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Top 15 Problem-Solving Activities for Your Team to Master

May 27, 2022 - 10 min read

Some people see problems as roadblocks, others see them as opportunities! Problem-solving activities are a great way to get to know how members of your team work, both individually and together. It’s important to teach your team strategies to help them quickly overcome obstacles in the way of achieving project goals.

In this article, you’ll explore 15 problem-solving activities designed to enhance collaboration and creativity. Additionally, if you want to discuss the insights and outcomes with your team after the activities, you can use Wrike’s actionable meeting notes template. This template allows you to record meeting discussions, assign action items, and ensure that everyone is on the same page.

The importance of problem-solving skills in today’s workplace

According to a 2019  report by McKinsey , soft skills are increasingly important in today's world — and problem-solving is the top area in which skills are lacking. A company or team’s success weighs heavily on the willingness of managers to help employees improve their problem-solving abilities. Team building activities targeting focus areas like communication and collaboration, adaptability, or strengthening decision-making techniques help.

All problem-solving processes start with identifying the problem. Next, the team must assess potential courses of action and choose the best way to tackle the problem. This requires a deep understanding of your team and its core strengths. A problem-solving exercise or game helps identify those strengths and builds problem-solving skills and strategies while having fun with your team.

Problem-solving games aren't for just any team. Participants must have an open mind and accept all ideas and solutions . They must also have an Agile mindset and embrace different structures, planning, and processes. Problems usually arise when we least expect them, so there's no better way to prepare than to encourage agility and flexibility.

Another aspect to keep in mind when engaging in problem-solving games and activities: There are no winners or losers. Sure, some games might end with a single winner, but the true goal of these exercises is to learn how to work together as a team to develop an Agile mindset. The winning team of each game should share their strategies and thought processes at the end of the exercise to help everyone learn.

Here’s a list of fun problem-solving activity examples to try with your team. From blindfolds to raw eggs, these problem-solving, team-building activities will have your team solving problems faster than Scooby and the gang.

Classic team-building, problem-solving activities

1. a shrinking vessel.

Helps with: Adaptability

Why adaptability is important for problem-solving: Adaptability is highly associated with cognitive diversity, which helps teams solve problems faster , according to the Harvard Business Review. Innovation and disruption are happening faster than ever before . People, teams, and organizations that can adapt will come out on top.

What you’ll need:

• A rope or string

Instructions:

1. Using the rope, make a shape on the floor everyone can fit into.

2. Slowly shrink the space over 10-15 minutes.

3. Work together to figure out how to keep everyone within the shrinking boundaries.

2. Marshmallow Spaghetti Tower

Helps with: Collaboration

Why collaboration is important for problem-solving: “Collectively, we can be more insightful, more intelligent than we can possibly be individually,” writes Peter Senge in The Fifth Discipline . We can solve problems better as a team than we can alone, which means developing your team’s collaboration skills will lead to better problem-solving outcomes.

What you’ll need (per team):

• 20 sticks of uncooked spaghetti
• 1 roll of masking tape
• 1 yard of string
• 1 marshmallow

1. The goal of this exercise is to see which team can use the materials provided to build the tallest tower within an allotted time period. The tower must be able to stand on its own.

2. To make this exercise more challenging, try adding a marshmallow to the top of the tower. This team problem-solving exercise helps people think on their toes while building camaraderie and leadership.

3. Egg Drop

Helps with: Collaboration, decision-making

Why decision-making is important for problem-solving: Making decisions isn’t easy , but indecision leads to team paralysis, stagnant thinking, and unsolved problems. Decision-making activities help your team practice making quick, effective choices. Train your team’s decision-making muscles and they will become more adept at problem-solving.

• A carton of eggs
• Basic construction materials such as newspapers, straws, tape, plastic wrap, balloons, rubber bands, popsicle sticks, etc., tarp, or drop cloth
• A parking lot, or some other place you don’t mind getting messy!

1. Each team gets an egg and must select from the construction materials.

2. Give everyone 20-30 minutes to construct a carrier for the egg and protect it from breaking.

3. Drop each egg carrier off a ledge (i.e. over a balcony) and see whose carrier protects the egg from breaking.

4. If multiple eggs survive, keep increasing the height until only one egg is left.

4. Stranded

Helps with: Communication, decision-making

Why communication is important for problem-solving: More employees work remotely than ever before. Good communication skills are vital to solving problems across  virtual teams . Working on communication skills while your team is together will help them solve problems more effectively when they’re apart.

Here's the setting: Your team has been stranded in the office. The doors are locked, and knocking down the doors or breaking the windows is not an option. Give your team 30 minutes to decide on ten items in the office they need for survival and rank them in order of importance. The goal of the game is to have everyone agree on the ten items and their rankings in 30 minutes.

Creative problem-solving activities

Helps with: Communication

What you'll need:

1. Divide everyone into small teams of two or more.

2. Select an overseer who isn't on a team to build a random structure using Lego building blocks within ten minutes.

3. The other teams must replicate the structure exactly (including size and color) within 15 minutes. However, only one member from each group may look at the original structure. They must figure out how to communicate the size, color, and shape of the original structure to their team.

4. If this is too easy, add a rule that the member who can see the original structure can't touch the new structure.

• A lockable room
• 5-10 puzzles or clues (depending on how much time you want to spend on the game)

1. The goal of this exercise is to solve the clues, find the key, and escape a locked room within the time allotted.

2. Hide the key and a list of clues around the room.

3. Gather the team into the empty room and "lock" the door.

4. Give them 30 minutes to an hour to find the key using the clues hidden around the room.

7. Frostbite

Helps with: Decision-making, adaptability

• A blindfold
• 1 packet of construction materials (such as card stock, toothpicks, rubber bands, and sticky notes) for each team
• An electric fan

Instructions:  Your employees are Arctic explorers adventuring across an icy tundra! Separate them into teams of four or five and have them select a leader to guide their exploration. Each team must build a shelter from the materials provided before the storm hits in 30 minutes. However, both the team leader’s hands have frostbite, so they can’t physically help construct the shelter, and the rest of the team has snow blindness and is unable to see. When the 30 minutes is up, turn on the fan and see which shelter can withstand the high winds of the storm.

8. Minefield

• An empty room or hallway
• A collection of common office items

1. Place the items (boxes, chairs, water bottles, bags, etc.) around the room so there's no clear path from one end of the room to the other.

2. Divide your team into pairs and blindfold one person on the team.

3. The other must verbally guide that person from one end of the room to the other, avoiding the "mines."

4. The partner who is not blindfolded can't touch the other.

5. If you want to make the activity more challenging, have all the pairs go simultaneously so teams must find ways to strategically communicate with each other.

9. Blind Formations

1. Have the group put on blindfolds and form a large circle.

2. Tie two ends of a rope together and lay it in a circle in the middle of the group, close enough so each person can reach down and touch it.

3. Instruct the group to communicate to create a shape with the rope — a square, triangle, rectangle, etc.

4. If you have a very large group, divide them into teams and provide a rope for each team. Let them compete to see who forms a particular shape quickest.

Quick and easy problem-solving activities

10. line up blind.

1. Blindfold everyone and whisper a number to each person, beginning with one.

2. Tell them to line up in numerical order without talking.

3. Instead of giving them a number, you could also have them line up numerically by height, age, birthday, etc.

11. Reverse Pyramid

Helps with: Adaptability, collaboration

1. Have everyone stand in a pyramid shape, horizontally.

2. Ask them to flip the base and the apex of the pyramid moving only three people.

3. This quick exercise works best when smaller groups compete to see who can reverse the pyramid the fastest.

12. Move It!

• Chalk, rope, tape, or paper (something to mark a space)

1. Divide your group into two teams and line them up front to back, facing each other.

2. Using the chalk, tape, rope, or paper (depending on the playing surface), mark a square space for each person to stand on. Leave one extra empty space between the two facing rows.

3. The goal is for the two facing lines of players to switch places.

4. Place these restrictions on movement:

• Only one person may move at a time.
• A person may not move around anyone facing the same direction.
• No one may not move backward.
• A person may not move around more than one person on the other team at a time.

13. Human Knot

1. Have everyone stand in a circle, and ask each person to hold hands with two people who aren’t directly next to them.

2. When everyone is tangled together, ask them to untangle the knot and form a perfect circle — without letting go of anyone's hand.

Our last two problem-solving activities work best when dealing with an actual problem:

14. Dumbest Idea First

Helps with: Instant problem-solving

1. "Dumb" ideas are sometimes the best ideas. Ask everyone to think of the absolute dumbest possible solution to the problem at hand.

2. After you have a long list, look through it and see which ones might not be as dumb as you think.

3. Brainstorm your solutions in Wrike. It's free and everyone can start collaborating instantly!

15. What Would X Do

1. Have everyone pretend they're someone famous.

2. Each person must approach the problem as if they were their chosen famous person. What options would they consider? How would they handle it?

3. This allows everyone to consider solutions they might not have thought of originally.

Looking for more team-building and virtual meeting games? Check out these virtual icebreaker games or our  Ultimate Guide to Team Building Activities that Don't Suck.

Additional resources on problem-solving activities

• Problem-Solving Model : Looking for a model to provide a problem-solving structure? This detailed guide gives you the tools to quickly solve any problem.
• The Simplex Process:  Popularized by Min Basadur's book, The Power of Innovation , the Simplex Process provides training and techniques for each problem-solving stage. It helps frame problem-solving as a continuous cycle, rather than a “one and done” process.
• Fun Problem-Solving Activities and Games : Looking for more ideas? Check out this list of interesting and creative problem-solving activities for adults and kids!
• The Secret to Better Problem-Solving:  This article provides tips, use cases, and fresh examples to help you become a whiz at solving the toughest problems.

How to organize problem-solving activities with Wrike

If you want to make problem-solving activities more effective, consider using team collaboration software such as Wrike. 

Wrike’s pre-built actionable meeting notes template helps you keep track of meeting discussions, assign action items, and keep everyone in the loop. It’s an effective tool to streamline your problem-solving sessions and turn insights into real projects.

Brianna Hansen

Brianna is a former Content Marketing Manager of Wrike. When she’s not writing about collaboration and team building games, you’ll find her in the kitchen testing out the latest recipes, sharing her favorite wine with friends, or playing with her two cats.

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Team Building Exercises – Problem Solving and Decision Making

Fun ways to turn problems into opportunities.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

Whether there's a complex project looming or your team members just want to get better at dealing with day-to-day issues, your people can achieve much more when they solve problems and make decisions together.

By developing their problem-solving skills, you can improve their ability to get to the bottom of complex situations. And by refining their decision-making skills, you can help them work together maturely, use different thinking styles, and commit collectively to decisions.

In this article, we'll look at three team-building exercises that you can use to improve problem solving and decision making in a new or established team.

Exercises to Build Decision-Making and Problem-Solving Skills

Use the following exercises to help your team members solve problems and make decisions together more effectively.

Exercise 1: Lost at Sea*

In this activity, participants must pretend that they've been shipwrecked and are stranded in a lifeboat. Each team has a box of matches, and a number of items that they've salvaged from the sinking ship. Members must agree which items are most important for their survival.

Download and print our team-building exercises worksheet to help you with this exercise.

This activity builds problem-solving skills as team members analyze information, negotiate and cooperate with one another. It also encourages them to listen and to think about the way they make decisions.

What You'll Need

• Up to five people in each group.
• A large, private room.
• A "lost at sea" ranking chart for each team member. This should comprise six columns. The first simply lists each item (see below). The second is empty so that each team member can rank the items. The third is for group rankings. The fourth is for the "correct" rankings, which are revealed at the end of the exercise. And the fifth and sixth are for the team to enter the difference between their individual and correct score, and the team and correct rankings, respectively.
• The items to be ranked are: a mosquito net, a can of petrol, a water container, a shaving mirror, a sextant, emergency rations, a sea chart, a floating seat or cushion, a rope, some chocolate bars, a waterproof sheet, a fishing rod, shark repellent, a bottle of rum, and a VHF radio. These can be listed in the ranking chart or displayed on a whiteboard, or both.
• The experience can be made more fun by having some lost-at-sea props in the room.

Flexible, but normally between 25 and 40 minutes.

Instructions

• Divide participants into their teams, and provide everyone with a ranking sheet.
• Ask team members to take 10 minutes on their own to rank the items in order of importance. They should do this in the second column of their sheet.
• Give the teams a further 10 minutes to confer and decide on their group rankings. Once agreed, they should list them in the third column of their sheets.
• Ask each group to compare their individual rankings with their collective ones, and consider why any scores differ. Did anyone change their mind about their own rankings during the team discussions? How much were people influenced by the group conversation?
• Now read out the "correct" order, collated by the experts at the US Coast Guard (from most to least important): - Shaving mirror. (One of your most powerful tools, because you can use it to signal your location by reflecting the sun.) - Can of petrol. (Again, potentially vital for signaling as petrol floats on water and can be lit by your matches.) - Water container. (Essential for collecting water to restore your lost fluids.) -Emergency rations. (Valuable for basic food intake.) - Plastic sheet. (Could be used for shelter, or to collect rainwater.) -Chocolate bars. (A handy food supply.) - Fishing rod. (Potentially useful, but there is no guarantee that you're able to catch fish. Could also feasibly double as a tent pole.) - Rope. (Handy for tying equipment together, but not necessarily vital for survival.) - Floating seat or cushion. (Useful as a life preserver.) - Shark repellent. (Potentially important when in the water.) - Bottle of rum. (Could be useful as an antiseptic for treating injuries, but will only dehydrate you if you drink it.) - Radio. (Chances are that you're out of range of any signal, anyway.) - Sea chart. (Worthless without navigational equipment.) - Mosquito net. (Assuming that you've been shipwrecked in the Atlantic, where there are no mosquitoes, this is pretty much useless.) - Sextant. (Impractical without relevant tables or a chronometer.)

Advice for the Facilitator

The ideal scenario is for teams to arrive at a consensus decision where everyone's opinion is heard. However, that doesn't always happen naturally: assertive people tend to get the most attention. Less forthright team members can often feel intimidated and don't always speak up, particularly when their ideas are different from the popular view. Where discussions are one-sided, draw quieter people in so that everyone is involved, but explain why you're doing this, so that people learn from it.

You can use the Stepladder Technique when team discussion is unbalanced. Here, ask each team member to think about the problem individually and, one at a time, introduce new ideas to an appointed group leader – without knowing what ideas have already been discussed. After the first two people present their ideas, they discuss them together. Then the leader adds a third person, who presents his or her ideas before hearing the previous input. This cycle of presentation and discussion continues until the whole team has had a chance to voice their opinions.

After everyone has finished the exercise, invite your teams to evaluate the process to draw out their experiences. For example, ask them what the main differences between individual, team and official rankings were, and why. This will provoke discussion about how teams arrive at decisions, which will make people think about the skills they must use in future team scenarios, such as listening , negotiating and decision-making skills, as well as creativity skills for thinking "outside the box."

A common issue that arises in team decision making is groupthink . This can happen when a group places a desire for mutual harmony above a desire to reach the right decision, which prevents people from fully exploring alternative solutions.

If there are frequent unanimous decisions in any of your exercises, groupthink may be an issue. Suggest that teams investigate new ways to encourage members to discuss their views, or to share them anonymously.

Exercise 2: The Great Egg Drop*

In this classic (though sometimes messy!) game, teams must work together to build a container to protect an egg, which is dropped from a height. Before the egg drop, groups must deliver presentations on their solutions, how they arrived at them, and why they believe they will succeed.

This fun game develops problem-solving and decision-making skills. Team members have to choose the best course of action through negotiation and creative thinking.

• Ideally at least six people in each team.
• Raw eggs – one for each group, plus some reserves in case of accidents!
• Materials for creating the packaging, such as cardboard, tape, elastic bands, plastic bottles, plastic bags, straws, and scissors.
• Aprons to protect clothes, paper towels for cleaning up, and paper table cloths, if necessary.
• Somewhere – ideally outside – that you can drop the eggs from. (If there is nowhere appropriate, you could use a step ladder or equivalent.)
• Around 15 to 30 minutes to create the packages.
• Approximately 15 minutes to prepare a one-minute presentation.
• Enough time for the presentations and feedback (this will depend on the number of teams).
• Time to demonstrate the egg "flight."
• Put people into teams, and ask each to build a package that can protect an egg dropped from a specified height (say, two-and-a-half meters) with the provided materials.
• Each team must agree on a nominated speaker, or speakers, for their presentation.
• Once all teams have presented, they must drop their eggs, assess whether the eggs have survived intact, and discuss what they have learned.

When teams are making their decisions, the more good options they consider, the more effective their final decision is likely to be. Encourage your groups to look at the situation from different angles, so that they make the best decision possible. If people are struggling, get them to brainstorm – this is probably the most popular method of generating ideas within a team.

Ask the teams to explore how they arrived at their decisions, to get them thinking about how to improve this process in the future. You can ask them questions such as:

• Did the groups take a vote, or were members swayed by one dominant individual?
• How did the teams decide to divide up responsibilities? Was it based on people's expertise or experience?
• Did everyone do the job they volunteered for?
• Was there a person who assumed the role of "leader"?
• How did team members create and deliver the presentation, and was this an individual or group effort?

Exercise 3: Create Your Own*

In this exercise, teams must create their own, brand new, problem-solving activity.

This game encourages participants to think about the problem-solving process. It builds skills such as creativity, negotiation and decision making, as well as communication and time management. After the activity, teams should be better equipped to work together, and to think on their feet.

• Ideally four or five people in each team.
• Paper, pens and flip charts.

Around one hour.

• As the participants arrive, you announce that, rather than spending an hour on a problem-solving team-building activity, they must design an original one of their own.
• Divide participants into teams and tell them that they have to create a new problem-solving team-building activity that will work well in their organization. The activity must not be one that they have already participated in or heard of.
• After an hour, each team must present their new activity to everyone else, and outline its key benefits.

There are four basic steps in problem solving : defining the problem, generating solutions, evaluating and selecting solutions, and implementing solutions. Help your team to think creatively at each stage by getting them to consider a wide range of options. If ideas run dry, introduce an alternative brainstorming technique, such as brainwriting . This allows your people to develop one others' ideas, while everyone has an equal chance to contribute.

After the presentations, encourage teams to discuss the different decision-making processes they followed. You might ask them how they communicated and managed their time . Another question could be about how they kept their discussion focused. And to round up, you might ask them whether they would have changed their approach after hearing the other teams' presentations.

Successful decision making and problem solving are at the heart of all effective teams. While teams are ultimately led by their managers, the most effective ones foster these skills at all levels.

The exercises in this article show how you can encourage teams to develop their creative thinking, leadership , and communication skills , while building group cooperation and consensus.

* Original source unknown. Please let us know if you know the original source.

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22 Unbeatable Team Building Problem Solving Activities

Problem-solving is a critical skill for professionals and with team building problem-solving activities, you can sharpen your skills while having fun at the same time.  

Updated: March 1, 2024

In the professional world, one thing is for sure: problem-solving is a vital skill if you want to survive and thrive. It’s a universal job skill that organizations seek in new potential employees and that managers look for when considering candidates for promotions.  

But there’s a problem. 

According to Payscale, 60% of managers feel that new grads entering the workforce lack problem-solving abilities – making it the most commonly lacking soft skill.  

Problem-solving skill needs to be practiced and perfected on an ongoing basis in order to be applied effectively when the time comes. And while there are tons of traditional approaches to becoming a better problem-solver, there’s another (much more interesting) option: team building problem-solving activities. 

The good news? This means learning and having fun don’t have to be mutually exclusive. And you can create a stronger team at the same time. 

16 In-Person Team Building Problem Solving Activities for Your Work Group  

1. cardboard boat building challenge, 2. egg drop , 3. clue murder mystery, 4. marshmallow spaghetti tower  , 5. corporate escape room, 6. wild goose chase, 7. lost at sea  , 8. domino effect challenge, 9. reverse pyramid  , 10. ci: the crime investigators, 11. team pursuit, 12. bridge builders, 13. domino effect challenge, 14. hollywood murder mystery, 15. code break, 16. cardboard boat building challenge, 6 virtual team building problem solving activities for your work group  , 1. virtual escape room: mummy’s curse, 2. virtual clue murder mystery, 3. virtual escape room: jewel heist, 4. virtual code break  , 5. virtual trivia time machine.

• 6. Virtual Jeoparty Social

There are a ton of incredible team building problem solving activities available. We’ve hand-picked 16 of our favorites that we think your corporate group will love too. 

Split into teams and create a cardboard boat made out of just the materials provided: cardboard and tape. Team members will have to work together to engineer a functional boat that will float and sail across water without sinking. Once teams have finished making their boats, they will create a presentation to explain why their boat is the best, before putting their boats to the test. The final challenge will have teams racing their boats to test their durability! Nothing says problem-solving like having to make sure you don’t sink into the water!

Every day at work, you’re forced to make countless decisions – whether they’re massively important or so small you barely think about them.  

