Team building games for guys

The challenge is completely up to you. Then give each team the same supplies to work from, or create a pile of available supplies in the middle of the room. Give them a specific time to complete the project, making sure to mention that they can only use what is available, though how they use it is completely up to them.

The final reveal is a fun event, and a great opportunity for your team to compete. Purpose: Problem solving as a team, with a strong mix of creativity, is exactly what this exercise accomplishes. It also brings an element of fun and maker-ism into the mix, with the added twist of learning how to solve a problem with reduced options.

In the book Weslandia by Paul Fleischman, the young boy Wes creates his own language, culture, and economy one summer. A new startup created a small economy and ended up having a great deal of fun as well as learning about what motivated other team members. Get your team together and decide if you want to create an economy or some mini-aspect of larger society. Set up the rules you will abide by, leaving enough wiggle room to experience problems that need group agreement to solve as the system is put into action.

There are rewards and penalties. Some team members will reveal themselves to be rule-abiders and others as creative rule-benders. The team will quickly learn how others work, solve, and think outside of the typical work-related realm.

This will bring new understanding to work-related projects that need solutions. This team-building exercise takes place not in one sitting, but over time. Make a large, blank journal or scrapbook available in the break room or other common areas. The book may have prompts on each page, asking questions or suggesting things to write or draw. Or, you may have guidelines printed and displayed next to the book i. Leave pens, markers, tape, and other items that your team can use to write and draw in the book.

When the book is full, put it on the shelf and get a new one. Purpose: This team exercise creates a living history of your business that you can keep adding to.

It is somewhat similar to the Zappos culture book, but allows your team a chance to build it more directly. This game encourages creativity, collaboration, and recollection. Divide your team into equal sized groups, and send them out with a list of items to locate and bring back.

Whether they remain in the office or are to leave the building is up to you. The ultimate goal is to get back first with the most items. You may want to set a time limit so that all groups are back in a reasonable time, whether they found all items or not. A scavenger hunt can be themed, and might involve a variety of clues or other twists that force a team to get creative and work together.

One variation is to make it a digital scavenger hunt in which they must find examples and specific information or web pages online. You may wish to restrict which search engines or methods they use to complete the challenge. Purpose: A scavenger hunt is a fun activity that forces people to work together as a team. It spurs creativity, particularly if clues or riddles are involved.

Much like a scavenger hunt, a geocache adventure relies on clues but has the added level of using GPS coordinates to find an item. Each group will need to have a GPS device that will work for finding geocaches. There are several apps available to use on smartphones that would suffice. You may wish to have a set time in which all groups must return. The clues you hide in specific geographic locations could be part of a larger riddle or message that you wish the teams to have revealed to them.

A variation of this might be to use QR codes placed around the office or neighborhood, mixing GPS locations with other clues found in QR codes. Purpose: This exercise helps team members work together to achieve a specific goal using a specific and narrow process in which close enough is not good enough.

It also promotes problem solving in a creative way if riddles and puzzles are involved. If you do this over lunch, be sure to cater food and make it a fun time. Require team members to be present. Have a question and answer session afterwards. Purpose: Most people are eager to let others know interesting things about themselves, but not all team members are able to make that happen. Most teams are lopsided, with some members dominating discussion. Before your regular staff meeting, break your team into groups.

Instruct the groups to find out one commonality among themselves. It might be a hobby or an interest they all do, or having the same favorite genre of music or favorite food. Once they discover a commonality they can agree on, they create a list of what might be stereotypical qualities of such people. Then, the groups come together to announce to the rest of the groups who they are. The Roller Coaster Buffs, for example, might periodically raise their arms and holler, or the Jane Austenites might rephrase all of their speech to co-workers as quotes from Jane Austen books.

At the completion of the meeting or day , talk about stereotypes that we assign to people. Talk about how people managed to find a commonality, and the process it took to dig it up.

Purpose: The idea is to force your team to confront the foolish nature of stereotypes and how, if people really behaved as we casually write them off to be, the office would be much different. The game also reveals the ability of a seemingly random group of people to find a commonality.

To do this, remove key nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Create a worksheet in which the removed words are shown as a blank line with instructions on what kind of word is needed. In groups of two, have one team member ask for the correct type of word and the other team member supply the word.

Or, if you do not want to break the team into groups, ask the team as a whole to supply one word at a time. Once there are enough words, read the mission statement back. It will sound silly. Now that the team knows what the goal is, ask them for the same word types. See what kinds of words they supply. Repeat the exercise until you get a mission statement that the team feels is correct.

A variation is to categorize the types of words before the first round. So, tell them you are looking for words that apply to the team without telling them you are working on a mission statement. By stripping away the jargon and stiffness and allowing the mission statement to go through several rounds of nonsense, you allow your team to help you craft a statement that is more relaxed and honest. Using wooden blocks or an actual Jenga game, mark blocks according to the hierarchies present in your company.

