I worked for had its HO in USA and every year the top brass did a "road show" around each branch. This took no account of the fact that we Brits tend to be more - ahem - reserved.

On this particular one they had brought over a hyper, professional, cheer-leading sort of person from California who was supposed to get everyone worked up to a fever pitch of enthusiasm for the year ahead. There was a set of drumsticks on each seat and we were all given different rhythms and were meant to give each speaker a rapturous welcome when they came on stage.

Apparently when they did the same thing in the States people were climbing on to their seats and whooping by this stage. We all found it just crushingly embarrassing and some of the technical staff were wondering if they could self harm with the drum sticks as an excuse to get away.

Horse riding