But your ability to effectively make decisions is critical in solving problems quickly and effectively.  

With a classic team building problem solving activity like the Egg Drop, that’s exactly what your team will learn to do. 

For this activity, you’ll need some eggs, construction materials, and a place you wouldn’t mind smashing getting dirty with eggshells and yolks.  

The goal of this activity is to create a contraption that will encase an egg and protect it from a fall – whether it’s from standing height or the top of a building. But the challenge is that you and your team will only have a short amount of time to build it before it’s time to test it out, so you’ll have to think quickly! 

To make it even more challenging, you’ll have to build the casing using only simple materials like: 

• Newspapers 
• Plastic wrap
• Rubber bands
• Popsicle sticks
• Cotton balls

Feel free to have some fun in picking the materials. Use whatever you think would be helpful without making things too easy! 

Give your group 15 minutes to construct their egg casing before each team drops their eggs. If multiple eggs survive, increase the height gradually to see whose created the sturdiest contraption.  

If you’re not comfortable with the idea of using eggs for this activity, consider using another breakable alternative, such as lightbulbs for a vegan Egg Drop experience. 

With Clue Murder Mystery, your team will need to solve the murder of a man named Neil Davidson by figuring out who had the means, motive, and opportunity to commit the crime.

But it won’t be easy! You’ll need to exercise your best problem-solving skills and channel your inner detectives if you want to keep this case from going cold and to get justice for the victim.

Collaboration is critical to problem solving. 

Why? Because, as the old saying goes, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This expression reflects the fact that people are capable of achieving greater things when they work together to do so. 

If you’re looking for a team building problem solving activity that helps boost collaboration, you’ll love Marshmallow Spaghetti Tower.  

This game involves working in teams to build the tallest possible freestanding tower using only marshmallows, uncooked spaghetti, tape, and string.  

The kicker? This all has to be done within an allotted timeframe. We recommend about thirty minutes.  

For an added dimension of challenge, try adding a marshmallow to the top of the tower to make it a little more top heavy.  

Whichever team has the highest tower when time runs out is the winner! 

If you’ve never participated in an escape room, your team is missing out! It’s one of the most effective team building problem solving activities out there because it puts you and your colleagues in a scenario where the only way out is collaboratively solving puzzles and deciphering clues.  

The principle is simple: lock your group in a room, hide the key somewhere in that room, and have them work through challenges within a set time frame. Each challenge will lead them one step closer to finding the key and, ultimately, their escape.    

At Outback, we offer “done-for-you” escape rooms where we’ll transform your office or meeting room so you don’t have to worry about:

• Seeking transportation for your team 
• Capacity of the escape rooms  
• High costs 
• Excessive planning  

That way, you and your team can simply step inside and get to work collaborating, using creative problem solving, and thinking outside the box.   

In this smartphone-based scavenger hunt team building activity , your group will split into teams and complete fun challenges by taking photos and videos around the city. Some examples of challenges you can do in this activity are:

• Parkour:  Take a picture of three team members jumping over an object that’s at least waist-high.
• Beautiful Mind:  Snap a photo of a team member proving a well-known mathematical theorem on a chalkboard.
• Puppy Love:  Take a photo of all of your team members petting a stranger’s dog at the same time.

It takes a ton of critical thinking and problem-solving to be crowned the Wild Goose Chase Champions!

Can you imagine a higher-pressure situation than being stranded at sea in a lifeboat with your colleagues? 

With this team building problem solving activity, that’s exactly the situation you and your group will put yourselves. But by the time the activity is over, you’ll have gained more experience with the idea of having to solve problems under pressure – a common but difficult thing to do. 

Here’s how it works. 

Each team member will get a six-columned chart where: 

• The first column lists the survival items each team has on hand (see the list below) 
• The second column is empty so that each team member can rank the items in order of importance for survival  
• The third column is for group rankings  
• The fourth column is for the “correct” rankings, which are revealed at the end of the activity 
• The fifth and sixth columns are for the team to enter thee difference between their individual and correct scores and the team and correct rankings 

Within this activity, each team will be equipped with the following “survival items,” listed below in order of importance, as well as a pack of matches:  

• A shaving mirror (this can be used to signal passing ships using the sun) 
• A can of gas (could be used for signaling as it could be put in the water and lit with the pack of matches) 
• A water container (for collecting water to re-hydrate ) 
• Emergency food rations (critical survival food) 
• One plastic sheet (can be helpful for shelter or to collect rainwater) 
• Chocolate bars (another food supply) 
• Fishing rods (helpful, but no guarantee of catching food) 
• Rope (can be handy, but not necessarily essential for survival) 
• A floating seat cushion (usable as a life preserver)  
• Shark repellant (could be important when in the water) 
• A bottle of rum (could be useful for cleaning wounds) 
• A radio (could be very helpful but there’s a good chance you’re out of range) 
• A sea chart (this is worthless without navigation equipment) 
• A mosquito net (unless you’ve been shipwrecked somewhere with a ton of mosquitos, this isn’t very useful) 

To get the activity underway, divide your group into teams of five and ask each team member to take ten minutes on their own to rank the items in order of importance in the respective column. Then, give the full team ten minutes as a group to discuss their individual rankings together and take group rankings, listed in that respective column. Ask each group to compare their individual rankings with those of the group as a whole. 

Finally, read out the correct order according to the US Coast Guard, listed above.  

The goal of this activity is for everyone to be heard and to come to a decision together about what they need most to survive.  

If your team works remotely, you can also do this activity online. Using a video conferencing tool like  Zoom , you can bring your group together and separate teams into “break-out rooms” where they’ll take their time individually and then regroup together. At the end, you can bring them back to the full video conference to go through the answers together. 

Many problems are intricately complex and involve a ton of moving parts. And in order to solve this type of problem, you need to be able to examine it systematically, one piece at a time.  

Especially in the business world, many problems or challenges involve multiple different teams or departments working through their respective portions of a problem before coming together in the end to create a holistic solution. 

As you can imagine, this is often easier said than done. And that’s why it’s so important to practice this ability.  

With a collaborative team building problem solving activity like Domino Effect Challenge, that’s exactly what you’ll need to do as you and your group work to create a massive, fully functional chain reaction machine. 

Here’s how it goes. 

Your group will break up into teams, with each team working to complete their own section of a massive “Rube Goldberg” machine. Then, all teams will regroup and assemble the entire machine together. You’ll need to exercise communication, collaboration, and on-the-fly problem solving in order to make your chain reaction machine go off without a hitch from start to finish. 

Being a great problem-solver means being adaptable and creative. And if you’re looking for a quick and easy team building problem solving activity, you’ll love the reverse pyramid. 

The idea here is simple: break your group out into small teams and then stand in the form of a pyramid.  

Your challenge is to flip the base and the peak of the pyramid – but you can only move three people in order to do so.  

Alternatively, rather than doing this activity with people as the pyramid, you can do another version –  the Pyramid Build  – using plastic cups instead.   

This version is a little bit different. Rather than flipping the base of a pyramid to the top, you’ll need to build the pyramid instead–but in reverse, starting from the top cup and working down. 

With this version, you’ll need 36 cups and one table per group. We recommend groups of five to seven people. Give your group 20 to 30 minutes to complete the activity. 

To get started, place one cup face down. Then, lift that cup and place the subsequent two cups underneath it. 

The real challenge here? You can only lift your pyramid by the bottom row in order to put a new row underneath – and only one person at a time can do the lifting. The remaining group members will need to act quickly and work together in order to add the next row so that it will balance the rest of the pyramid. 

If any part of your pyramid falls, you’ll need to start over. Whichever team has the most complete pyramid when time runs out will be the winner!  

The value of being able to approach problems analytically can’t be overstated. Because when problems arise, the best way to solve them is by examining the facts and making a decision based on what you know. 

With CI: The Crime Investigators, this is exactly what your team will be called upon to do as you put your detective’s hats on and work to solve a deadly crime. 

You’ll be presented with evidence and need to uncover and decipher clues. And using only the information at your disposal, you’ll need to examine the facts in order to crack the case. 

Like many of our team building problem solving activities, CI: The Crime Investigators is available in a hosted format, which can take place at your office or an outside venue, as well as a virtually-hosted format that uses video conferencing tools, or a self-hosted version that you can run entirely on your own.  

Each member of your team has their own unique strengths and skills. And by learning to combine those skills, you can overcome any challenge and solve any problem. With Team Pursuit, you and your team together to tackle challenges as you learn new things about one another, discover your hidden talents, and learn to rely on each other.

This team building problem solving activity is perfect for high-energy groups that love to put their heads together and work strategically to solve problems as a group.

Collaborate with your colleague to design and build different segments of a bridge. At the end, see if the sections come together to create a free-standing structure!   

Together as a group, see if you and your colleagues can build a gigantic “chain-reaction” machine that really works!

In smaller groups, participants work together to solve the challenge of creating sections of the machine using miscellaneous parts, and at the end, you’ll have to collaborate to connect it all together and put it in motion.

The case is fresh, but here’s what we know so far: we’ve got an up-and-coming actress who’s been found dead in her hotel room following last night’s awards show.

We have several suspects, but we haven’t been able to put the crime on any of them for sure yet. Now, it’s up to you and your team of detectives to crack the case. Together, you’ll review case files and evidence including police reports, coroners’ reports, photo evidence, tabloids, interrogations, and phone calls as you determine the motive, method, and murderer and bring justice for the victim.

You’ll need to put your problem-solving skills to the test as you share theories, collaborate, and think outside the box with your fellow investigators.

Using Outback’s app, split up into small groups and put your heads together to solve a variety of puzzles, riddles, and trivia. The team who has completed the most challenges when time is up, wins!

Can you stay afloat in a body of water in a boat made entirely of cardboard? Now that is a problem that urgently needs solving.

With this team building problem solving activity, you and your colleagues will split into groups and create a cardboard boat made out of just the materials provided – cardboard and tape.

Team members will have to work together to engineer a functional boat that will float and sail across water without sinking. Once teams have finished making their boats, they will create a presentation to explain why their boat is the best, before putting their boats to the test. The final challenge will have teams racing their boats across the water!

If you and your team are working remotely, don’t worry. You still have a ton of great virtual team building problem solving options at your disposal.

In this virtual escape room experience, your team will be transported into a pyramid cursed by a restless mummy. You’ll have to work together to uncover clues and solve complex challenges to lift the ancient curse.

You’ve probably never heard of a man named Neil Davidson. But your group will need to come together to solve the mystery of his murder by analyzing clues, resolving challenges, and figuring out who had the means, motive, and opportunity to commit a deadly crime. 

This activity will challenge you and your group to approach problems analytically, read between the lines, and use critical thinking in order to identify a suspect and deliver justice.  

If you and your team like brainteasers, then Virtual Escape Room: Jewel Heist will be a big hit.  

Here’s the backstory.

There’s been a robbery. Someone has masterminded a heist to steal a priceless collection of precious jewels, and it’s up to you and your team to recover them before time runs out.

Together, you’ll need to uncover hidden clues and solve a series of brain-boggling challenges that require collaboration, creative problem-solving, and outside-the-box thinking. But be quick! The clock is ticking before the stolen score is gone forever.

With Virtual Code Break, you and your team can learn to be adaptive and dynamic in your thinking in order to tackle any new challenges that come your way. In this activity, your group will connect on a video conferencing platform where your event host will split you out into teams. Together, you’ll have to adapt your problem-solving skills as you race against the clock to tackle a variety of mixed brainteaser challenges ranging from Sudoku to puzzles, a game of Cranium, riddles, and even trivia. 

Curious to see how a virtual team building activity works? Check out this video on a Virtual Clue Murder Mystery in action. 

Step into the Outback Time Machine and take a trip through time, from pre-pandemic 21st century through the decades all the way to the 60’s. 

This exciting, fast-paced virtual trivia game, packed with nostalgia and good vibes, is guaranteed to produce big laughs, friendly competition, and maybe even some chair-dancing. 

Your virtual game show host will warm up guests with a couple of “table hopper rounds” (breakout room mixers) and split you out into teams. Within minutes, your home office will be transformed into a game show stage with your very own game show buzzers! 

And if your team loves trivia, check out our list of the most incredible virtual trivia games for work teams for even more ideas.

6.  Virtual Jeoparty Social

If your remote team is eager to socialize, have some fun as a group, and channel their competitive spirit, we’ve got just the thing for you! With Virtual Jeoparty Social, you and your colleagues will step into your very own virtual Jeopardy-style game show—equipped with a buzzer button, a professional actor as your host, and an immersive game show platform! Best of all, this game has been infused with an ultra-social twist: players will take part in a unique social mixer challenge between each round. 

With the right team building problem solving activities, you can help your team sharpen their core skills to ensure they’re prepared when they inevitably face a challenge at work. And best of all, you can have fun in the process. 

Do you have any favorite team building activities for building problem-solving skills? If so, tell us about them in the comments section below! 

Learn More About Team Building Problem Solving Activities  

For more information about how your group can take part in a virtual team building, training, or coaching solution, reach out to our Employee Engagement Consultants.     

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I love how this blog provides a variety of problem-solving activities for team building. It’s a great resource for anyone looking to foster teamwork and collaboration!

Kaizen is about changing the way things are. If you assume that things are all right the way they are, you can’t do kaizen. So change something! —Taiichi Ohno

Inspect and Adapt

Inspect & adapt: overview.

The Inspect and Adapt (I&A) is a significant event held at the end of each PI, where the current state of the Solution is demonstrated and evaluated. Teams then reflect and identify improvement backlog items via a structured problem-solving workshop.

The Agile Manifesto emphasizes the importance of continuous improvement through the following principle: “At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.”

In addition, SAFe includes ‘relentless improvement’ as one of the four SAFe Core Values as well as a dimension of the Continuous Learning Culture core competency. While opportunities to improve can and should occur continuously throughout the PI (e.g., Iteration Retrospectives ), applying some structure, cadence, and synchronization helps ensure that there is also time set aside to identify improvements across multiple teams and Agile Release Trains .

All ART stakeholders participate along with the Agile Teams in the I&A event. The result is a set of improvement backlog items that go into the ART Backlog for the next PI Planning event. In this way, every ART improves every PI. A similar I&A event is held by Solution Trains .

The I&A event consists of three parts:

PI System Demo

• Quantitative and qualitative measurement
• Retrospective and problem-solving workshop

Participants in the I&A should be, wherever possible, all the people involved in building the solution. For an ART, this includes:

• The Agile teams
• Release Train Engineer (RTE)
• System and Solution Architects
• Product Management ,  Business Owners , and other stakeholders

Additionally, Solution Train stakeholders may also attend this event.

The PI System Demo is the first part of the I&A, and it’s a little different from the regular system demos after every iteration. This demo shows all the Features the ART has developed during the PI. Typically the audience is broader; for example, Customers or Portfolio representatives are more likely to attend this demo. Therefore, the PI system demo tends to be a little more formal, and extra preparation and setup are usually required. But like any other system demo, it should be timeboxed to an hour or less, with the level of abstraction high enough to keep stakeholders actively engaged and providing feedback.

Before or as part of the PI system demo, Business Owners collaborate with each Agile Team to score the actual business value achieved for each of their Team PI Objectives , as illustrated in Figure 1.

The achievement score is calculated by separately totaling the business value for the plan and actual columns. The uncommitted objectives are not included in the total plan. However, they are part of the total actual. Then divide the actual total by the planned total to calculate the achievement score illustrated in Figure 1.

Quantitative and Qualitative Measurement

In the second part of the I&A event, teams collectively review any quantitative and qualitative metrics they have agreed to collect, then discuss the data and trends. In preparation for this, the RTE and the Solution Train Engineer are often responsible for gathering the information, analyzing it to identify potential issues, and facilitating the presentation of the findings to the ART.

Each team’s planned vs. actual business value is rolled up to create the ART predictability measure, as shown in Figure 2.

Reliable trains should operate in the 80–100 percent range; this allows the business and its external stakeholders to plan effectively. (Note: Uncommitted objectives are excluded from the planned commitment. However, they are included in the actual business value achievement, as can also be seen in Figure 1.)

Retrospective

The teams then run a brief (30 minutes or less) retrospective to identify a few significant issues they would like to address during the problem-solving workshop . There is no one way to do this; several different Agile retrospective formats can be used [3].

Based on the retrospective and the nature of the problems identified, the facilitator helps the group decide which issues they want to tackle. Each team may work on a problem, or, more typically, new groups are formed from individuals across different teams who wish to work on the same issue. This self-selection helps provide cross-functional and differing views of the problem and brings together those impacted and those best motivated to address the issue.

Key ART stakeholders—including Business Owners, customers, and management—join the retrospective and problem-solving workshop teams. The Business Owners can often unblock the impediments outside the team’s control.

Problem-Solving Workshop

The ART holds a structured, root-cause problem-solving workshop to address systemic problems. Root cause analysis provides a set of problem-solving tools used to identify the actual causes of a problem rather than just fixing the symptoms. The RTE typically facilitates the session in a timebox of two hours or less.

Figure 3 illustrates the steps in the problem-solving workshop.

The following sections describe each step of the process.

Agree on the Problem(s) to Solve

American inventor Charles Kettering is credited with saying that “a problem well stated is a problem half solved.” At this point, the teams have self-selected the problem they want to address. But do they agree on the details of the problem, or is it more likely that they have differing perspectives? To this end, the teams should spend a few minutes clearly stating the problem, highlighting the ‘what,’ ‘where,’ ‘when,’ and ‘impact’ as concisely as possible. Figure 4 illustrates a well-written problem statement.

Perform Root Cause Analysis

Effective problem-solving tools include the fishbone diagram and the ‘5 Whys.’ Also known as an Ishikawa Diagram , a fishbone diagram is a visual tool to explore the causes of specific events or sources of variation in a process. Figure 5 illustrates the fishbone diagram with a summary of the previous problem statement written at the head of the ‘fish.’

For our problem-solving workshop, the main bones often start with the default categories of people, processes, tools, program, and environment. However, these categories should be adapted as appropriate.

Team members then brainstorm causes that they think contribute to solving the problem and group them into these categories. Once a potential cause is identified, its root cause is explored with the 5 Whys technique. By asking ‘why’ five times, the cause of the previous cause is uncovered and added to the diagram. The process stops once a suitable root cause has been identified, and the same process is then applied to the next cause.

Identify the Biggest Root Cause

Pareto Analysis, also known as the 80/20 rule, is used to narrow down the number of actions that produce the most significant overall effect. It uses the principle that 20 percent of the causes are responsible for 80 percent of the problem. It’s beneficial when many possible courses of action compete for attention, which is almost always the case with complex, systemic issues.

Once all the possible causes-of-causes are identified, team members then cumulatively vote on the item they think is the most significant factor contributing to the original problem. They can do this by dot voting. For example, each person gets five votes to choose one or more causes they think are most problematic. The team then summarizes the votes in a Pareto chart, such as the example in Figure 6, which illustrates their collective consensus on the most significant root cause.

Restate the New Problem

The next step is to pick the cause with the most votes and restate it clearly as a problem. Restating it should take only a few minutes, as the teams clearly understand the root cause.

Brainstorm Solutions

At this point, the restated problem will start to imply some potential solutions. The team brainstorms as many possible corrective actions as possible within a fixed timebox (about 15–30 minutes). The rules of brainstorming apply here:

• Generate as many ideas as possible
• Do not allow criticism or debate
• Let the imagination soar
• Explore and combine ideas

Create Improvement Backlog Items

The team then cumulatively votes on up to three most viable solutions. These potential solutions are written as improvement stories and features, planned in the following PI Planning event. During that event, the RTE helps ensure that the relevant work needed to deliver the identified improvements is planned. This approach closes the loop, thus ensuring that action will be taken and that people and resources are dedicated as necessary to improve the current state.

Following this practice, problem-solving becomes routine and systematic, and team members and ART stakeholders can ensure that the train is solidly on its journey of relentless improvement.

Inspect and Adapt for Solution Trains

The above describes a rigorous approach to problem-solving in the context of a single ART. If the ART is part of a Solution Train, the I&A event will often include key stakeholders from the Solution Train. In larger value streams, however, an additional Solution Train I&A event may be required, following the same format.

Due to the number of people in a Solution Train, attendees at the large solution I&A event cannot include everyone, so stakeholders are selected that are best suited to address the problems. This subset of people consists of the Solution Train’s primary stakeholders and representatives from the various ARTs and Suppliers .

Last update: 22 January 2023

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Are you looking to enhance your or your team’s problem-solving abilities? Engaging in activities specifically designed to stimulate your and your team’s critical thinking skills can be an excellent way to sharpen your problem-solving prowess. Whether you enjoy puzzles, brain teasers, or interactive challenges, these activities provide an opportunity to overcome obstacles and think creatively.

By immersing yourself in problem-solving activities, you can develop valuable strategies, improve your decision-making abilities, and boost your overall problem-solving IQ. Get ready to unlock your full potential and tackle any challenge that comes your way with these exciting activities for problem-solving.