For example, you might have some blocks denoted as the IT department, and others as HR. Divide your team into groups, giving them an equal number and kind of blocks. From here, either specify the type of structure each team must build, or provide guidelines and allow them to build any structure they want. When the time limit has been reached, each team, taking turns, must begin to remove a block at a time without destroying their structure.

Do not inform them ahead of time that you will be asking them to do this. If time allows, you may ask them to repeat the exercise. See if they find a way to build a structure that can withstand removal of blocks. Purpose: This exercise is meant to show how each department and the various managers and staff positions are necessary to complete the task, and that without everyone in place, things fall apart.

Divide your team into groups of two each. Have each person sit with their back to the other. One person will have a picture. The other person will have a blank sheet of paper and a pen. The team member with the picture must not show the other person the image. Instead, the are to describe the image without using words that give it away, while the other team member is to draw what is being described.

For example, the picture might be of an elephant standing on a ball. After a set time limit, the drawing time ends and both team members view the original picture and the drawing. Purpose: This is an exercise that focuses on communication and language. While the final drawing will seldom look like the picture, it is revealing to participants to see how different the interpretation of instructions can be even when they are supposedly talking about the same thing.

Gather your team in a circle, and have them sit down. Each team member should then put on a provided blindfold. Leave the circle. Instruct them to form a perfect square out of the rope without removing their blindfolds. You can introduce variations into this game. For example, you might, at random, instruct a team member to not speak. One by one, members of the group are muted, making communication more challenging.

Or, let the team come up with a plan before putting on the blindfold, but once they cannot see, they also cannot talk. Purpose: This exercise deals with both communication and leadership styles. Team-building exercises have emerged as a popular way to boost morale, cooperation and camaraderie among groups of people, typically in a professional or business setting.

Team-building exercises for men typically focus on working together and problem-solving through action. These activities require single materials to get men working toward common goals. This icebreaker exercise works great for newly formed groups or those which have recently added several members. Have everyone stand in a circle. Starting with one ball, have a member of the group say the name of another man in the group before tossing him the ball. The man who received the ball then names another man in the group and tosses him the ball.

The ball cannot be tossed to someone who has already touched it until everyone in the group has a chance to catch and toss. Icebreaker games are a fun way to get to know other people in a group quickly. These games can take just a few minutes at the beginning of a meeting, and provide immense value in improving communication and engagement.

You can start with any of the games on this list as a way to bring your people together and build community. Next, check out our list of improv games that can serve as icebreakers and these ones with question games and getting to know you games.

We also have a list of icebreaker activities for large groups and Christmas icebreaker games. Still confused over what an icebreaker is? Here are some commonly asked questions about icebreaker games for team building.

Icebreaker games are activities you play with your team to help facilitate discussion among colleagues. These games are crucial for new teams that do not know each other very well, especially if team members are unaware of potential shared interests. By participating in icebreaker games, your team experiences a variety of benefits that create stronger bonds, and thus lets coworkers work better together.

An easy icebreaker game to start with is Hometown Maps because it is a low pressure activity that only requires you to prepare a blank map, Post-Its, and a box of push pins. Because you have a smaller number of players, you can take advantage of this fact by granting each participant more time. Giving more time creates a more intimate atmosphere, and lets team members get to know each other even more. Team building content expert. Skip to content You found our list of quick icebreaker games for small groups.

Specifically, this list includes: Icebreaker games for small groups Fun icebreaker games for work Quick icebreakers So, here is the list! List of icebreaker games for work When a group does not know each other, it may be difficult for people to start talking.

Icebreaker Bingo Icebreaker Bingo is one of the best games you can play for new introductions. Speed Networking While Speed Networking may seem better suited for large group icebreakers, this activity can also be reworked as an intimate icebreaker activity. Hometown Map Hometown Map is an icebreaker game for work that is easy to set up.

Psychology Masks Psychology Masks is another icebreaker activity pulled from Psychology that is especially suited for artistically inclined teams. Because of the dual nature of the masks, the display is sure to stimulate discussion among your team members and provide a low pressure icebreaker game for employees to share more about themselves, 6. Myers-Briggs Session One of the most prominent personality tests is the Myers-Briggs Test , which matches people with a personality type denoted by four letters that reveals what you are like in relationships, the workplace, and as a parent.

Jenga Questions Jenga Questions is an icebreaker game for college students and other groups, where your team plays Jenga, while also answering questions.

Time Heist Have you ever considered what you would do if you could travel back in time? Each group must decide how to market the new brand. Encourage your coworkers to come up with logos, slogans, and a basic color palette. Share and vote on the best marketing strategy!