In this article, we will explore activities for problem-solving that can help enhance your team’s problem-solving skills, allowing you to approach challenges with confidence and creativity.

What Are Problem Solving Activities?

Problem-solving activities or problem-solving exercises are interactive games requiring critical thinking to solve puzzles. They enhance teamwork & critical thinking. Examples include building towers, navigating simulated challenges, and fostering creativity and communication.

For instance, imagine a team working together to construct the tallest tower using limited materials. They strategize, communicate ideas, and problem-solve to create the best structure, promoting collaboration and inventive thinking among team members.

Some widely practiced problem-solving activities include:

• A Shrinking Vessel: Teams must fit into a shrinking space, testing their cooperation and adaptability.
• Marshmallow Spaghetti Tower: Participants build a tower using marshmallows and spaghetti, promoting creative engineering.
• Egg Drop: Protecting an egg from a fall challenges problem-solving skills.
• Desert Island Survival: Teams simulate survival scenarios, encouraging creative solutions.
• Rolling Dice: A simple yet effective game involving chance and decision-making.
• Build a Tower: Constructing a stable tower with limited resources fosters teamwork and innovation, etc.

13 Easy Activities For Problem-Solving Ideas to Enhance Team Collaboration

Team building activities offer a great opportunity to test problem-solving abilities and promote effective collaboration within a group to problem solving group activities. By engaging in these activities, teams can break the monotony of the workplace and create a more inclusive and welcoming environment.

Here are nine easy-to-implement activities that can bring substantial change to your team culture and overall workplace dynamics.

#1. Crossword Puzzles

Objective: To enhance problem-solving skills, vocabulary, and cognitive abilities through engaging crossword puzzles. 

Estimated Time: 15-20 Minutes 

Materials Needed:

• Crossword puzzle sheets
• Pens or pencils
• Distribute crossword puzzle sheets and pens/pencils to each participant.
• Explain the rules of crossword puzzles and the goal of completing as many clues as possible within the given time.
• Participants individually or in pairs work on solving the crossword puzzle by filling in the correct words.
• Encourage critical thinking, word association, and collaborative discussions for solving challenging clues.
• At the end of the time limit, review the answers and discuss any interesting or challenging clues as a group.
• Enhanced Problem-Solving: Participants engage in critical thinking while deciphering clues, promoting effective problem-solving skills.
• Vocabulary Expansion: Exposure to new words and phrases within the crossword improves vocabulary and comprehension.
• Cognitive Stimulation: The mental exercise of solving the puzzle stimulates the brain, enhancing cognitive abilities.
• Team Collaboration: If done in pairs, participants practice collaboration and communication to solve clues together.
• Achievement and Motivation: Successfully completing the crossword brings a sense of accomplishment and motivates individuals to explore more puzzles.

Tips for Facilitators:

• Provide varying levels of crossword puzzles to accommodate different skill levels.
• Encourage participants to share strategies for solving challenging clues.
• Emphasize the fun and educational aspects of the activity to keep participants engaged.

#2. A Shrinking Vessel

Estimated Time: 10-15 Minutes

• Materials Needed: A rope and a ball of yarn
• Prepare the Setting: Lay a rope on the floor in a shape that allows all team members to stand comfortably inside it. For larger teams, multiple ropes can be used, dividing them into smaller groups.
• Enter the Circle: Have all team members stand inside the rope, ensuring that nobody steps outside its boundaries.
• Shrinking the Circle: Begin gradually shrinking the rope’s size, reducing the available space inside the circle.
• Adapt and Maintain Balance: As the circle shrinks, team members must make subtle adjustments to maintain their positions and balance within the shrinking area.
• The Challenge: The objective for the team is to collectively brainstorm and find innovative ways to keep every team member inside the circle without anyone stepping outside.
• Collaboration and Communication: The activity promotes teamwork and open communication as participants strategize to stay within the shrinking circle.
• Adaptability: Team members learn to adapt swiftly to changing circumstances, fostering agility and flexibility.
• Creative Problem-Solving: The challenge encourages inventive thinking and brainstorming to find unique solutions.
• Trust Building: By relying on each other’s actions, participants build trust and cohesion among team members.
• Time-Efficient: The short duration makes it an ideal icebreaker or energizer during meetings or workshops.
• Observe and Facilitate: Monitor the team’s dynamics and offer guidance to encourage equal participation and effective problem-solving.
• Encourage Verbalization: Prompt participants to voice their ideas and collaborate vocally, aiding in real-time adjustments.
• Debrief Thoughtfully: Engage the team in a discussion afterward, reflecting on strategies employed and lessons learned.
• Emphasize Adaptability: Highlight the transferable skill of adaptability and its significance in both professional and personal contexts.

#3. Human Knots

• Objective: Improving Collaboration & enhancing Communication Skills

Estimated Time: 15-20 minutes

• Materials: None required

Procedure: 

• Organize your team into a compact circle. For more sizable teams, subdivide them into smaller clusters, with each cluster forming its own circle. 
• Direct each individual to grasp the hands of two other people in the circle, with the exception of those positioned directly adjacent to them. This action will result in the formation of a complex “human knot” within the circle. 
• Present the challenge to the group: to unravel themselves from this entanglement while maintaining their hold on each other’s hands. If preferred, you can establish a specific time limit. 
• Observe the team members collaborating to unravel the knot, witnessing their collective effort to devise solutions and free themselves from the intricate puzzle.
• Team Cohesion: The activity encourages team members to interact closely, promoting bonding and understanding among participants.
• Effective Communication: Participants practice clear and concise communication as they coordinate movements to untangle the knot.
• Problem-Solving: The challenge stimulates creative thinking and problem-solving skills as individuals work collectively to find the optimal path for untangling.
• Adaptability: Participants learn to adapt their actions based on the evolving dynamics of the human knot, fostering adaptability.
• Trust Building: As individuals rely on each other to navigate the intricate knot, trust and cooperation naturally develop.
• Set a Positive Tone: Create an inclusive and supportive atmosphere, emphasizing that the focus is on collaboration rather than competition.
• Encourage Verbalization: Urge participants to articulate their intentions and listen to others’ suggestions, promoting effective teamwork.
• Observe Group Dynamics: Monitor interactions and step in if needed to ensure everyone is actively engaged and included.
• Reflect and Share: Conclude the activity with a debriefing session, allowing participants to share their experiences, strategies, and key takeaways.
• Vary Grouping: Change group compositions for subsequent rounds to enhance interactions among different team members.

#4. Egg Drop

Helps With: Decision Making, Collaboration

• A carton of eggs
• Construction materials (balloons, rubber bands, straws, tape, plastic wrap, etc.)
• A suitable location for the activity
• Assign each team a single egg and random construction materials.
• Teams must create a carrier to protect the egg from breaking.
• Drop the carriers one by one and increase the height if necessary to determine the most durable carrier.
• The winning team is the one with the carrier that survives the highest drop.
• Decision Making: Participants engage in critical decision-making processes as they select construction materials and determine carrier designs.
• Collaboration: The activity necessitates collaboration and coordination among team members to construct an effective carrier.
• Problem-Solving: Teams apply creative problem-solving skills to devise innovative methods for safeguarding the egg.
• Risk Management: Participants learn to assess potential risks and consequences while making design choices to prevent egg breakage.
• Celebrating Success: The victorious team experiences a sense of accomplishment, boosting morale and promoting a positive team spirit.
• Provide Diverse Materials: Offer a wide range of construction materials to stimulate creativity and allow teams to explore various design options.
• Set Safety Guidelines: Prioritize safety by specifying a safe drop height and ensuring participants follow safety protocols during construction.
• Encourage Brainstorming: Prompt teams to brainstorm multiple carrier ideas before finalizing their designs, fostering diverse perspectives.
• Facilitate Reflection: After the activity, lead a discussion where teams share their design strategies, challenges faced, and lessons learned.
• Highlight Collaboration: Emphasize the significance of teamwork in achieving success, acknowledging effective communication and cooperation.

#5. Marshmallow Spaghetti Tower

Helps With: Collaboration

Estimated Time: 20-30 Minutes

Materials Needed (per team):

• Raw spaghetti: 20 sticks
• Marshmallow: 1
• String: 1 yard
• Masking tape: 1 roll
• Tower Construction: Instruct teams to collaborate and utilize the provided materials to construct the tallest tower possible within a designated time frame.
• Marshmallow Support: Emphasize that the tower must be capable of standing independently and supporting a marshmallow at its highest point.
• Prototype and Iterate: Encourage teams to engage in prototyping and iteration, testing different design approaches and refining their tower structures.
• T eamwork and Communication: Promote effective teamwork and communication as team members coordinate their efforts to build a stable and tall tower.
• Evaluation Criteria: Evaluate each tower based on its height, stability, and the successful placement of the marshmallow at the top.
• Collaboration: Participants collaborate closely, sharing ideas and working together to design and construct the tower.
• Innovative Thinking: The activity encourages innovative thinking as teams experiment with different strategies to build a stable tower.
• Time Management: Teams practice time management skills as they work within a specified time limit to complete the task.
• Problem-Solving: Participants engage in creative problem-solving to address challenges such as balancing the marshmallow and constructing a sturdy tower.
• Adaptability: Teams adapt their approaches based on trial and error, learning from each iteration to improve their tower designs.
• Set Clear Guidelines: Clearly explain the materials, objectives, and evaluation criteria to ensure teams understand the task.
• Foster Creativity: Encourage teams to think outside the box and explore unconventional methods for constructing their towers.
• Emphasize Collaboration: Highlight the importance of effective communication and teamwork to accomplish the task successfully.
• Time Management: Remind teams of the time limit and encourage them to allocate their time wisely between planning and construction.
• Reflect and Share: Facilitate a discussion after the activity, allowing teams to share their design choices, challenges faced, and lessons learned.

Objective: To engage participants in the strategic and analytical world of Sudoku, enhancing logical thinking and problem-solving abilities. 

Estimated Time: 20-25 Minutes 

• Sudoku puzzle sheets
• Pencils with erasers
• Distribute Sudoku puzzle sheets and pencils to each participant.
• Familiarize participants with the rules and mechanics of Sudoku puzzles.
• Explain the goal: to fill in the empty cells with numbers from 1 to 9 while adhering to the rules of no repetition in rows, columns, or subgrids.
• Encourage participants to analyze the puzzle’s layout, identify potential numbers, and strategically fill in cells.
• Emphasize the importance of logical deduction and step-by-step approach in solving the puzzle.
• Provide hints or guidance if needed, ensuring participants remain engaged and challenged.
• Logical Thinking: Sudoku challenges participants’ logical and deductive reasoning, fostering analytical skills.
• Problem-Solving: The intricate interplay of numbers and constraints hones problem-solving abilities.
• Focus and Patience: Participants practice patience and attention to detail while gradually unveiling the solution.
• Pattern Recognition: Identifying number patterns and possibilities contributes to enhanced pattern recognition skills.
• Personal Achievement: Successfully completing a Sudoku puzzle provides a sense of accomplishment and boosts confidence.
• Offer varying levels of Sudoku puzzles to cater to different skill levels.
• Encourage participants to share strategies and techniques for solving specific challenges.
• Highlight the mental workout Sudoku provides and its transferable skills to real-life problem-solving.

Helps With: Communication, Problem-solving, & Management

• A lockable room
• 5-10 puzzles or clues
• Hide the key and a set of clues around the room.
• Lock the room and provide team members with a specific time limit to find the key and escape.
• Instruct the team to work together, solving the puzzles and deciphering the clues to locate the key.
• Encourage efficient communication and effective problem-solving under time pressure.
• Communication Skills: Participants enhance their communication abilities by sharing observations, ideas, and findings to collectively solve puzzles.
• Problem-solving Proficiency: The activity challenges teams to think critically, apply logical reasoning, and collaboratively tackle intricate challenges.
• Team Management: The experience promotes effective team management as members assign tasks, prioritize efforts, and coordinate actions.
• Time Management: The imposed time limit sharpens time management skills as teams strategize and allocate time wisely.
• Adaptability: Teams learn to adapt and adjust strategies based on progress, evolving clues, and time constraints.
• Clear Introduction: Provide a concise overview of the activity, emphasizing the importance of communication, problem-solving, and time management.
• Diverse Challenges: Offer a mix of puzzles and clues to engage various problem-solving skills, catering to different team strengths.
• Supportive Role: Act as a facilitator, offering subtle guidance if needed while allowing teams to independently explore and solve challenges.
• Debriefing Session: Organize a debriefing session afterward to discuss the experience, highlight successful strategies, and identify areas for improvement.
• Encourage Reflection: Encourage participants to reflect on their teamwork, communication effectiveness, and problem-solving approach.

#8. Frostbite for Group Problem Solving Activities

Helps With: Decision Making, Trust, Leadership

• An electric fan
• Construction materials (toothpicks, cardstock, rubber bands, sticky notes, etc.)
• Divide the team into groups of 4-5 people, each with a designated leader.
• Blindfold team members and prohibit leaders from using their hands.
• Provide teams with construction materials and challenge them to build a tent within 30 minutes.
• Test the tents using the fan to see which can withstand high winds.
• Decision-Making Proficiency: Participants are exposed to critical decision-making situations under constraints, allowing them to practice effective and efficient decision-making.
• Trust Development: Blindfolding team members and relying on the designated leaders fosters trust and collaboration among team members.
• Leadership Skills: Designated leaders navigate the challenge without hands-on involvement, enhancing their leadership and communication skills.
• Creative Problem Solving: Teams employ creative thinking and resourcefulness to construct stable tents with limited sensory input.
• Team Cohesion: The shared task and unique constraints promote team cohesion and mutual understanding.
• Role of the Facilitator: Act as an observer, allowing teams to navigate the challenge with minimal intervention. Offer assistance only when necessary.
• Clarity in Instructions: Provide clear instructions regarding blindfolding, leader restrictions, and time limits to ensure a consistent experience.
• Debriefing Session: After the activity, conduct a debriefing session to discuss team dynamics, leadership approaches, and decision-making strategies.
• Encourage Communication: Emphasize the importance of effective communication within teams to ensure smooth coordination and successful tent construction.
• Acknowledge Creativity: Celebrate creative solutions and innovative approaches exhibited by teams during the tent-building process.

#9. Dumbest Idea First

Helps With: Critical Thinking & Creative Problem Solving Activity

Estimated Time: 15-20 Minutes

Materials Needed: A piece of paper, pen, and pencil

• Problem Presentation: Introduce a specific problem to the team, either a real-world challenge or a hypothetical scenario that requires a solution.
• Brainstorming Dumb Ideas: Instruct team members to quickly generate and jot down the most unconventional and seemingly “dumb” ideas they can think of to address the problem.
• Idea Sharing: Encourage each participant to share their generated ideas with the group, fostering a relaxed and open atmosphere for creative expression.
• Viability Assessment: As a team, review and evaluate each idea, considering potential benefits and drawbacks. Emphasize the goal of identifying unconventional approaches.
• Selecting Promising Solutions: Identify which seemingly “dumb” ideas could hold hidden potential or innovative insights. Discuss how these ideas could be adapted into workable solutions.
• Divergent Thinking: Participants engage in divergent thinking, pushing beyond conventional boundaries to explore unconventional solutions.
• Creative Exploration: The activity sparks creative exploration by encouraging participants to let go of inhibitions and embrace imaginative thinking.
• Critical Analysis: Through evaluating each idea, participants practice critical analysis and learn to identify unique angles and aspects of potential solutions.
• Open Communication: The lighthearted approach of sharing “dumb” ideas fosters open communication, reducing fear of judgment and promoting active participation.
• Solution Adaptation: Identifying elements of seemingly “dumb” ideas that have merit encourages participants to adapt and refine their approaches creatively.
• Safe Environment: Foster a safe and non-judgmental environment where participants feel comfortable sharing unconventional ideas.
• Time Management: Set clear time limits for idea generation and sharing to maintain the activity’s energetic pace.
• Encourage Wild Ideas: Emphasize that the goal is to explore the unconventional, urging participants to push the boundaries of creativity.
• Facilitator Participation: Participate in idea generation to demonstrate an open-minded approach and encourage involvement.
• Debriefing Discussion: After the activity, facilitate a discussion on how seemingly “dumb” ideas can inspire innovative solutions and stimulate fresh thinking.

This activity encourages out-of-the-box thinking and creative problem-solving. It allows teams to explore unconventional ideas that may lead to unexpected, yet effective, solutions.

#10: Legoman

Helps With: Foster teamwork, communication, and creativity through a collaborative Lego-building activity.

Estimated Time: 20-30 minutes

• Lego bricks
• Lego instruction manuals

Procedure :

• Divide participants into small teams of 3-5 members.
• Provide each team with an equal set of Lego bricks and a Lego instruction manual.
• Explain that the goal is for teams to work together to construct the Lego model shown in the manual.
• Set a time limit for the building activity based on model complexity.
• Allow teams to self-organize, build, and collaborate to complete the model within the time limit.
• Evaluate each team’s final model compared to the manual’s original design.
• Enhanced Communication: Participants must communicate clearly and listen actively to collaborate effectively.
• Strengthened Teamwork: Combining efforts toward a shared goal promotes camaraderie and team cohesion.
• Creative Problem-Solving: Teams must creatively problem-solve if pieces are missing or instructions unclear.
• Planning and Resource Allocation: Following instructions fosters planning skills and efficient use of resources.
• Sense of Achievement: Completing a challenging build provides a sense of collective accomplishment.
• Encourage Participation: Urge quieter members to contribute ideas and take an active role.
• Highlight Teamwork: Emphasize how cooperation and task coordination are key to success.
• Ensure Equal Engagement: Monitor group dynamics to ensure all members are engaged.
• Allow Creativity: Permit modifications if teams lack exact pieces or wish to get creative.
• Focus on Enjoyment: Create a lively atmosphere so the activity remains energizing and fun.

#11: Minefield

Helps With: Trust, Communication, Patience

Materials Needed: Open space, blindfolds

• Mark a “minefield” on the ground using ropes, cones, or tape. Add toy mines or paper cups.
• Pair up participants and blindfold one partner.
• Position blindfolded partners at the start of the minefield. Direct seeing partners to verbally guide them through to the other side without hitting “mines.”
• Partners switch roles once finished and repeat.
• Time partnerships and provide prizes for the fastest safe crossing.
• Trust Building: Blindfolded partners must trust their partner’s instructions.
• Effective Communication: Giving clear, specific directions is essential for navigating the minefield.
• Active Listening: Partners must listen closely and follow directions precisely.
• Patience & Support: The exercise requires patience and encouraging guidance between partners.
• Team Coordination: Partners must work in sync, coordinating movements and communication.
• Test Boundaries: Ensure the minefield’s size accommodates safe movement and communication.
• Monitor Interactions: Watch for dominant guidance and ensure both partners participate fully.
• Time Strategically: Adjust time limits based on the minefield size and difficulty.
• Add Obstacles: Introduce additional non-mine objects to increase challenge and communication needs.
• Foster Discussion: Debrief afterward to discuss communication approaches and trust-building takeaways.

#12: Reverse Pyramid

Helps With: Teamwork, Communication, Creativity

Materials Needed: 36 cups per group, tables

• Form small groups of 5-7 participants.
• Provide each group with a stack of 36 cups and a designated building area.
• Explain the objective: Build the tallest pyramid starting with just one cup on top.
• Place the first cup on the table, and anyone in the group can add two cups beneath it to form the second row.
• From this point, only the bottom row can be lifted to add the next row underneath.
• Cups in the pyramid can only be touched or supported by index fingers.
• If the structure falls, start over from one cup.
• Offer more cups if a group uses all provided.
• Allow 15 minutes for building.

Teamwork: Collaborate to construct the pyramid.

Communication: Discuss and execute the building strategy.

Creativity: Find innovative ways to build a tall, stable pyramid.

Clarify Expectations: Emphasize the definition of a pyramid with each row having one less cup.

Encourage Perseverance: Motivate groups to continue despite challenges.

Promote Consensus: Encourage groups to work together and help each other.

Reflect on Failure: Use collapses as a metaphor for overcoming obstacles and improving.

Consider Competitions: Modify the activity for competitive teams and scoring.

#13: Stranded

Helps With: Decision-making, Prioritization, Teamwork

Materials Needed: List of salvaged items, paper, pens

• Present a scenario where teams are stranded and must prioritize items salvaged from a plane crash.
• Provide teams with the same list of ~15 salvaged items.
• Instruct teams to agree on an item ranking with #1 being the most important for survival.
• Teams share and compare their prioritized lists. Identify differences in approach.
• Discuss what factors influenced decisions and how teams worked together to agree on priorities.
• Critical Thinking: Weighing item importance requires analytical thinking and discussion.
• Team Decision-Making: Coming to a consensus fosters team decision-making capabilities.
• Prioritization Skills: Ranking items strengthen prioritization and justification abilities.
• Perspective-Taking: Understanding different prioritizations builds perspective-taking skills.
• Team Cohesion: Collaborating toward a shared goal brings teams closer together.
• Encourage Discussion: Urge teams to discuss all ideas rather than allow single members to dominate.
• Be Engaged: Circulate to listen in on team discussions and pose thought-provoking questions.
• Add Complexity: Introduce scenarios with additional constraints to expand critical thinking.
• Highlight Disagreements: When priorities differ, facilitate constructive discussions on influencing factors.
• Recognize Collaboration: Acknowledge teams that demonstrate exceptional teamwork and communication.

Now let’s look at some common types of problem-solving activities.

Types of Problem-Solving Activities

The most common types of problem-solving activities/exercises are:

• Creative problem-solving activities
• Group problem-solving activities
• Individual problem-solving activities
• Fun problem-solving activities, etc.

In the next segments, we’ll be discussing these types of problem-solving activities in detail. So, keep reading!

Creative Problem-Solving Activities

Creative problem solving (CPS) means using creativity to find new solutions. It involves thinking creatively at first and then evaluating ideas later. For example, think of it like brainstorming fun game ideas, discussing them, and then picking the best one to play.

Some of the most common creative problem-solving activities include:

• Legoman: Building creative structures with LEGO.
• Escape: Solving puzzles to escape a room.
• Frostbite: Finding solutions in challenging situations.
• Minefield: Navigating a field of obstacles.

Group Problem-Solving Activities

Group problem-solving activities are challenges that make teams work together to solve puzzles or overcome obstacles. They enhance teamwork and critical thinking.

For instance, think of a puzzle-solving game where a group must find hidden clues to escape a locked room.

Here are the most common group problem-solving activities you can try in groups:

• A Shrinking Vessel
• Marshmallow Spaghetti Tower
• Cardboard Boat Building Challenge
• Clue Murder Mystery
• Escape Room: Jewel Heist
• Escape Room: Virtual Team Building
• Scavenger Hunt
• Dumbest Idea First

Individual Problem-Solving Activities

As the name suggests, individual problem-solving activities are the tasks that you need to play alone to boost your critical thinking ability. They help you solve problems and stay calm while facing challenges in real life. Like puzzles, they make your brain sharper. Imagine it’s like training your brain muscles to handle tricky situations.

Here are some of the most common individual problem-solving activities:

• Puzzles (jigsaw, crossword, sudoku, etc.)
• Brain teasers
• Logic problems
• Optical illusions
• “Escape room” style games

Fun Problem-Solving Activities

Fun problem-solving activities are enjoyable games that sharpen your critical thinking skills while having a blast. Think of activities like the Legoman challenge, escape rooms, or rolling dice games – they make problem-solving exciting and engaging!

And to be frank, all of the mentioned problem-solving activities are fun if you know how to play and enjoy them as all of them are game-like activities.

Team Problems You Can Address Through Problem Solving Activities

Fun problem-solving activities serve as dynamic tools to address a range of challenges that teams often encounter. These engaging activities foster an environment of collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking, enabling teams to tackle various problems head-on. Here are some common team problems that can be effectively addressed through these activities:

• Communication Breakdowns:  

Activities like “Escape,” “A Shrinking Vessel,” and “Human Knots” emphasize the importance of clear and effective communication. They require teams to work together, exchange ideas, and devise strategies to accomplish a shared goal. By engaging in these activities, team members learn to communicate more efficiently, enhancing overall team communication in real-world situations.

• Lack of Trust and Cohesion:  

Problem-solving activities promote trust and cohesiveness within teams. For instance, “Frostbite” and “Marshmallow Spaghetti Tower” require teams to collaborate closely, trust each other’s ideas, and rely on each member’s strengths. These activities build a sense of unity and trust, which can translate into improved teamwork and collaboration.

• Innovative Thinking:  

“Dumbest Idea First” and “Egg Drop” encourage teams to think outside the box and explore unconventional solutions. These activities challenge teams to be creative and innovative in their problem-solving approaches, fostering a culture of thinking beyond traditional boundaries when faced with complex issues.

• Decision-Making Challenges:  

Activities like “Onethread” facilitate group decision-making by providing a platform for open discussions and collaborative choices. Problem-solving activities require teams to make decisions collectively, teaching them to weigh options, consider different viewpoints, and arrive at informed conclusions—a skill that is transferable to real-world decision-making scenarios.

• Leadership and Role Clarification:  

Activities such as “Frostbite” and “Egg Drop” designate team leaders and roles within groups. This provides an opportunity for team members to practice leadership, delegation, and role-specific tasks. By experiencing leadership dynamics in a controlled setting, teams can improve their leadership skills and better understand their roles in actual projects.

• Problem-Solving Strategies:  

All of the problem-solving activities involve the application of different strategies. Teams learn to analyze problems, break them down into manageable components, and develop systematic approaches for resolution. These strategies can be adapted to real-world challenges, enabling teams to approach complex issues with confidence.

• Team Morale and Engagement:  

Participating in engaging and enjoyable activities boosts team morale and engagement. These activities provide a break from routine tasks, energize team members, and create a positive and fun atmosphere. Elevated team morale can lead to increased motivation and productivity.

By incorporating these fun problem-solving activities, teams can address a variety of challenges, foster skill development, and build a more cohesive and effective working environment. As teams learn to collaborate, communicate, innovate, and make decisions collectively, they are better equipped to overcome obstacles and achieve shared goals.

The Benefits of Problem Solving Activities for Your Team

#1 Better Thinking

Problem-solving activities bring out the best in team members by encouraging them to contribute their unique ideas. This stimulates better thinking as team managers evaluate different solutions and choose the most suitable ones.

For example, a remote team struggling with communication benefited from quick thinking and the sharing of ideas, leading to the adoption of various communication modes for improved collaboration.

#2 Better Risk Handling

Team building problem solving activities condition individuals to handle risks more effectively. By engaging in challenging situations and finding solutions, team members develop the ability to respond better to stressful circumstances.

#3 Better Communication

Regular communication among team members is crucial for efficient problem-solving. Engaging in problem-solving activities fosters cooperation and communication within the team, resulting in better understanding and collaboration. Using tools like OneThread can further enhance team communication and accountability.

#4 Improved Productivity Output

When teams work cohesively, overall productivity improves, leading to enhanced profit margins for the company or organization. Involving managers and team members in problem-solving activities can positively impact the company’s growth and profitability.

How Onethread Enhances the Effect of Problem Solving Activities

Problem-solving activities within teams thrive on collaborative efforts and shared perspectives. Onethread emerges as a potent facilitator, enabling teams to collectively tackle challenges and harness diverse viewpoints with precision. Here’s a comprehensive view of how Onethread amplifies team collaboration in problem-solving initiatives:

Open Channels for Discussion:

Onethread’s real-time messaging feature serves as a dedicated hub for open and seamless discussions. Teams can engage in brainstorming sessions, share insightful observations, and propose innovative solutions within a flexible environment. Asynchronous communication empowers members to contribute their insights at their convenience, fostering comprehensive problem analysis with ample deliberation.

Centralized Sharing of Resources:

Effective problem-solving often hinges on access to pertinent resources. Onethread’s document sharing functionality ensures that critical information, references, and research findings are centralized and readily accessible. This eradicates the need for cumbersome email attachments and enables team members to collaborate with precise and up-to-date data.

Efficient Task Allocation and Monitoring:

Problem-solving journeys comprise a series of tasks and actions. Onethread’s task management capability streamlines the delegation of specific responsibilities to team members. Assign tasks related to research, data analysis, or solution implementation and monitor progress in real time. This cultivates a sense of accountability and guarantees comprehensive coverage of every facet of the problem-solving process.

Facilitated Collaborative Decision-Making: Navigating intricate problems often demands collective decision-making. Onethread’s collaborative ecosystem empowers teams to deliberate over potential solutions, assess pros and cons, and make well-informed choices. Transparent discussions ensure that decisions are comprehensively comprehended and supported by the entire team.

Seamless Documentation and Insights Sharing:

As the problem-solving journey unfolds, the accumulation of insights and conclusions becomes pivotal. Onethread’s collaborative document editing feature empowers teams to document their discoveries, chronicle the steps undertaken, and showcase successful solutions. This shared repository of documentation serves as a valuable resource for future reference and continuous learning.

With Onethread orchestrating the backdrop, team collaboration during problem-solving activities transforms into a harmonious fusion of insights, ideas, and actionable steps.

What are the 5 problem-solving skills?

The top 5 problem-solving skills in 2023 are critical thinking, creativity, emotional intelligence, adaptability, and data literacy. Most employers seek these skills in their workforce.

What are the steps of problem-solving?

Problem-solving steps are as follows: 1. Define the problem clearly. 2. Analyze the issue in detail. 3. Generate potential solutions. 4. Evaluate these options. 5. Choose the best solution. 6. Put the chosen solution into action. 7. Measure the outcomes to assess effectiveness and improvements made. These sequential steps assist in efficient and effective problem resolution.

How do you teach problem-solving skills?

Teaching problem-solving involves modelling effective methods within a context, helping students grasp the problem, dedicating ample time, asking guiding questions, and giving suggestions. Connect errors to misconceptions to enhance understanding, fostering a straightforward approach to building problem-solving skills.

So here is all about “activities for problem solving”.No matter which activity you choose, engaging in problem-solving activities not only provides entertainment but also helps enhance cognitive abilities such as critical thinking, decision making, and creativity. So why not make problem solving a regular part of your routine?

Take some time each day or week to engage in these activities and watch as your problem-solving skills grow stronger. Plus, it’s an enjoyable way to pass the time and challenge yourself mentally.

So go ahead, grab a puzzle or gather some friends for a game night – get ready to have fun while sharpening your problem-solving skills!

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14 Best Team Building Problem Solving Group Activities For 2024

The best teams see solutions where others see problems. A great company culture is built around a collaborative spirit and the type of unity it takes to find answers to the big business questions.

So how can you get team members working together?

How can you develop a mentality that will help them overcome obstacles they have yet to encounter?

One of the best ways to improve your teams’ problem solving skills is through team building problem solving activities .

“86% of employees and executives cite lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for workplace failures.” — Bit.AI

These activities can simulate true-to-life scenarios they’ll find themselves in, or the scenarios can call on your employees or coworkers to dig deep and get creative in a more general sense.

The truth is, on a day-to-day basis, you have to prepare for the unexpected. It just happens that team building activities help with that, but are so fun that they don’t have to feel like work ( consider how you don’t even feel like you’re working out when you’re playing your favorite sport or doing an exercise you actually enjoy! )

What are the benefits of group problem-solving activities?

The benefits of group problem-solving activities for team building include:

• Better communication
• Improved collaboration and teamwork
• More flexible thinking
• Faster problem-solving
• Better proactivity and decision making

Without further ado, check out this list of the 14 best team-building problem-solving group activities for 2024!

Page Contents (Click To Jump)

Popular Problem Solving Activities

1. virtual team challenge.

Virtual Team Challenges are popular problem-solving activities that involve a group of people working together to solve an issue. The challenge generally involves members of the team brainstorming, discussing, and creating solutions for a given problem.

Participants work both individually and collaboratively to come up with ideas and strategies that will help them reach their goals.

Why this is a fun problem-solving activity: Participants can interact and communicate with each other in a virtual environment while simultaneously engaging with the problem-solving activities. This makes it an enjoyable experience that allows people to use their creative thinking skills, build team spirit, and gain valuable insights into the issue at hand.

Problem-solving activities such as Virtual Team Challenges offer a great way for teams to come together, collaborate, and develop creative solutions to complex problems.

2. Problem-Solving Templates

Problem-Solving Templates are popular problem-solving activities that involve a group of people working together to solve an issue. The challenge generally involves members of the team utilizing pre-made templates and creating solutions for a given problem with the help of visual aids.

This activity is great for teams that need assistance in getting started on their problem-solving journey.

Why this is a fun problem-solving activity: Problem-Solving Templates offer teams an easy and stress-free way to get the creative juices flowing. The visual aids that come with the templates help team members better understand the issue at hand and easily come up with solutions together.

This activity is great for teams that need assistance in getting started on their problem-solving journey, as it provides an easy and stress-free way to get the creative juices flowing.

Problem Solving Group Activities & Games For Team Building

3. coworker feud, “it’s all fun and games”.

Coworker Feud is a twist on the classic Family Feud game show! This multiple rapid round game keeps the action flowing and the questions going. You can choose from a variety of customizations, including picking the teams yourself, randomized teams, custom themes, and custom rounds.

Best for: Hybrid teams

Why this is an effective problem solving group activity: Coworker Feud comes with digital game materials, a digital buzzer, an expert host, and a zoom link to get the participants ready for action! Teams compete with each other to correctly answer the survey questions. At the end of the game, the team with the most competitive answers is declared the winner of the Feud.

How to get started:

• Sign up for Coworker Feud
• Break into teams of 4 to 10 people
• Get the competitive juices flowing and let the games begin!

Learn more here: Coworker Feud

4. Crack The Case

“who’s a bad mamma jamma”.

Crack The Case is a classic WhoDoneIt game that forces employees to depend on their collective wit to stop a deadly murderer dead in his tracks! Remote employees and office commuters can join forces to end this crime spree.

Best for: Remote teams

Why this is an effective problem solving group activity: The Virtual Clue Murder Mystery is an online problem solving activity that uses a proprietary videoconferencing platform to offer the chance for employees and coworkers to study case files, analyze clues, and race to find the motive, the method, and the individual behind the murder of Neil Davidson.

• Get a custom quote here
• Download the app
• Let the mystery-solving collaboration begin!

Learn more here: Crack The Case

5. Catch Meme If You Can

“can’t touch this”.

Purposefully created to enhance leadership skills and team bonding , Catch Meme If You Can is a hybrid between a scavenger hunt and an escape room . Teammates join together to search for clues, solve riddles, and get out — just in time!

Best for: Small teams

Why this is an effective problem solving group activity: Catch Meme If You Can is an adventure with a backstory. Each team has to submit their answer to the puzzle in order to continue to the next part of the sequence. May the best team escape!

• The teams will be given instructions and the full storyline
• Teams will be split into a handful of people each
• The moderator will kick off the action!

Learn more here: Catch Meme If You Can

6. Puzzle Games

“just something to puzzle over”.

Puzzle Games is the fresh trivia game to test your employees and blow their minds with puzzles, jokes , and fun facts!

Best for: In-person teams

Why this is an effective problem solving group activity: Eight mini brain teaser and trivia style games include word puzzles, name that nonsense, name that tune, and much more. Plus, the points each team earns will go towards planting trees in the precious ecosystems and forests of Uganda

• Get a free consultation for your team
• Get a custom designed invitation for your members
• Use the game link
• Dedicated support will help your team enjoy Puzzle Games to the fullest!

Learn more here: Puzzle Games

7. Virtual Code Break

“for virtual teams”.

Virtual Code Break is a virtual team building activity designed for remote participants around the globe. Using a smart video conferencing solution, virtual teams compete against each other to complete challenges, answer trivia questions, and solve brain-busters!

Why this is an effective problem solving group activity: Virtual Code Break can be played by groups as small as 4 people all the way up to more than 1,000 people at once. However, every team will improve their communication and problem-solving skills as they race against the clock and depend on each other’s strengths to win!

• Reach out for a free consultation to align the needs of your team
• An event facilitator will be assigned to handle all of the set-up and logistics
• They will also provide you with logins and a play-by-play of what to expect
• Sign into the Outback video conferencing platform and join your pre-assigned team
• Lastly, let the games begin!

Learn more here: Virtual Code Break

8. Stranded

“survivor: office edition”.

Stranded is the perfect scenario-based problem solving group activity. The doors of the office are locked and obviously your team can’t just knock them down or break the windows.

Why this is an effective problem solving group activity: Your team has less than half an hour to choose 10 items around the office that will help them survive. They then rank the items in order of importance. It’s a bit like the classic game of being lost at sea without a lifeboat.

• Get everyone together in the office
• Lock the doors
• Let them start working together to plan their survival

Learn more here: Stranded

9. Letting Go Game

“for conscious healing”.

The Letting Go Game is a game of meditation and mindfulness training for helping teammates thrive under pressure and reduce stress in the process. The tasks of the Letting Go Game boost resiliency, attentiveness, and collaboration.

Why this is an effective problem solving group activity: Expert-guided activities and awareness exercises encourage team members to think altruistically and demonstrate acts of kindness. Between yoga, face painting, and fun photography, your employees or coworkers will have more than enough to keep them laughing and growing together with this mindfulness activity!

• Reach out for a free consultation
• A guide will then help lead the exercises
• Let the funny videos, pictures, and playing begin!

Learn more here: Letting Go Game

10. Wild Goose Chase

“city time”.

Wild Goose Chase is the creative problem solving activity that will take teams all around your city and bring them together as a group! This scavenger hunt works for teams as small as 10 up to groups of over 5000 people.

Best for: Large teams

Why this is an effective group problem solving activity: As employees and group members are coming back to the office, there are going to be times that they’re itching to get outside. Wild Goose Chase is the perfect excuse to satisfy the desire to go out-of-office every now and then. Plus, having things to look at and see around the city will get employees talking in ways they never have before.

• Download the Outback app to access the Wild Goose Chase
• Take photos and videos from around the city
• The most successful team at completing challenges on time is the champ!

Learn more here: Wild Goose Chase

11. Human Knot

“for a knotty good time”.

The Human Knot is one of the best icebreaker team building activities! In fact, there’s a decent chance you played it in grade school. It’s fun, silly, and best of all — free!

Why this is an effective group problem solving activity: Participants start in a circle and connect hands with two other people in the group to form a human knot. The team then has to work together and focus on clear communication to unravel the human knot by maneuvering their way out of this hands-on conundrum. But there’s a catch — they can’t let go of each other’s hands in this team building exercise.

• Form a circle
• Tell each person to grab a random hand until all hands are holding another
• They can’t hold anyone’s hand who is directly next to them
• Now they have to get to untangling
• If the chain breaks before everyone is untangled, they have to start over again

Learn more here: Human Knot

12. What Would You Do?

“because it’s fun to imagine”.

What Would You Do? Is the hypothetical question game that gets your team talking and brainstorming about what they’d do in a variety of fun, intriguing, and sometimes, whacky scenarios.

Best for: Distributed teams

Why this is an effective group problem solving activity: After employees or coworkers start talking about their What Would You Do? responses, they won’t be able to stop. That’s what makes this such an incredible team building activity . For example, you could ask questions like “If you could live forever, what would you do with your time?” or “If you never had to sleep, what would you do?”

• In addition to hypothetical questions, you could also give teammates some optional answers to get them started
• After that, let them do the talking — then they’ll be laughing and thinking and dreaming, too!

13. Crossing The River

“quite the conundrum”.

Crossing The River is a river-crossing challenge with one correct answer. Your team gets five essential elements — a chicken, a fox, a rowboat, a woman, and a bag of corn. You see, the woman has a bit of a problem, you tell them. She has to get the fox, the bag of corn, and the chicken to the other side of the river as efficiently as possible.

Why this is an effective group problem solving activity: She has a rowboat, but it can only carry her and one other item at a time. She cannot leave the chicken and the fox alone — for obvious reasons. And she can’t leave the chicken with the corn because it will gobble it right up. So the question for your team is how does the woman get all five elements to the other side of the river safely in this fun activity?

• Form teams of 2 to 5 people
• Each team has to solve the imaginary riddle
• Just make sure that each group understands that the rowboat can only carry one animal and one item at a time; the fox and chicken can’t be alone; and the bag of corn and the chicken cannot be left alone
• Give the verbal instructions for getting everything over to the other side

14. End-Hunger Games

“philanthropic fun”.

Does anything bond people quite like acts of kindness and compassion? The End-Hunger Games will get your team to rally around solving the serious problem of hunger.

Best for: Medium-sized teams

Why this is an effective problem solving group activity: Teams join forces to complete challenges based around non-perishable food items in the End-Hunger Games. Groups can range in size from 25 to more than 2000 people, who will all work together to collect food for the local food bank.

• Split into teams and compete to earn boxes and cans of non-perishable food
• Each team attempts to build the most impressive food item construction
• Donate all of the non-perishable foods to a local food bank

Learn more here: End-Hunger Games

People Also Ask These Questions About Team Building Problem Solving Group Activities

Q: what are some problem solving group activities.

• A: Some problem solving group activities can include riddles, egg drop, reverse pyramid, tallest tower, trivia, and other moderator-led activities.

Q: What kind of skills do group problem solving activities & games improve?

• A: Group problem solving activities and games improve collaboration, leadership, and communication skills.

Q: What are problem solving based team building activities & games?

• A: Problem solving based team building activities and games are activities that challenge teams to work together in order to complete them.

Q: What are some fun free problem solving games for groups?

• A: Some fun free problem solving games for groups are kinesthetic puzzles like the human knot game, which you can read more about in this article. You can also use all sorts of random items like whiteboards, straws, building blocks, sticky notes, blindfolds, rubber bands, and legos to invent a game that will get the whole team involved.

Q: How do I choose the most effective problem solving exercise for my team?

• A: The most effective problem solving exercise for your team is one that will challenge them to be their best selves and expand their creative thinking.

Q: How do I know if my group problem solving activity was successful?

• A: In the short-term, you’ll know if your group problem solving activity was successful because your team will bond over it; however, that should also translate to more productivity in the mid to long-term.

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How to run a problem-solving workshop.

What is a problem-solving workshop?

A problem-solving workshop is a rapid session that helps you:

• Understand the root cause of a problem
• Quickly generate ideas to solve it
• Evaluate the ideas to ensure they’re robust
• Make a plan to test or implement the solution

This workshop critically assesses what’s going wrong and helps you find out what your options are to solve it, before you decide on the perfect solution.

Who should run a problem-solving workshop?

Product team leads, such as designers, product managers or engineers can run this type of workshop. There’s no one right person to lead something as important as this.

In fact, the core of your product development should start with the problem rather than the solution itself. It can be tempting to jump straight into features, but until you understand the problem well, you can’t begin to solve it.

When to run a problem-solving workshop

This workshop can be used in various circumstances:

• A show-stopping problem that grinds everything to a halt
• An intermittent problem that you want to get to the bottom of
• A customer or user problem, such as a pain point when using a service or product
• A high-level business problem, for example “too many customer complaints”, “conversion rate is too low”, or “operating costs are too high”

1. Get the right people together

2. identify the right problem.

• 3. Come up with ideas to solve the problem

4. Evaluate the ideas to ensure they’re robust

5. make a plan to test or implement the solution.

Read on to find out how to do all that, and more.

Invite all affected parties to a session. These are people that the problem has a direct impact on. Including those that aren’t impacted may offer a more objective view, but ultimately; more people equals more time. We want to solve problems with haste, so we can find out if it’s the right solution sooner rather than later!

What may appear like the problem, could be one of many observable results of a deeper underlying problem. To identify the ‘right’ or ‘true’ problem, we need to delve into it. This method is often called “Root Cause Analysis”.

There are many ways to conduct a Root Cause Analysis, but the easiest and most pragmatic way is to use the  Five Whys Analysis tactic .

Simply put, asking “why?” at least five times will lead you to the real problem. Solving this root problem subsequently solves all of the surface problems associated with it.

Learn how to run the Five Whys Analysis tactic

3. Come up with ideas to solve your problem

What normally follows identifying the right problem is a flurry of ideas. This usually takes the form of blurting them out at each other – but there are better, more structured ways to capture ideas.  Generating ideas in a structured way gives you time and space to think, as well as building on others’ ideas. The result means more thorough and refined ideas, over a back of the napkin sketch that the loudest person in the room decides is the best thing to do.

Idea-generation tactics for problem solving:

• Mind Map  – Get your brain on to paper, so you can start to form ideas for the methods below.
• Crazy Eights  – Eight ideas in eight minutes
• Reverse Brainstorm  – Come up with ways to make the problem  worse,  then reverse it to get the solution
• Round Robin  – Generate an idea, then have the person next to you build on it
• Storyboard  – Turn your idea into a sequence of events to understand how it might actually work in reality

Once you have a suite of ideas, you’ll want to review them and try some  evaluative tactics .

If you have a lot of ideas, you might want to prioritise the most promising ones to take forward with a decision tactic such as  Priority Map  or  Blind Vote .

Once you have a shortlist of ideas it can be tempting to go with the one that appears most promising. If time is of the essence, and it’s low risk – it might be the right call to just try it out.

However, it’s vital to evaluate ideas for solutions that may be more costly or complicated. Kick the tyres, so to speak.

Evaluating ideas gives you the confidence that your promising idea truly is promising, and is worthy of taking forward to the next stage: prototyping and implementation.

Evaluation tactics for ideas:

• Idea Beetle  –  a set of questions that help you assess if your idea is robust before you progress with it
• Rose, Thorn, Bud  –  a way to review the good, the bad and the potential of an idea
• SWOT Analysis  –  articulate an idea’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities or threats

If you still have a lot of ideas, you might want to prioritise the most promising ones to take forward with a decision tactic such as  Priority Map  or  Blind Vote .

Now you should have one or two (or more!) evaluated, robust and promising ideas that you want to try out to solve the problem.

Whether you need to work out how to prototype and test the idea, or go ahead and implement the solution right away – you need a plan.

To work out a plan, use the  Sticky Steps tactic , which mentally starts you off at having the solution implemented or prototype tested, then works backwards to today in order to see what steps you need to take.

Once you have a solid plan, create accountability by creating a list of tasks to do, and assigning them to people with a deadline. You can do this with the  Who, What, When tactic .

2 thoughts on “How to run a problem-solving workshop”

Hi I’d love to know approx about how long it should take to run one of these workshops. If you could include that in your very helpful summaries – I think that would be very helpful to plan and market these types of servies.

Appreciate all you do! R

All activities are very helpful.

Appreciate you Nazia Psychologist

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Problem Solving Activities to Improve Team Creativity

Richi Gupta

Lead Product Analyst

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Richi Gupta, a Lead Product Analyst, excels in systems integration and translating complex business needs into actionable tech strategies. Her attention to detail, coupled with exemplary project management skills, drive ... Read more

Richi Gupta, a Lead Product Analyst, excels in systems integration and translating complex business needs into actionable tech strategies. Her attention to detail, coupled with exemplary project management skills, drive her success in product feedback management, competitive analysis, strategic planning, and budget management. As a valued member of the ProProfs Survey Maker Advisory Board, Richi's primary objective is to deliver precise and coherent content, ensuring alignment with the company's strategic vision and objectives. Read less

Project Management Expert

David Miller, a seasoned Senior Project Manager at ProProfs with over two decades of diverse expertise, shares impactful insights on project management, leadership, and personal development through his writing.

“Every problem has a solution. You just have to be creative enough to find it.”                                                                                                               – Travis Kalanick

Problem-solving is a skill that undoubtedly comes into play to improve creativity, execute and deliver projects delightfully. Strong problem-solving skills to improve creativity is a crucial asset for any team. Whether you’re a manager or fresher, easy problem-solving tactics will help you glide over tough decision-making faster and approach problems smartly.

For example, in project management, your team might find itself questioning things like “How would we handle tight deadlines while maintaining the quality consistently?” or “How do we ensure that we effectively track progress on multiple projects?”.

These are common challenges that are bound to arise on the job. However, being prepared and having the ability to handle difficult or unexpected situations is what will guide you to the end.

Luckily, there are many ways to develop problem-solving skills to create innovative solutions. Here’s how one can rewire the brain for problem solving and creativity. Let’s start with the basics!

What Are Problem Solving Activities?

Simply put, problem-solving activities are activities that help in building the capability to solve problems and overcome challenges. While finding effective solutions to complex problems isn’t easy, a step-by-step process of solving the problem at hand ensures that you implement the most effective solution.

One can resolve almost any problem by using the right techniques learned through various problem-solving exercises. All processes of problem-solving begin with identifying and defining the problem. Thereafter, one evaluates the possible course of action and selects the best approach for solving the problem.

For example, if you are starting an online store and have listed down all possible problems that can arise in the process, with the right problem-solving techniques you cannot only eliminate those issues but also can bring out the best possible solution to help you scale and grow. 

Problem-solving activities are highly sought-after activities that help in imbibing key problem-solving skills.

Let’s take a look at these skills.

• Analytical skills
• Adaptability, Quick thinking ability
• Logical reasoning
• Communication skills
• Perseverance, Motivation skills
• Collaboration
• Team skills
• Cooperation
• Decision-making skills, Leadership skills
• Visual perception skills
• Critical thinking skills, Negotiation skills

Read More: Excel in Project Execution With These 5 Surefire Tips

The Importance of Developing Problem Solving Skills in Today’s Workplace

You may question: How will I benefit from developing problem-solving skills in my team members? Are these skills important for my team to attain business goals?

Well, have you ever found yourself saying, “Let’s think outside the box for this project” to your team? We are certain that you have, and that is exactly why you need to understand what it takes to level up your team’s ability to convert problems into actionable solutions for the team to succeed together. After all, company performance is closely tied to improving team members’ problem-solving skills.

Good problem-solving skills encourage quick and creative thinking, leading to better decision-making and ultimately increased company growth. Teams and leaders who approach problems thoughtfully perform better and find realistic solutions.

Let’s take a step back and understand ‘ What it takes ?’ to level up your team’s ability to convert problems into actionable solutions.

The secret to a thriving business lies in solving problems effectively. This is where good teams outshine the mediocre ones, isn’t it?

So how do the good teams do it?

Good teams approach problems in a fresh and creative manner at every step of the way. They have learned how to generate ideas and come up with out-of-the-box solutions. 

Guess what they have mastered?

Yes, problem-solving skills!

Here are a few advantages that you should expect from your teams that have acquired problem-solving skills:

1. Better risk handling

Managing risk means acknowledging that undesired or uncertain events may occur at any stage of the process. Problem-solving skills help in being confident of your capability to turn risks into opportunities by going beyond the expected.

2. Better communication

Problem-solving skills equip you with solving issues in a way that minimizes accusations and brings about a resolution regarding the problem. This efficient approach helps foster intra-team communication eventually leading to better understanding.

3. Improved productivity output

Adopting problem-solving techniques at the workplace has a positive impact on total productivity . Problem-solving skills help in implementing solutions in an effective and timely manner without any hindrance.

4. A proactive mindset

A proactive mindset enables identifying and executing the solution to a specific problem. Defining, generating, evaluating, and selecting the best solution is possible only when one has mastered the problem-solving skill.

Remember that not all problems are the same. Moreover, it is unlikely that the same solution will work each time for a particular problem. Scope and type of problems will vary according to the size, type, and goals of an organization. Likewise, solutions will be different for each. Thus, problem-solving skills are absolutely invaluable at the workplace.

20 Fun Problem Solving Activities to Improve Creativity

Problem-solving activities help in developing the skill of problem-solving by practicing exercises to equip a team or an individual with a convincing ability to handle and overcome problems and challenges. The below activities guide through the set of actions, approaches, and processes that one should undertake for devising strategies for solving a problem creatively.

1. Dumbest Idea First

Helps With: Creative problem solving

Why is creative problem solving important for problem-solving?

Creative problem solving allows you to relax your assumptions and approach a problem in an imaginative, unconventional way. The skill focuses on divergent thinking, thus redefining problem-solving.

What you’ll need: Nothing!

Directions:

Yes, this is an important activity for problem-solving. Encourage everyone to voice the absolute random and dumb solution to the problem in front of them. Who knows, you might just get an idea that can be shaped into an effective solution.

Come to think of it, most successful start-up ideas once seemed like the dumbest!

2. 40-20-10-5 

Helps With: Analytical skill

Why is an analytical skill important for problem-solving?

Analytical skill helps in assessing information and finding solutions using knowledge, facts, and data. This skill ensures that any solutions you implement are backed up logically and have been adequately thought out.

To apply this rule, explain your problem in 40 words. Cut it down to 20, then to 10, and finally to 5 words. This 5-word problem statement is the root of your problem and maybe even the solution!

3. Brainstorm Ideas

Helps With: Lateral Thinking

Why is Lateral Thinking important for problem-solving?

Lateral Thinking involves generating ideas using an indirect and creative approach that is not immediately obvious. It deals in insight restructuring and consciously coming up with alternative solutions for the given problem.

Brainstorming ideas is a powerful and one of the best problem-solving activities to get your team’s creative juices flowing.

The purpose of this activity is to produce as many new and creative ideas as possible.

Once the list of ideas is ready, you can then go on to explore the feasibility of each idea to arrive at the most suitable one.

4. Gamification

Helps With: Perseverance, Motivation skill

Why is perseverance important for problem-solving?

Perseverance is being absolute in purpose to continue in the pursuit of an idea or a goal despite setbacks and roadblocks. The quality is a given if you wish to develop the skill of problem-solving.

Why is motivation skill important for problem-solving?

Motivational skills can be defined as actions or strategies that elicit a desired behavior or response. To solve a problem, deriving self-motivation to get to the core of the problem is foremost.

We all have heard the phrase, “Work Hard, Play harder”. Guess it’s time to incorporate it into your work routine!

Gamification will turn ‘work’ into an entertaining and fun activity. You are required to set different types of rules and objectives for the team which they have to follow to earn desirable rewards that will let them win the game or should we say, solve the problem?

5. Shrinking Vessel

Helps With: Adaptability, Quick thinking ability

Why is adaptability important for problem-solving?

Organizations that can adapt quickly have an obvious advantage over their competitors as they have conditioned themselves to effortlessly adapt to changing circumstances while facing problems.

Why is quick thinking ability important for problem-solving?

If you are a quick thinker, that means that you act on problems easily, while being efficient and accurate in thought.

What you’ll need: A Rope/String

A Shrinking Vessel is a problem-solving activity with a simple concept. The idea is that you are in a situation of a sinking ship.

There is a predetermined space for the activity and the teams are divided equally. The entire team must work together to occupy a space, marked with a rope/string, that shrinks over time. It is the perfect game to bond with your teammates and craft a stellar creative strategy to be the last one standing.

6. Egg Drop Idea

Helps With: Logical reasoning

Why is logical reasoning important for problem-solving?

Logical reasoning measures your ability to reason logically by observing and analyzing circumstances. Logical reasoning aids in arriving at a rational conclusion about how to proceed.

What you’ll need: newspaper, plastic wrap, cotton, socks, and a handkerchief

The egg drop project involves designing a package or a container with everyday items that will keep an egg intact when dropped from a height.

Sounds fascinating, right?

It sure is! You can use whatever items or construction material you find around you and deem fit to save an egg. Some items that you may find around easily are newspaper, plastic wrap, cotton, socks, and handkerchief.

Reach out for these and more to save your egg!

Helps With: Communication

Why is communication important for problem-solving?

Being an effective communicator is essential to succeed and progress at the workplace. This is because one needs to successfully communicate ideas and recommendations for daily tasks and projects.

What you’ll need: Lego pieces

This is one of the most interesting team-building activities. This activity is all about observation and retention of design. For this activity, select an impartial individual to construct a random figurine using Legos in under 5 minutes.

Next, the competing teams have to replicate this structure in 10 minutes.

Sounds easy, right? Well, there’s a catch!

Only one person is allowed to look at the figurine at a time. The person has to then communicate the parameters like size, shape, color, etc. to his/her team members. Now, that’s some team-building activity!

8. Stranded

Helps With: Decision-making skill

Why is decision-making skill important for problem-solving?

Problem-solving and decision-making skills go hand in hand at work. Decision-making is an ongoing process in every organization whether big or small. Decision-making skills help in choosing between two or more alternatives to arrive at the best solution to implement.

What you’ll need: A room that can be locked

The setting is that your team will be locked in a room and will be given 30 minutes to choose 10 items that they will need for survival. Also, the items have to be chronologically listed.

9. Reverse the Pyramid

Helps With: Adaptability, Collaboration

Having adaptability skills means embracing problems with optimism. Adaptability reflects your willingness to respond to changing circumstances.

Why is collaboration important for problem-solving?

In the words of Peter Senge, “Collectively, we can be more insightful, more intelligent than we can possibly be individual”.

Collaboration facilitates the free exchange of ideas, knowledge, perspectives, and experiences leading to enhanced innovation.

This is one of the best problem-solving exercises for teams.

Make a team. Ask everyone to stand in the shape of a pyramid. Next, ask them to flip the base and the apex moving only 3 people.

Whichever team moves and forms the reverse pyramid fastest wins the activity.

10. Word on the Street

Helps With: Team skills

Why are team skills important for problem-solving?

Building strong team skills enables team members to come together for a common purpose. Employing team skills for problem-solving is a hallmark of high-performing teams.

It’s a fairly simple technique that involves interviewing all team members to gain their perspective on the solution that has been arrived at for a specific problem.

11. Human Knot

Helps With: Collaboration, Communication skills

Why are communication skills important for problem-solving?

When teams come together to solve a problem, no problem is big enough. Together, a team can overcome even the most difficult of obstacles. Active listening skills are an important element of communication skills.

Get ready for an entertaining problem-solving group activity!

Make everyone stand in a circle. Next, ask each one to hold hands with two people who aren’t directly standing next to them.

Now, ask them to untangle themselves and form a circle without letting go of anyone’s hand. Believe us, it’s going to be super fun watching them twist and turn to form the perfect circle.

12. Marshmallow Spaghetti Tower

Helps With: Collaboration

What you’ll need: Uncooked spaghetti, 1 marshmallow, tape, and a string/thin rope

In this activity, you simply have to make the tallest tower within the set amount of time.

You’re given a handful of supplies to work with. Your task is to build the tallest free-standing tower that supports a marshmallow at the top of the tower! You’re given 18 minutes to complete the challenge.

13. Minefield

Helps With: Team skill, Trust

Why is trust important for problem-solving?

A well-analyzed solution will fail if the team lacks trust while implementing the solution. Building trust within the team is the first step towards problem-solving.

What you’ll need: An empty room, blindfolds, common office items like table, chair, bag, bottle

Place some objects like a table, chair, bag, bottle, etc. on the floor to act as obstacles in this activity.

Divide teams into pairs and blindfold one of them. The person who is not blindfolded has to verbally guide the person in blindfolds to the other end of the room, avoiding the ‘mines’.

14. Bonding Belt

Helps With: Cooperation

Why is cooperation important for problem-solving?

Cooperation for problem-solving means being part of a cooperative team that identifies and listens to each other’s perspectives on the proposed solution and works together as a team.

What you’ll need: A firm rope

Make teams of 5-6 people. Tie them together by a firm rope, tightly wrapped around their waists. Ask them to move as one unit from point A to point B in as short a time as possible. The teams have to ensure they stay ‘bonded’ as one unit.

15. Frostbite

Helps With: Decision-making skill, Leadership skill

Why is leadership skill important for problem-solving?

Leadership involves keeping the team aligned, energized, and focused on a common business goal. The ability to stimulate, challenge, and inspire others to devise creative solutions is what adds up to leadership skills .

What you’ll need: An electric fan, a packet of construction materials like card stock, rubber bands, and sticky notes, etc, a blindfold

The scenario for this creative problem-solving activity is that your team is on arctic exploration. You have to separate everyone into different teams of 4-5 members. Each team will choose a leader among themselves who will lead them on this activity. The teams have to construct a shelter to protect themselves from the storm that will hit in precisely 30 minutes. The catch is that the team leaders will not work as they can’t move their hands due to frostbite. Further, all other team members are temporarily blind due to snow blindness. After the time is up, you can turn on the fan and see whose shelter can endure the high winds of the storm. Come on, let’s see which team withstands the snowstorm!

16. Idea Mock-Up

Helps With: Analytical skill, Decision making skill

In this activity, the solutions to your problems are supposed to be projected via mock-ups to ascertain the best solution for the given problem. This enables receiving the most accurate feedback on the proposed solutions.

17. Futures Wheel

Helps With: Visual perception skill

Why is visual perception skill important for problem-solving?

Visual perception skills are the ability to make sense of what the eyes see. It involves organizing and interpreting the information and giving it meaning.

What you’ll need: Pen and paper

If you’re looking to explore the structural consequences of a proposed solution, then this activity is your best bet.

You start with writing the name of the topic in the center. Next, you form the first layer of the wheel with consequences to the solutions. In the next layer, you may go deep into the consequences of these consequences themselves. Jot these down in the order of importance. Analyze each aspect and complete this activity within a time period of about 30 minutes.

This visual technique will make it easier for you to outline the best method to go ahead with to attain the desired outcome.

18. Be a Character

Helps With: Initiative

Why is initiative important for problem-solving?

Taking initiative is the ability to independently assess problems and initiate action to attain solutions. It is a self-management skill and requires rational persistence to be able to solve a problem successfully.

Fancied being an imaginary character from a movie or block? Or just fancied being a famous personality?

Well, now is the time to bring out your inner persona and approach the given problem with the outlook and the perspective of the character or person who you’ve always admired. Embody the character for 15 minutes and see how you approach the situation at hand.

19. End in Mind

According to Dr. Stephen R. Covey, all things are created twice – first in the mind and then in the real world.

Logical reasoning helps you reason through ideas and decisions following a series of steps to conclude. This approach leads to efficient problem-solving.

The end in mind activity allows you to question the ‘What’, ‘Why’, and ‘How’ of any problem. It brings purpose and clarity to the solution you seek. You basically backtrack your way into finding a solution.

20. Stop, Start, Continue

Helps With: Critical thinking skill, Negotiation skill

Why is critical thinking important for problem-solving?

Critical thinking refers to the ability to use knowledge, facts, and data to effectively share thoughts and make justifiable decisions. The skill includes analyzing information and formulating creative solutions to complex problems.

Why is negotiation skill important for problem-solving?

Having negotiation skills does not mean that you give in or instantly compromise every time someone disagrees with you. Having this skill means demonstrating open-mindedness to prospects and team members. Active listening is crucial to develop this skill.

A Stop, Start, Continue Approach is a feedback framework made up of three things that a team should stop doing, three things that a team should start doing, and three things that a team should continue doing as they move forward to achieve their problem-solving objectives.

The purpose of the above-listed activities is to train your mind to think about how to solve a problem in new ways and for greater success. The purpose is also to have some fun through these activities while upgrading your skills.

Read More: How to Solve Project Management Problems in The Modern Workplace

The 10-Step Process of Problem Solving Ability

This simple 10-step process will guide you in solving problems to improve creativity.

• Define the Problem
• Analyze the Problem
• Specify Underlying Causes
• Brainstorm Ideas
• List Possible Solutions
• Create Solution Mock-Ups
• Measure the Business Impact
• Establish the Best Possible Solution
• Implement the Solution
• Evaluate Progress

Read More: 16 Best Project Management Softwares for Creative Teams

The Four P’s to Problem Solving

The problem-solving process is cyclic in nature. This is because there are bound to arise new problems while managing a project that accordingly demands new solutions.

This is where you measure, understand, and diagnose the problem that you wish to solve. The activities 40-20-10-5 and Dumbest idea first help in initiating a problem-solving process.

This is where you organize everything and generate possibilities through activities like Brainstorming and Word of mouth .

This is where you visualize and execute your plan. Activities like Futures wheel and Stop, start, continue fall in this stage of problem-solving.

This is where you analyze the solution and check for further improvement. Stranded and Shrinking Vessel are the activities that develop decision-making skills leading to problem-solving.

Face Challenges Head-on With Quick and Easy Problem Solving Activities

Doesn’t it look like it’s all under control now? Well, to be perfectly honest, it takes time and practice to be an effective problem solver.

The way we approach problems at the workplace can be improved by indulging in proven activities that help build problem-solving skills to improve creativity.

Once you have covered the basics of how to go about the problem-solving process and have a can-do mindset, we are sure that there is absolutely nothing that can deter you from confronting problems head-on.

The listed activities are the easiest mechanism to follow to master the skill of effective problem-solving at the workplace. This course of action will enable you to exert full control towards sure shot success in improving creativity with constructive problem-solving activities.

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About the author

David miller.

David is a Project Management expert. He has been published in elearningindustry.com , simpleprogrammer.com . As a project planning and execution expert at ProProfs, he has offered a unique outlook on improving workflows and team efficiency. Connect with David for more engaging conversations on Twitter , LinkedIn , and Facebook .

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Problem-Solving Workshop

A collaborative learning environment designed to help participants develop skills to identify and solve problems. product glossary problem-solving workshop also called: problem-solving session and problem-solving exercise see also: how might we , hypothesis statement , premortem , problem statement , six thinking hats , swot analysis , affinity diagram , circles method , design thinking , jobs-to-be-done framework (jtbd) relevant metrics: attendance and engagement, pre- and post-workshop assessments, goal achievement, participant satisfaction, knowledge retention, application of skills, networking and collaboration, and commitment to continuous improvement in this article what is a problem-solving workshop.

A Problem-Solving Workshop is a collaborative event in which a group of people come together to identify and solve a problem. It is a structured process that involves brainstorming, analyzing, and developing solutions to a problem. A problem-solving workshop is a rapid session that helps you:

• Unlocking the Core of the Issue . A problem-solving workshop serves as an accelerated session designed to delve into the underlying cause of a dilemma, enabling participants to better comprehend its complexities.
• Generate ideas . With a deeper understanding of the problem at hand, participants rapidly brainstorm potential solutions. They then carefully assess these ideas, ensuring their feasibility and effectiveness in addressing the issue.
• Evaluating ideas . Participants scrutinize their proposed ideas, determining their robustness and ability to withstand potential challenges to ensure that only the most viable and reliable solutions are considered for implementation, enhancing the likelihood of successfully resolving the problem.
• Make a plan to test or implement . Equipped with a well-rounded perspective and carefully evaluated solutions, the workshop empowers attendees to devise a strategic plan for testing or implementing their chosen resolution, ultimately guiding them toward the ideal solution to their problem.

The workshop typically begins with a discussion of the problem and its context. Participants then brainstorm potential solutions and evaluate them based on their feasibility and potential impact. After the brainstorming session, the group works together to develop a plan of action to address the problem. This plan may include changes to existing processes, new procedures, or other solutions.

The Problem-Solving Workshop is an effective way to identify and solve problems in the context of Product Management and User Experience. It allows for a collaborative approach to problem-solving, which can lead to more creative and effective solutions. It also allows for a structured approach to problem-solving, which can help ensure that the problem is addressed in a timely and efficient manner.

Where did Problem-Solving Workshops come from?

The idea of coming together to solve problems can be traced back to ancient human societies that held gatherings to discuss issues and find solutions. In modern times, problem-solving workshops have been shaped by developments in various fields like psychology, education, management, design, and innovation.

Some significant influences on problem-solving workshops include:

• Brainstorming . Alex Osborn, an advertising executive, introduced brainstorming in the 1940s as a group creativity technique to generate ideas and solve problems. This method encouraged people to share their ideas freely, no matter how wild, and suspend judgment during the idea-generation process. Brainstorming has since been incorporated into many problem-solving workshops.
• Quality circles . In the 1960s, Japanese companies introduced quality circles, which are small groups of employees who meet regularly to discuss and solve work-related problems. These circles aimed to improve the quality of products and processes by involving employees in problem-solving and decision-making. The concept of quality circles has inspired many problem-solving workshops in various industries.
• Design thinking . The design thinking methodology, pioneered by companies like IDEO and Stanford University’s d.school, has played a crucial role in shaping modern problem-solving workshops. Design thinking is a human-centered approach to problem-solving that encourages empathy, experimentation, and collaboration. It involves a series of steps, such as empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing, which can be adapted to various problem-solving workshop formats.
• Lean and Agile methodologies . Lean and Agile methodologies, which originated in the manufacturing and software development sectors, respectively, have also influenced problem-solving workshops. These approaches emphasize collaboration, continuous improvement, and rapid iteration to achieve better results.
• Facilitation techniques . The growth of professional facilitation has also impacted problem-solving workshops. Skilled facilitators use various tools and techniques to guide groups through problem-solving processes, ensuring that the workshop’s objectives are met and that participants stay engaged and focused.

Why should I conduct a problem-solving workshop?

Conducting a problem-solving exercise can be beneficial in several ways. It can help individuals or teams to:

• Identify the root cause of a problem . By engaging in a structured problem-solving exercise, participants can gain a deeper understanding of the issue and identify the underlying causes.
• Generate new ideas and solutions . By brainstorming and evaluating various solutions, individuals or teams can develop creative and effective solutions that they may not have thought of otherwise.
• Encourage collaboration and teamwork . Collaborative problem-solving exercises can foster a sense of teamwork and create a shared sense of ownership and responsibility for the problem and the solution.
• Improve decision-making . By evaluating various options and considering different perspectives, participants can make informed and effective decisions that take into account a wide range of factors.
• Enhance learning and development . Problem-solving exercises can provide opportunities for individuals or teams to learn new skills, practice critical thinking, and develop problem-solving abilities that can be applied to future challenges.

How to run a problem-solving workshop

Step 1: assemble a well-rounded team.

Gather individuals with diverse backgrounds, skill sets, and perspectives who are relevant to the problem at hand. This may include team members, cross-functional collaborators, subject matter experts, or stakeholders. A diverse group will enhance the ideation process and facilitate a more comprehensive understanding of the issue.

Consider the following factors:

• Diversity . Assemble a team with a mix of expertise, backgrounds, perspectives, and roles relevant to the problem. Diversity encourages creative thinking and helps avoid groupthink or blind spots.
• Relevant stakeholders . Ensure that key stakeholders, including decision-makers, subject matter experts, and those directly affected by the problem, are included in the workshop. Their insights and buy-in are crucial for the success of the proposed solutions.
• Size of the group . Aim for a group size that allows for effective collaboration and communication. Ideally, the group should be large enough to generate a variety of ideas but small enough to facilitate productive discussions. Typically, a group of 6-10 participants is considered optimal for a problem-solving workshop.
• Team dynamics . Select participants who are open-minded, willing to collaborate, and capable of engaging in constructive discussions. The right balance of personalities is essential for fostering a positive atmosphere and effective teamwork.
• Establish clear roles . Assign roles and responsibilities to participants, such as a facilitator to guide the workshop, a timekeeper to monitor progress, and a note-taker to document key points and decisions. Clearly defined roles help ensure the smooth flow of the workshop.
• Preparation . Communicate the workshop’s purpose, goals, and expectations to participants beforehand. Encourage them to familiarize themselves with the problem and come prepared with any relevant data or insights. This will enable a more focused and productive discussion during the workshop.

Step 2: Establish the Objective and Scope

Clearly define the purpose and goals of the workshop. Ensure that all participants understand the problem to be addressed, its context, and any constraints or limitations. Set a time limit for the workshop to maintain focus and efficiency.

Consider the following:

• Preparation and research . A facilitator should be well-prepared with a thorough understanding of the problem, its context, and the workshop’s objectives. This may involve conducting research, reviewing relevant materials, and consulting with key stakeholders or subject matter experts beforehand.
• Active listening . Practice active listening during the workshop to ensure participants feel heard and understood. Encourage questions and clarifications to address any misunderstandings or ambiguities regarding the problem, scope, or objectives.
• Flexibility and adaptability . Be prepared to adjust the workshop’s objectives or scope if new information or insights emerge during the discussion. Maintain an open-minded approach and adapt to the needs of the group while ensuring that the workshop remains focused and productive.
• Time management . Monitor the workshop’s progress and allocate time appropriately for each stage. If necessary, intervene to refocus the discussion, maintain momentum, or transition to the next step in the problem-solving process.

Each of the following workshop exercises can contribute to the success of establishing a clear objective and scope by helping participants gain a deeper understanding of the problem, its context, and the needs of those affected, leading to a clearer definition of the objective and scope:

• Six Thinking Hats . This exercise, developed by Edward de Bono, encourages participants to approach the problem from six different perspectives, represented by metaphorical “hats.” These perspectives are: facts and information (white hat), emotions and feelings (red hat), cautious and critical thinking (black hat), optimistic and positive thinking (yellow hat), creative and alternative thinking (green hat), and process and organization (blue hat). This technique can help the group establish a more comprehensive understanding of the problem, its context, and potential constraints, leading to a clearer definition of the objective and scope.
• Stakeholder Mapping . In this exercise, participants identify and analyze the key stakeholders involved in or affected by the problem. This helps the group understand the different perspectives, priorities, and needs of these stakeholders, providing valuable context for the problem-solving process. By considering stakeholder needs and concerns, the workshop can better define the objective and scope while ensuring that potential solutions address relevant issues.
• Empathy Mapping . This exercise helps participants gain insight into the needs, motivations, and challenges of the individuals affected by the problem, such as customers, users, or team members. By creating an empathy map, the group can better understand the problem from the perspective of those who are directly impacted. This understanding can help the group establish a clearer and more focused objective and scope for the workshop, ensuring that potential solutions address the most critical concerns of the affected individuals.

Step 3: Identify the Right Problem and Root Cause

Begin the workshop by collectively discussing the problem to gain a deeper understanding of its nuances. Use techniques like the 5 Whys or Fishbone Diagram to identify the root cause of the problem, ensuring that the team’s efforts are directed towards solving the underlying issue rather than merely addressing symptoms.

Approach this step with a well-defined strategy that guides participants through the process of understanding the problem and its underlying factors. The facilitator plays a pivotal role in creating an environment that encourages open and honest dialogue, allowing participants to share their insights and collectively work towards identifying the root cause.

Strike a balance between allowing sufficient time for discussions and ensuring that the workshop maintains momentum and stays on track. The facilitator may need to intervene occasionally to refocus the conversation or steer the group towards the desired outcome.

Be prepared to adapt to the evolving dynamics of the workshop. They must be flexible and responsive to new insights or challenges that emerge during the discussions. If necessary, the facilitator may need to adjust the workshop’s objectives, scope, or methodology to ensure that the group remains focused on addressing the problem’s root cause.

Consider using one of these workshop exercises to identify the right problem:

• Five Whys . This technique involves asking “Why?” repeatedly to dig deeper into the problem and uncover the root cause. By using this approach in the workshop, participants can move beyond surface-level symptoms to identify the true source of the issue. The facilitator can guide the group through the Five Whys exercise, ensuring that the discussion stays focused and productive.
• Fishbone Diagram . Also known as the Ishikawa or cause-and-effect diagram, this tool visually represents the relationship between a problem and its potential causes. Participants brainstorm and categorize potential causes into distinct branches, which can help the group identify the root cause. The facilitator can lead the group through the Fishbone Diagram exercise, encouraging them to consider various aspects of the problem and promoting a comprehensive understanding.
• Round Robin . This brainstorming technique involves giving each participant a chance to contribute an idea or perspective on the problem in a structured and organized manner. This ensures equal participation and helps to gather diverse insights. Using the Round Robin method, the facilitator can facilitate discussions on the problem’s root cause by encouraging participants to share their thoughts and perspectives without interruption.
• Force Field Analysis . This exercise helps participants identify the driving and restraining forces that influence a problem. By analyzing these forces, the group can gain a deeper understanding of the underlying factors contributing to the issue. The facilitator can guide participants through the Force Field Analysis, helping them to identify and assess the various forces at play and facilitating discussions on how these forces might relate to the root cause of the problem.

Step 4: Generate Ideas to Solve the Problem

Encourage participants to brainstorm solutions, emphasizing the importance of open-mindedness and creativity. Utilize techniques like mind mapping, round-robin, or the six thinking hats to foster an environment conducive to idea generation. Ensure that all participants have an opportunity to share their thoughts, and discourage judgment or criticism during this stage.

Make sure that all participants feel comfortable sharing their ideas, no matter how unconventional they may seem. This requires the facilitator to create a non-judgmental and supportive atmosphere that promotes inclusivity and equal participation.

One critical aspect for the facilitator is the use of various brainstorming techniques and ideation exercises that can stimulate creative thinking and encourage diverse perspectives. By employing a mix of individual and group activities, the facilitator can cater to different thinking styles and preferences, ensuring that everyone contributes to the ideation process.

These workshop exercises are great for generating ideas to solve the problem you identified:

• Mind Mapping . This technique helps to visually organize information around a central concept, allowing participants to generate ideas in a structured manner. It encourages them to think about the problem from different perspectives and make connections between seemingly unrelated ideas, which can lead to creative solutions.
• Crazy Eights . In this exercise, participants are given eight minutes to sketch out eight different ideas on a piece of paper. The time constraint forces them to think quickly and encourages them to generate a wide variety of ideas. By sharing and discussing their sketches afterward, the group can build upon each other’s ideas and develop more innovative solutions.
• Reverse Brainstorming . This technique prompts participants to think about the problem from an opposite perspective, by asking them to come up with ways to make the situation worse. By challenging conventional thinking, reverse brainstorming helps uncover new insights and approaches that may not have been considered otherwise.
• How Might We . This exercise frames the problem as an open-ended question, starting with the phrase “How might we…?”. This positive and optimistic framing encourages participants to think creatively and generate ideas without constraints. The open-ended nature of the question also promotes collaboration, as participants can build on each other’s ideas to find innovative solutions.
• Forced Analogy . In this exercise, participants are asked to draw analogies between the problem at hand and unrelated objects or scenarios. This encourages them to think about the problem from a new perspective and come up with creative ideas that they may not have considered otherwise. The forced analogy technique can reveal hidden connections and inspire innovative solutions.
• SCAMPER . This is an acronym for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Reverse. Participants are prompted to think about the problem and generate ideas using each of these seven approaches. The SCAMPER technique encourages participants to look at the problem from different angles and find unique solutions.

Step 5: Evaluate and Refine Ideas

Once a range of potential solutions has been generated, evaluate their robustness and viability. Encourage participants to consider potential challenges, drawbacks, and risks associated with each idea. Use a decision matrix, SWOT analysis, or other evaluation tools to help compare and prioritize the proposed solutions.

Seek to create an environment where participants feel comfortable sharing their opinions and ideas while also being open to constructive feedback. The facilitator must balance encouragement and critical thinking, promoting an atmosphere where ideas are assessed objectively, and their merits and drawbacks are examined thoroughly.

Be aware of any biases, power imbalances, or dominant personalities that may influence the evaluation process. By skillfully navigating these dynamics, the facilitator can ensure that all voices are heard and that the evaluation process remains objective and fair.

These workshop exercises are great for evaluating and refining ideas.

• SWOT Analysis . This exercise requires participants to analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats associated with each proposed solution. By conducting a SWOT Analysis, the group can thoroughly evaluate the viability and potential impact of each idea, identifying potential challenges and opportunities.
• Pros and Cons . In this exercise, participants list the advantages and disadvantages of each proposed solution. This method encourages participants to think critically about the potential outcomes of each idea, enabling the group to make a more informed decision.
• Poster Session . In this exercise, each proposed solution is presented on a poster, and participants are given time to review and provide feedback on each idea. The Poster Session promotes thoughtful consideration of each solution and allows for open discussion and collaborative evaluation.
• Plus/Delta . This exercise involves participants identifying the positive and negative aspects of an idea or solution. It can help to refine ideas by focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of each one.
• Affinity Mapping . This exercise involves grouping similar ideas together and can help to identify common themes and patterns. It can help to refine ideas by clarifying the relationships between different solutions.
• Assumptions Collection . This exercise involves identifying assumptions that have been made about the problem or solution and testing them to see if they are valid. It can help to refine ideas by identifying any flawed assumptions and correcting them.
• Force Field Analysis . This exercise involves identifying the forces that are supporting and opposing a proposed solution. It can help to refine ideas by addressing the barriers and challenges that need to be overcome for the solution to be successful.

By incorporating these workshop exercises, participants can thoroughly evaluate the proposed ideas to ensure they are robust and viable. These

Step 6: Select the Best Solution

As a group, decide on the most promising solution(s) based on the evaluation process. Discuss the reasoning behind the selection and ensure that all participants are on board with the decision.

To promote objectivity, encourage the use of predefined criteria or frameworks for evaluating the proposed solutions. By providing a structured approach to decision-making, participants will be better equipped to weigh the pros and cons of each idea, ultimately leading to a more informed choice.

This will also help you maintain a neutral stance throughout the selection process, allowing the group to discuss and debate the merits of each solution without bias. As a facilitator, your goal is to ensure that the group focuses on the problem at hand and avoids getting sidetracked by personal preferences or interpersonal conflicts.

If you see that the group is struggling to reach a consensus, you might need to guide them toward a decision. By summarizing the key points of the discussion and highlighting the most promising solutions, the facilitator can help the group make a well-informed decision that best addresses the problem.

The following workshop exercises are great for facilitating the selection process:

• Dot Voting . This method helps participants prioritize solutions by giving them a limited number of dots or stickers that they can distribute among the proposed ideas. The solutions with the most votes are considered the most promising and can be further discussed or refined.
• Fist to Five . This technique allows the group to quickly gauge the level of support for each solution. Participants indicate their level of agreement by raising a certain number of fingers (1 to 5), with five fingers signifying strong support. The solutions with the highest average scores are deemed the most favorable.
• Stack Ranking . In this exercise, participants rank the proposed solutions in order of preference, assigning a unique position to each idea. The facilitator then tallies the rankings and determines the overall order of preference for the group. This helps identify the top solutions based on collective input.
• Trade-off Sliders . This method encourages participants to consider the pros and cons of each solution by using sliders to represent various criteria, such as cost, time, or quality. Participants adjust the sliders to visually represent the trade-offs they are willing to make, and the facilitator synthesizes the results to identify the most viable solutions.
• SWOT Analysis . By evaluating each solution’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, participants can gain a comprehensive understanding of the potential outcomes and risks associated with each idea. This structured analysis helps the group make a more informed decision about which solution is best suited to address the problem.
• Decision Matrix . The facilitator creates a matrix with the proposed solutions as rows and the evaluation criteria as columns. Participants then score each solution based on how well it meets the criteria. The solution with the highest total score is considered the best option. This method promotes objective decision-making and allows for a clear comparison of the proposed solutions.
• Priority Mapping . This technique involves visually mapping ideas based on their importance and urgency. By using Priority Mapping, the group can quickly identify the most critical and time-sensitive ideas, ensuring that the most pressing solutions are prioritized for implementation.

Step 7: Develop a Plan for Implementation or Testing

With the chosen solution(s) in hand, create a detailed plan outlining the steps required for implementation or testing. Assign responsibilities, establish deadlines, and set milestones to ensure accountability and progress. Consider creating a pilot project or running tests to validate the effectiveness of the solution before a full-scale implementation.

Seek to guide the group in setting realistic timelines and defining clear roles and responsibilities. This involves promoting open communication, ensuring that everyone’s input is valued, and addressing any concerns that may emerge.

You might also consider to spend time establishing key metrics for monitoring success and setting up checkpoints to evaluate the success of the implementation, enabling the team to learn from their experiences and iterate on the solution as necessary.

The following workshop exercises work great for exploring an creating an implementation plan.

• Project timeline . A project timeline is an effective way to help the team map out the key milestones, tasks, and deadlines involved in implementing the chosen solution. It allows the team to visualize the project’s overall progress and identify potential issues that may arise during the implementation process.
• Future-Back Planning . Future-Back Planning is a technique that helps the team envision what success will look like in the future and work backward to identify the necessary steps to achieve that success. This approach can help the team develop a clear vision and strategy for implementing the solution.
• RACI Matrix . A RACI Matrix is a tool that can be used to clarify roles and responsibilities during the implementation process. It helps ensure that each team member understands their role in the project and can help prevent confusion or misunderstandings.
• Dependency Map . A Dependency Map is a visual tool that helps the team identify the interdependencies between different tasks or components of the project. This can help the team develop a more realistic and feasible plan for implementing the solution.
• Sailboat . The Sailboat exercise can be used to help the team identify potential obstacles or challenges that may arise during the implementation process. It involves visualizing the solution as a sailboat and identifying the factors that may help or hinder its progress towards the desired destination. This exercise can help the team proactively address any potential roadblocks and develop a plan to overcome them.

Step 8: Follow Up and Iterate

After the workshop, monitor the progress of the solution’s implementation or testing. Gather feedback, evaluate results, and make any necessary adjustments or refinements. Encourage open communication among participants, and consider scheduling follow-up meetings to review progress and address any emerging challenges.

The solution that was chosen may need to be adjusted or refined based on feedback or unexpected challenges that arise. As a facilitator, you should encourage team members to share their thoughts and ideas and foster an environment where experimentation and iteration are encouraged.

Find ways celebrate successes and acknowledge the efforts of the team throughout the process. This can help maintain morale and motivation for continued improvement and innovation.

Typical pitfalls when running a Problem-Solving Workshop

• Finding the Right Facilitator . Finding a facilitator who is knowledgeable and experienced in problem-solving techniques can be a challenge. It is important to find someone who can effectively lead the workshop and ensure that all participants are engaged and productive.
• Establishing Clear Goals . Establishing clear goals for the workshop is essential for its success. Without a clear understanding of the objectives, it can be difficult to ensure that the workshop is productive and successful.
• Creating an Engaging Environment . Creating an engaging environment for the workshop is key to its success. Participants need to feel comfortable and be able to focus on the task at hand.
• Managing Time . Time management is essential for a successful workshop. It is important to ensure that the workshop is structured in a way that allows for productive discussion and problem-solving.
• Ensuring Participation . Ensuring that all participants are actively engaged in the workshop is essential. It is important to create an environment where everyone feels comfortable to contribute and share their ideas.

Google is known for its commitment to fostering a culture of innovation and continuous improvement. The company regularly conducts workshops, hackathons, and brainstorming sessions to encourage creative problem-solving among employees. Google’s “20% time” policy, which allowed employees to dedicate 20% of their time to side projects, has led to the development of successful products like Gmail and Google Maps.

IDEO, a global design consultancy, is renowned for its human-centered, collaborative approach to problem-solving called “design thinking.” The company conducts workshops, both internally and for clients, to tackle complex challenges and create innovative solutions. This approach has helped IDEO to develop breakthrough products, such as the Apple mouse and the Palm V PDA.

Procter & Gamble (P&G)

P&G is a consumer goods company that has leveraged problem-solving workshops and open innovation programs to drive growth. They have held workshops and innovation sessions, such as the “Clay Street Project,” where cross-functional teams come together to tackle complex challenges and create new products. The company’s innovation initiatives have resulted in successful products like Swiffer, Febreze, and Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.

LEGO, the toy company known for its iconic plastic bricks, has used problem-solving workshops to foster innovation and drive business growth. The company has employed design thinking workshops to explore new product ideas and refine existing ones. LEGO’s commitment to problem-solving and innovation has led to the creation of successful product lines such as LEGO Mindstorms, LEGO Architecture, and LEGO Ideas.

• What is the purpose of the workshop?
• What are the objectives of the workshop?
• Who will be attending the workshop?
• What topics will be covered in the workshop?
• What methods will be used to facilitate problem-solving?
• What is the expected outcome of the workshop?
• How will the success of the workshop be measured?
• What is the timeline for the workshop?
• What is the budget for the workshop?

You might also be interested in reading up on:

• How Might We
• Hypothesis Statement
• Problem Statement
• Six Thinking Hats
• SWOT Analysis
• Affinity Diagram
• CIRCLES Method
• Design Thinking
• Jobs-To-Be-Done Framework (JTBD)
• Tim Brown @tceb62
• Tom Kelley @TomKelley74
• Jeanne Liedtka @jeanneliedtka
• Tendayi Viki @tendayiviki
• Dave Gray @davegray
• Lateral Thinking : Creativity Step by Step by Edward de Bono (1970)
• Thinkertoys : A Handbook of CreativeThinking Techniques by Michael Michalko (1991)
• Problem Solving and Decision Making : A Guide for Managers by Barry K. Baines (2000)
• The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking by Edward B. Burger and Michael Starbird (2012)
• Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono (1985)
• Innovation Games : Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play by Luke Hohmann (2006)
• Gamestorming by Dave Gray (2010)

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Top 22 Virtual Problem-Solving Activities to Strengthen Any Team

We live in a fast-paced environment where challenges often arise, both personally and professionally.

Especially in today’s workplace, professionals have to deal with social, ethical, and organisational problems.

This is where problem-solving skills come into play.

Strong problem-solving tactics can improve creativity and help team members make efficient and informed decisions.

While every professional might not be a natural born problem-solver, there are a lot of resources to help develop these skills.

In this article, we’ll go over the definition of problem-solving activities, their main benefits, and examples that can be put into practice in the workplace.

What Are Problem-Solving Activities?

These activities require problem-solving skills, which help find solutions for difficult situations.

Like any other skill, these tactics are best learnt through practice.

To make problem-solving activities worth the ride, participants have to be open-minded, listen to others, and accept alternative ideas and solutions.

An agile mindset can also be beneficial when participating in such activities because they’re based on understanding, collaborating , learning and staying flexible.

As problem-solving games are group activities, participants must be willing to collaborate and embrace agility and flexibility.

Another critical aspect is creating the mindset that there are no winners or losers.

The goal of these activities is to share strategies and learn from each other, rather than compete against one another.

The Four P’s to Problem-Solving

By following the four P’s in the problem-solving guide, one can resolve almost any problem that comes along.

Problem-solving activities begin with a discovery phase, where the problem is identified.

This is the step where you understand, dissect, and learn about the problem you’re trying to solve.

Until the problem has been well defined, you can’t move forward and prepare to form the right solution.

After you’ve analysed the problem, you have to develop several courses of action to solve the issue.

This is the phase where you generate several possibilities to ultimately decide on the best course of action for your problem.

After the problem has been defined and resolutions have been listed, it’s time to take action.

This is the step where you find the best approach and implement a plan that needs to be followed with precision.

You need to first visualise your plan and then execute it.

When the problem has been solved, you need to evaluate the plan and assess whether it could be improved for future situations.

While you should do your best to solve the issue, the truth is that there is always room for growth.

Reviewing and checking for room for further improvement is essential because it can help you achieve even greater results in the future.

Benefits of Developing Problem-Solving Skills in the Workplace

Employees are often asked to think outside the box for projects or find alternative solutions for work problems.

Problem-solving tactics are a great way to practice valuable skills relevant in the workplace.

There are a lot of situations where processes and workflow in organisations need improvement. Or, when deadlines are tight, team members have to find ways to deliver on time.

These are the exact scenarios that can be overcome if the team is able to turn problems into actionable solutions.

After all, performance is closely related to employee efficiency as achieving companies’ goals on time is crucial to success.

Having team members with good problem-solving skills means they can use critical thinking to make better decisions and ultimately increase business productivity and growth.

There are a wealth of advantages that problem-solving activities can bring to teams.

Here are a few benefits you can expect from employees well equipped with problem-solving skills:

Better risk management

Simply put, risk management skills help people know what could go wrong, assess risks, and finally take action to solve an issue.

Some people are very good at handling risk, while others are afraid of risky situations.

Whichever way your team members are naturally inclined, problem-solving techniques are here to help.

Participating in problem-solving tasks trains the mind to handle stressful situations better.

It’s impossible to avoid risk, and this is why it’s essential to be confident that your team knows how to handle risk and turn it into opportunity.

Better thinking

Team problem-solving techniques stimulate better thinking by pushing people to find progressive alternatives.

Better thinking also develops analytical skills, which help people find logical explanations for problems and identify practical solutions.

Better communication skills

As mentioned earlier, problem-solving activities are group tasks that can only be performed if participants work together.

Humans are competitive by nature which can be problematic when trying to create a cohesive team. Problem-solving skills nurture understanding and collaboration within a company.

By solving problems together, employees learn how to better communicate and listen to others.

Having transparent and effective communication improves engagement and productivity and leads to better relationships .

Increased team cohesion

If your team already has good communication skills , this will likely lead to increased team cohesion .

Regardless of your business’s profile or size, success comes from having a united team.

Team cohesion reduces anxiety, brings motivation, and increases employee satisfaction.

Being on a cohesive team means that employees work together for the same goal, and everyone contributes to the group’s overall success.

People are social creatures, so it’s imperative that everybody feels heard, understood, and included.

Efficiency / increased productivity

Exercising problem-solving activities can boost performance and workplace productivity, leading to overall growth and profits.

Having solid problem-solving skills equips employees with the ability to find efficient solutions promptly.

By reducing the time spent solving specific problems, companies benefit from improved workplace productivity , leading to better profit margins.

Problem-solving activities foster creativity and encourage team members to express their ideas.

Creative thinkers know how to find the balance between analytical skills and innovative solutions, thus providing new perspectives.

No matter how well-established company processes are, there are always situations that require alternative ways of thinking.

Creative thinking skills boost people’s confidence in putting forth unique ideas.

List of the Top 22 Virtual Problem-Solving Activities

Virtual problem-solving activities for teams are meant to challenge participants to think outside the box and find solutions to problems while also having fun. Remember that these exercises should be playful and enjoyable.

Here is a list of virtual problem-solving activities that teams of any size can play:

• Dumbest Idea First
• Brainstorm Ideas
• End in Mind
• Stop, Start, Continue
• Idea Mock-Ups
• Be a Character
• Crossword Puzzles
• Online Escape Rooms
• Murder Mysteries
• Virtual Hackathons
• Treasure Hunts
• Moral Challenge
• Improv Games
• Poem/Story Challenge
• What Would You Do?
• Lost at Sea
• Coworker Feud
• Virtual Code Break
• War of the Wizards
• Ultimate Game Show

Online problem-solving activities can be played through video conferencing platforms, such as Zoom, Skype, Google Meet, Webex, etc.

Let’s take a closer look:

1. Dumbest Idea First

Dumbest Idea First, as the name suggests, is a problem-solving exercise in which participants are asked to think of the dumbest possible solutions to the problem presented.

After all ideas have been presented, look through the list.

You might be surprised to find that some ideas are not as dumb as first thought!

Helps with : creative problem-solving .

2. Brainstorm Ideas

One of the most common problem-solving activities is brainstorming ideas with your team.

Brainstorming ideas’ objective is to generate as many ideas as possible.

After the list is complete, team members review them and decide which is most suitable for the given scenario.

There are a lot of methods to aid the brainstorming process.

You can play word games, create a mood board, play improv games, or even doodle.

Helps with : lateral thinking.

3. End in Mind

The End in Mind technique is an excellent activity for solving group problems that require participants to start with the end.

In this exercise, you have to backtrack, finding solutions for the issue.

It challenges team members to think of the “what,” “why,” and “how” of a problem, thus coming up with alternative approaches.

Helps with : analytical thinking.

4. Stop, Start, Continue

“Stop, Start, Continue” is a technique used for delivering or requesting feedback.

This problem-solving activity consists of a list of three categories that each member has to think about:

• Stop: three things that the team should stop doing
• Start: three things that the team should start doing
• Continue: three things that the team should continue doing

This exercise aims to solve problems in new ways while also having fun.

Helps with : team cohesion, critical thinking.

5. Idea Mock-Ups

Idea mock-ups are processes in which solutions to problems are found via mock-ups.

It’s a virtual solving problem activity as you can use images from the internet that can be easily shared with the team members.

This exercise aims to have players try out a bunch of different scenarios until the perfect match for the problem is found.

6. Be a Character

Have you ever dreamed of being a character from a movie or a book? Then this is the perfect exercise for you.

By playing this group game, participants impersonate a character and approach problems through that person’s mindset.

Helps with : creativity , thinking outside the box.

7. Idea Trial

The Idea Trial is another fun virtual problem-solving activity that encourages participants to find solutions for a particular problem.

Players need to present their ideas to the “court.”

They can go through the entire process, such as opening and closing statements, and call witnesses to support their ideas.

Helps with : risk management, communication skills.

8. Crossword Puzzles

Everybody has heard of crossword puzzles, but not everyone has thought of transforming them into a virtual problem-solving activity.

All you have to do is use an online crossword puzzle to create a custom puzzle for your team.

To make it more exciting and engaging for your team, you should consider your company’s niche and your teammates’ interests.

Helps with : critical thinking.

9. Online Escape Rooms

Like in-person escape rooms, their online counterpart requires participants to escape rooms and work together to solve puzzles virtually.

Digital escape rooms provide two alternatives for players: either a Zoom room led by a host or from a specialised website.

These are significant virtual problem-solving activities that are both fun and challenging.

Helps with : cooperation, communication.

10. Murder Mysteries

Murder mysteries are story-based problem-solving activities that require participants to take on the roles of suspects and detectives.

The aim of the game is to identify the killer by searching for clues and occasionally solving small puzzles.

These group exercises are complex because they require players to be observant and search for hidden clues using logic.

Luckily for you, there are many options for playing murder mystery games online .

Helps with : observation, logical thinking.

11. Virtual Hackathons

Hackathons are events where a group of people pitch a product or service in a given period.

Even though it originated in the programming world, hackathons can be easily applied to any industry.

Virtual hackathons refer to the online version of these events, where participants work together via online meeting software to design solutions.

These are great virtual team problem-solving activities because they don’t require much organisational work.

You just have to announce the event’s theme, explain the problem when the hackathon begins, and set a timeline.

Helps with : efficiency, cooperation.

12. Treasure Hunts

Like escape rooms or murder mysteries, treasure hunts are group games that require players to find hidden objects by following a trail of clues.

Treasure hunts are fun problem-solving activities that teach participants how to collaborate and communicate with each other.

They can have specific themes or be a more general hunt.

Helps with : communication, cooperation.

13. Moral Challenge

While most group problem-solving activities focus more on finding alternative problem resolutions, moral challenges lean more towards ethics.

These group techniques are just as important as the others as not all problems are factual; some are ethical.

Moral challenge exercises are better played in a group because each participant can represent a different opinion or moral belief.

The moral issue becomes harder to resolve and implicitly forces team members to find common ground.

Moral challenges are equally important in decision-making processes as rational thinking.

Some of the most well-known moral challenges online are the Moral Machine or the Dilemma .

Helps with : communication skills.

14. Improv Games

Improv games have their roots in acting and comedy and are group activities designed around participants’ acting without a script, or improvising.

These problem-solving activities force players to keep the story going in an entertaining and logical way.

This kind of group exercise helps build collaborative skills while boosting team members’ confidence.

Helps with : collaboration, imagination.

15. Poem/Story Challenge

If most of the problem-solving activities mentioned are based on logical thinking, the poem/story challenge revolves around writing skills.

While not all businesses rely on this, it’s still an excellent exercise for groups, as it stimulates the imagination and improves public speaking.

All you have to do is ask participants to create a story or a poem using a limited word bank.

After they have crafted their stories, they read them aloud in front of the group.

Helps with : creativity, public speaking.

16. What Would You Do?

“What Would You Do?” is a hypothetical problem-solving activity that challenges your team to brainstorm ideas and react to different scenarios.

To play this game with your team members, prepare some problem-solving stories in advance, then read them one by one.

Participants have to say what they would do in these circumstances.

Helps with : lateral thinking, imagination.

17. Lost at Sea

Lost at Sea, also known as Stranded at Sea, is a team-building activity that encourages interaction and teamwork.

Give participants a scenario where they’re stranded on an island with just a handful of objects.

To increase their chances of survival, they need to rate the objects based on their utility.

Players should work individually first and then together to decide which objects are most important.

If multiple groups play this game, the moderator can ask each group to compare their individual and collective rankings.

They should also consider why any scores differ.

At the end of the game, players reflect and feedback on their choices.

Helps with : decision making, collaboration, critical thinking.

18. The Hunt

Its purpose is to challenge players to collaborate under pressure as they compete for glory.

This is a virtual problem-solving activity suitable for a business of any size.

It works best played in small teams of four or five, so players have the opportunity to interact with one another.

Helps with : team decision making, lateral thinking, creativity.

19. Coworker Feud

This game is a new take on the classic game show Family Feud, and it consists of multiple rapid rounds.

The players are asked to provide fast answers to a fun assortment of questions the host presents.

The aim is to guess the five most popular answers to win points for the round.

The team with the most points is declared the winner of the game.

Helps with : fast-thinking, communication.

20. Virtual Code Break

Virtual Code Break is a virtual team-building activity specially designed for remote players.

Its purpose is to challenge players to think outside the box, improve problem-solving skills, and leverage their own and each other’s skills.

This game uses an intelligent video conferencing solution so that teams of all sizes can play from anywhere globally.

Players compete against each other by answering trivia questions and solving riddles and puzzles.

Helps with : better thinking, collaboration.

21. War of the Wizards

War of the Wizards is a 90-minutes virtual team-building activity that promises to be both fun and creative.

To play this game, participants roleplay as powerful wizards to conquer evil forces through the power of storytelling.

They have to play mini-games and competitions, develop their characters, and make decisions together to win.

Helps with : teamwork, imagination.

22. Ultimate Game Show

In this 90-minute virtual event, players bond together as a team while playing different quizzes to win the final prize.

This competition works for hybrid teams, as well as for fully remote teams.

Helps with : collaboration, fast-thinking.

Plenty of organisations face daily challenges that affect team productivity and get in the way of attaining business goals.

While it’s impossible to avoid those situations, there are many ways to train team members to work collaboratively to resolve problems effectively.

Problem-solving activities act as educational tools that bring all participants closer as a team and help them develop problem-solving skills. By nurturing solution-generating capabilities, your team learns to communicate better, act fast in risky situations, and find creative solutions.

The virtual problem-solving activities listed in this article are excellent practices for real-life conflict resolution that can benefit everyone within an organisation.

Stefan is a Co-Founder and a President of Brosix. His many years experience as a programmer, give him an unique perspective to lead the team and build Brosix in a way to best serve the customers.

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Problem Solving Team Building

It's hard to solve difficult problems as a team.

Everyone has an opinion. They all think they’re right. And they’re often unwilling to consider other options.

Problem Solving Team Building (PSTB for short) is a 30-45 minute activity where the problem ‘owner’ goes through a structured process of brainstorming, issue analysis, and action planning to achieve a plausible solution to their issue.

The result is a prioritized list of options and solutions that the group accepts. It’s as close to magic in a corporate setting as you are likely to get.

The PSTB manages resistance to change as the steps encourage involvement, inclusion and rapid progress.

Download free slides... enter your email address at the bottom to get this team building activity in your inbox

• To make breakthrough progress on a seemingly intractable problem by using the power of the Team.
• To be an antidote to unstructured, time-consuming meetings that discuss a problem but seldom arrive at any concrete way forward.
• For the Problem Owner to go away with actions that inform future plans.
• For the Team to feel they have worked together to enrich the thinking behind the solution.

When Would You Use It?

• Whenever you have an issue that needs problem solving techniques to get to a solution fast.
• Whenever you require a rigorous process to achieve issue analysis.
• Best results with small to medium sized groups (no more than 10).
• If you’d like to sharpen your brainstorming techniques library.

Are There Any Rules?

• Good team behavior needs to be emphasized (especially as this is issue analysis).
• Headlines only (i.e. keep the discussion at the right level).
• No idea is a bad idea.
• Be open-minded.
• Listen as well as contribute.
• One person to speak at a time.
• Be ready to participate actively (it’s more fun that way!).
• Don’t kill the process.
• Agree the time contract upfront (e.g. 20, 30 or 45 mins).
• Always remember who owns the problem.
• Roles and responsibilities should be maintained throughout – owner, facilitator, team.

Before you start

• Make sure you're tackling a root cause problem otherwise you'll be working on a symptom.
• If you want to avoid working on a symptom run a root cause analysis process like Five Whys or Fishbone Analysis first.

Resources Required

• A willing group of people (max 10 for best results).
• A flip-chart, marker pens (a few to avoid lost time when the first inevitably dries up), plenty of tack to stick the paper on the wall as it’s produced, wall space near the flip-chart.
• A private quiet open space (no tables, just a semi-circle of chairs pointing at the flip-chart).

Roles and Responsibilities

The main steps of this problem solving technique are illustrated in the diagram below, based on a 30 minute time contract.

For longer PSTB sessions (45 mins or 60 mins) keep the initial step to five minutes but adjust the timing of each remaining step in proportion to those shown here.

• 1 The Problem Statement is a simple “How do I …?” question.
• 2 Idea Generation is a rapid brainstorming activity for the Team only (i.e. the Problem Ownerlistens and the Facilitator writes).
• 3 Idea Selection is for the Problem Owner only to pick the 1-3 most promising ideas.
• 4 Benefits & Concerns is for the Team to assess each of the selected ideas.
• 5 Critical Concerns can be raised by anyone and may eliminate an idea if they cannot be overcome.
• 6 Action Planning is for everyone to contribute to and take ownership of the individual points.

Be disciplined with the timing to inhibit elaboration and argument that could derail the process.

Secret Sauce

• As mentioned in the introduction the PSTB manages resistance to change as the steps encourage involvement, inclusion and rapid progress. This is how it does that:
• The Idea Generation phase allows contributions from everyone. Then the selection narrows down to 1,2,3 directions – by the owner!
• The Benefits & Concerns phase allows the group to comment on their reactions to the potential success of the choices. The owner is first to share their Pros and Cons of each choice and then the team gets to reflect on their pros and cons of that choice. They mustn't talk about why something else should be chosen as this would open out the discussion again.
• At this point you have the group focused on (1,2,3 ) choices and the problem owner has to listen and choose. If the owner has chosen her/his own idea – they run the risk of being chastened by the group responses. If there are blockers / difficult people in the group then they must respond to their objections by ensuring they and/or others come up with strategies to overcome the problems (as you will see in the Action Plan).
• The group gets the opportunity to shape the 3 options and therefore creates ownership of the solution they did not choose. The owner is also primed to see how difficult it is going to be to implement the chosen idea.
• The Critical Concerns phase allows the owner to discard an unwise choice, work on a difficult choice some more or just move on the action planning
• The action planning step MUST first, take each concern of the choice(1,2,3) and address how to overcome that concern. When this has been done for each concern against a choice – then and only then can you open it out to "so what else do we need to do to get this choice implemented?"
• As with many brainstorming techniques once the team gets going in the idea generation phase it can be hard to cut them off. If the content is great and you don’t want them to stop then the Facilitator can give a polite “we now need to move on to the next phase but as this is going so well let’s give it another 2 mins”. You can always make up the time in the Idea Selection phase which rarely takes more than a couple of minutes to complete.
• There are very rarely any critical concerns that are so critical that it rules out the solution. That won’t stop doomsayers from suggesting them though so make sure you ask the question “is that so critical and out of our control that we can’t overcome it with some carefully planned actions later on?”
• Leave plenty of time for Action Planning and make sure you complete this phase well (it’s the whole point after all). After all that expended creative energy the group will be tired and the temptation can be to do a half-job. Be diligent!
• While there is no obligation on the Problem Owner to pursue each shortlisted idea and every action proposed, the Problem Owner should be aware that an implicit or ‘psychological’ contract exists as a consequence of the PSTB process. The value of any future PSTB exercises is likely to be undermined if the Team feels their collective input has not been pursued.
• Many problem solving techniques take practice to perfect and this one is no different. It requires lots of discipline from all the parties involved. Keep trying and don’t get discouraged because the results can be truly amazing!

Free Download Files

About the author.

Nick Martin helps leaders & consultants improve team results with resources, advice & coaching through WorkshopBank.com

thanks for your stuff

That’s a pleasure Mary … glad you stopped by … thanks for your comment 🙂

Good Morning (EST),

I just downloaded this workshop for a Team Meeting I am having on Friday. I like the concepts and the flow of the excerise. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Thanks for sharing.

Thanks Wayne. I hope everything goes well for your workshop 🙂

great exercise. if I can follow the flow in my workshop it will come out awesome. Thanx for sharing.

That’s a pleasure Avinash … thanks for saying thanks … it’s a brilliant workshop this one … never fails to bring a team together as one behind a tricky problem

Thanks for the article. As a former Cap gemini consultant, I appreciate the tool. Be aware that this approach has been digitalised with http://www.workshop-it.digital/ (In French for the time being). Best,

Thanks for the slides. How can this be addapted to a problem of a whole team?

How big a team Christina? You don’t really want more than 10 people as you lose momentum. If you have more than 10 then I like to run multiple PSTBs in parallel with different groups solving different issues with plenary feedback as a whole group at the end.

Nick you missed an important step – what is the root cause of the problem – that should always come before solution seeking. Even root causes are a brainstorm – you need also to test to ensure that you have the right root cause. Keep up the good work

Great point Denis. I was assuming the root cause of the problem had been identified first which is clearly not a given. I’ve added a section ‘Before you start’ suggesting a couple of root cause analysis tools you could run first. Thanks for the suggestion!

I appreciate the effort, it is useful, looking forwards for more.

This is exactly the kind of tool I’ve been looking for! Thanks Nick!

I’ve used it with hundreds of schools without a failure yet. Two tips 1 train up a team of three to understand the rulesbeforehand 2 stick to the rules whatever Cheers Peter

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Top 50 problem solving activities, games & puzzles for remote teams

Blockchain and Crypto / March 6, 2022 by admin

Here is a list of the top 50 problem solving activities, games & puzzles best suited for remote teams. Read on!

What are problem solving activities?

The success of a company or organization depends heavily on the managers’ ability to help workers develop their problem solving skills. Problem solving activities that address areas such as teamwork and cooperation, adaptability or reinforcement of decision-making strategies help.

All processes of problem solving begin with the identification of the problem. The team will then evaluate the possible course of action and select the best way to tackle it. This needs a profound understanding of your team and its core strengths.

Not only among corporates, but problem solving activities find their use in educational settings as well. Students who are good at solving problems will become much more successful than those who are not. Remote work and education are on the rise.

Enabling smooth interpersonal communication to solve problems can become a task in these situations. However, engaging all the people concerned in problem solving activities before shifting to the remote space can ease the process.

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Key skills evaluated in problem solving activities

Problem solving skills refer to the necessary thinking skills that an individual or group uses when met with a challenge. Many issues require the use of several skills; others are easy and may require only one or two skills. These are some skills that help to solve problems,

• Communication skills
• Decision-making skills
• Analytical thinking
• Negotiation skills
• Logical reasoning
• Persistence
• Lateral thinking

Problem solving skill examples

Several problems occur at the workplace. Problem solving skills can be technical problems that occur on websites or apps or addressing client concerns. Problems could be simple or complex. Business managers spend time and resources to solve problems.

They encourage their team to improve their analytical and logical abilities. Common issues in companies can be exploding data or changing technology, or financial management.

Did you know? Emotional intelligence plays a crucial role in problem solving!

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Problem solving scenarios

Many problem solving scenarios occur at work. The basis to solve any problem is to evaluate and arrive at a solution. Analytical skill or problem solving ability is a skill many employers evaluate while hiring candidates.

Strong problem solving skills can be an asset to any organization. Organizations organize problem and solution activities to improve the problem solving abilities in the workplace.

1. Decision making games

Businesses are looking for new and innovative ways to stimulate their staff. Decision making games help employees to learn new skills and work effectively as a team. Decision making activities help to improve the creative problem solving and decision-making skills of the team. Here are some best Decision-making games,

1. Dumb Idea first – This game gives a hypothetical problem that could occur in your company. Ask each manager to think of the dumbest solution to the problem. After compiling the list of the ideas, the team reviews them.

You have a brainstorming session to make the “dumb ideas” feasible. This problem solving exercise underlines the importance of out-of-box thinking.

Benefits: Decision-making skill

Time duration: 10 to 15 minutes

Team size: 2 to more team managers

Material: Paper and pencil

2. Egg Drop Idea – The objective of the game is to build a container to protect the egg when dropped from a specified height using the material provided. Each team nominates a presenter who explains why the egg will survive the fall.

Once they have presented the idea, the team drops the egg to check if the idea has worked. Egg drop pyramid activities like the marshmallow challenge help teams to think on their feet.

Benefit: Decision-making skill and is a top problem solving skill example

Time duration: 15 – 30 minutes

Team size: 6 or more

Material: A cartoon of eggs, aprons to protect clothes, material for packing (cardboard, tape, elastics, plastic straws, etc.), material to clean up.

Instructions:

• Every team gets an egg and should choose from the building materials. 
• Grant everyone 20-30 minutes to build an egg carrier and guard against breaking. 
• Remove each egg carrier from a ledge (that is, over a balcony) to see which carrier prevents it from cracking. 
• If several eggs survive, continue to heighten until only one egg remains.

3. Dog, Rice, and Chicken – The dog, rice, and chicken game can be fun decision-making activities for adults. In this game, one team member plays the farmer, and the other team members are villagers who advise him. The farmer has to take three items chicken, dog, and rice across the river by boat.

There are the following constraints:- only one item can be carried on the boat. He cannot leave the chicken and dog alone because the dog will eat the chicken. He cannot leave the chicken alone with the rice because the chicken will eat the rice grains.

Benefit: creative problem solving examples that are applicable at work.

Time duration: 10-15 minutes.

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2. Teambuilding puzzle

Team building exercises are fun and creative ways to get your team to work together and improve problem solving skills.

1. Lost at Sea – In this game, you and your friends have chattered a yacht to sail across the Atlantic Ocean. Since you do not have any navigation experience, you hire a captain and a two-person crew. Unfortunately, the crew and captain die when a fire breaks out on the yacht.

The yacht is severally damaged and is sinking. You and your friends have managed to save 15 items and a lifeboat. Your task is to rank the 15 items while you are waiting to be rescued. The activity lost at sea team building underlines the importance of problem solving skills in the workplace.

Benefits: Team building exercise and interaction

Time duration: 30 to 40 minutes

Team size: 4 to 6

Material: Lost in sea ranking for interaction chart for each member

2. Marshmallow Spaghetti Tower – The marshmallow team-building activities have the goal of building the tallest tower as quickly as possible. To make the task more challenging the marshmallow is placed at the top of the tower. This is a fun puzzle activity for team building.

Benefit: Teambuilding puzzle

Time duration: 30 minutes

Material required: 20 sticks on raw uncooked spaghetti, a marshmallow, masking thread, and yarn of thread.

3. Go for Gold – This is an example of a marshmallow challenge similar to activities. The objective of this exercise is to create a structure using pipes, rubber tubing, and cardboard to carry a marble from point A to point B using gravity.

Benefit: team building problem solving scenario examples

Team size: Minimum 6 persons

Material required: Each member has different material

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3. Work Problem Solving

Work problem solving activities help to use the skills you used in problem solving activities in your workplace.

1. Create your own – this game aims to create a brand new problem solving activity for the organization. The team can brainstorm for 1 hour. After one hour each team has to give a presentation about their activity outlining the key benefits.

Benefit: Understanding the problem solving process. Build creativity, improve negotiation, and Decision-making skills

• When the participants arrive, you declare that they will create an original problem solving activity on their own, rather than spending an hour on an existing problem solving team-building exercise. 
• Divide members into teams and encourage them to develop a new problem solving team-building exercise that will fit well with the organization. The activity should not be one they have engaged in or heard of before.
• Every team has to show their new activity to everyone else after an hour and outline the main benefits.

2. Shrinking Vessel – make a shape on the floor using a rope where all the team members can fit. Reduce the size every 10 -15 minutes. The real challenge for the team is figuring out how to work together and keep everyone together.

Benefits: Adaptability and cognitive diversity

Material: Rope and large room

• Place on the floor a big circle of rope. Position your whole team inside the circle. 
• Lessen the circle size steadily. When it gets smaller, advise the team to keep the entire team inside the circle. Nobody must move out of the loop. See how small you can make the area until it cannot remain inside.

3. Legoman – the team is divided into groups of two or more people. Select an impartial individual who will make a structure in 10 minutes. Each team will compete to recreate it in fifteen minutes. Only one person is allowed to see the structure. They need to communicate vital parameters like color, shape, and size.

Benefits: Communication

Tools: Lego

4. What Would X Do – This problem solving activity stimulates teams to think of new ideas.

• Benefits: Instant problem solving
• Time Duration: 10-15 minutes
• Materials Required: N/A
• Let every team pretend to be someone famous. 
• Every team needs to address the issue as if they were a famous person. Which are the choices they would consider? How will they do this? 
• It helps all to consider options they may not have initially thought of.

Tip: Before you decide, a problem is worth solving, weigh the risks of solving it versus not solving it. 

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4. Team building riddles

Team building riddles are a great way to show the team group problem solving is usually more effective.

1. Barter puzzle – the team is broken into groups. Give each team a different jigsaw puzzle to solve. The groups have to complete the puzzle at the same time. The twist in the game is that some pieces of their puzzle belong to other puzzles.

The goal is to complete the puzzle before the other teams. Each group has to come with their method to convince other teams to handover the pieces they need, either by bartering pieces or donating time to the other teams. This puzzle piece team-building activity helps teams to collaborate.

Benefit: Team building and negotiating.

Material: Jigsaw puzzle for each team

Time: 30 minutes

2. Scavenger Hunt – in this game, each team has a list of the article to locate and bring back. The goal of the game is to finish the assigned list first. In the scavenger hunt, the team has a time limit to make the game more challenging. You have the flexibility of having the hunt outside or within the premises. The team-building puzzle game helps the team to look for creative solutions.

3. Escape – the goal is to solve clues and find the key to unlock the door in a limited time. Hide the key and a list of clues around the room. The team has 30 to 60 minutes to figure out the clues and unlock the door.

Benefit: Team building exercise

Material: Rope, key, lockable room, 5 to 10 puzzles

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5. Work together problems

Work together on problems helps to underline the need to collaborate while solving issues at work. Group challenge activities help the team work well together.

1. Bonding belt – each group is divided into 5 to 6 participants, who are bound together with rope or tape so that their movements are limited. The team has to reach from point A to point B, and the time is recorded. The teams collaborate to beat their previous score.

Benefits: Helps the team to collaborate and skills for problem solving scenario/

Time: 20 to 30 minutes

Material: Cling film, belt, or rope

2. Scramble puzzle – the team members with blindfolds sit in a circle with the puzzle. The teammate without the blindfold sits outside the circle, with their back to the group. The blindfolded group tries to assemble the pieces of the puzzle. The outsider who has the same puzzle gives the team instructions to solve it.

Benefits: trust, leadership, and communication

Material: Preschool-level puzzles and blindfolds.

3. Flip it over – this is a classic work-together problem. In this game, 6 to 8 participants stand together on a blanket/towel/tarp. The challenge is to flip over the blanket or reverse it. The rule is that none of the participants can leave the blanket.

Benefit: Work together exercise

Duration: 30 minutes

Material: Blanket

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6. Team building survival games

Team building survival games helps to fine-tune problem solving scenarios that may occur at work. The activities encourage creative problem solving and decision making.

1. Stranded – Stranded helps in building effective communication. In this setting, the team is stranded in an office. The rooms will be locked, and doors and windows cannot be broken down. The team is asked to make a list of 10 items that they need to survive.

They need to rank items in the order of their importance. The team has to agree on the items and the order. Stranded is one of several popular survival team-building exercises.

Benefit: Team building and Decision-making exercises

• Your team is stuck inside the building. Doors are closed, so there is no option to kick down the doors or smash the windows.
• Grant the team 30 minutes to determine what ten things they need to thrive in the office and list them in order of importance.
• The goal of the game is to get everyone to agree in 30 minutes about the ten things and their ranking.

2. Minefield – you randomly place items around the room or hallway and there is no clear path from one end of the room to another. The team is divided into pairs. One team member is blindfolded, and the other team member is the guide.

The guide navigates the blindfolded person across the minefield. The two partners cannot touch. This survival team-building activity underlines the need for clear communication.

Benefits: Communication and collaborative problem solving

Duration: 10-15 minutes

Material: Blindfold, empty room or hallway, and collection of random items.

3. Frostbite – in this survival scenario team-building exercise the team is trapped in Siberia. Each team has to elect a team captain. The team has to build a storm shelter with the material provided.

The twist in the game is the team captains cannot help physically since they have frostbite. Other team members are suffering snow blindness and are blindfolded. The electric fan will be turned on in 30 minutes to see if the shelter built will survive the storm.

Benefit: Leadership, skills action plan, and team building survival games

Team size: 4 to 5 members

Material: An electric fan, blindfold, simple building materials like cardboard paper, rubber bands, toothpicks, masking tape, straws, sticky notes, etc.

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7. Group decision making games

Group decision making games help encourage creative problem solving and decision making at work. Here is a bunch of group decision making games

1. Reverse Pyramid – the team members stand in a pyramid shape. The next step is to flip the base and apex of the pyramid. The limiting factor in only three persons can move.

Benefits: Group Decision-making and collaboration

2. Tower of Hanoi – in this game, there are three towers/posts/rods with 5 or more discs arranged conical shape with the smallest shape at the top. The objective of the game is to move the entire stack to another location retaining the shape. Some conditions of the games are only one disc can be moved at a time. Only the top disc can be moved. Another rule of the game is larger disc cannot be put on a smaller disc.

Benefits: This team-building exercise helps problem solving within the participants.

3. Human Knot – the team stands in a circle every person holds hands with a person not standing next to them. When everyone is cross-connected, the aim is to untangle the structure without letting go of anybody’s hand.

Benefit: group problem solving

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8. Funny problem solving games

We need to solve problems for personal and professional lives. Funny problem solving exercises are a light way. Funny problem solving can help reduce stress levels.

1. Pencil drop – in the pencil drop challenge, one end of the pencil is tied to a pencil and the other is tied around the waist of a team member. The other team member puts the pencil into the bottle placed below. The participants are not allowed to use their hands.

Benefit: Team bonding

Team size: 2 members each

Material: Some pencil and bottle

2. Blind drawing – this game requires two players to sit back to back. One participant describes an image in front of them without giving stating anything obvious. The other participant needs to draw it using the description. The outcome can be fun.

3. Be the character – in this activity, you pretend to be an imaginary character while trying to solve a problem. This game gives a unique perspective on your solution and whether the solution is feasible for other members.

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9. Group problem solving activities for adults

Group problem solving activities are very efficient, especially for adults. These can be used in any setting to enhance problem solving skills. 

1. Human Knots

• Benefits: Communication skills, collaboration
• Time Duration: 10 – 15 minutes.

This is one of the most straightforward group problem solving activities that can be done with any group. It facilitates communication and critical thinking in the face of a challenging and complex question. Various group members will possibly suggest a variety of solutions, and each will need to be reviewed and adopted by the organization as a whole.

• Have the group stand in a small circle (make several circles when you are a larger group). Every person in the loop will hold the hands of 2 other people who are not directly next to them. That would make a messy crossed arms knot.
• Ask the group to disentangle themselves without moving their hands at any point in time. They may be unable to disentangle completely to form a circle again. Still, they would have begun to work together to solve the problem by the end of the activity.

2. Frostbite 

• Benefits: Leadership, decision-making, trust, adaptability
• Time Duration: 30 minutes.
• Materials Required: An electric fan, blindfold, simple building materials like cardboard paper, rubber bands, toothpicks, masking tape, straws, sticky notes, etc.

Your group is trapped in the barren deserts of Siberia, and a sudden winter storm is approaching. You have to create a shelter with only the materials in hand that can survive the storm’s harsh winds. The leader of your expedition was afflicted with frostbite in both hands, sadly, and all the others experience severe snow blindness.

• Divide the group into clusters of 4-5. Every group will have to elect a chief. 
• Group leaders are not allowed to use their hands to support the group in any way, and group members should be blindfolded during the exercise. 
• The groups have 30 minutes to build a small tent structure that can withstand the wind from the fan’s highest location. 

3. Dumbest Idea First

• Benefits: Critical thinking, creative problem solving, quick problem solving
• Time Duration: 15 – 20 minutes
• Materials Required: Pen or pencil, a piece of paper.

Dumbest Idea First is one of the most creative problem solving activities for groups. This can encourage your creativity by thinking out of the box and lead you to ideas that would typically sound too insane to work. You can broaden the possibilities by looking at these crazy solutions first, and find potential alternatives that might not be as obvious.

• Present your team with a question. It could be a real-world dilemma facing the group, or it could be a created scenario. For example, your company attempts to beat a rival to win a high-paying customer contract, but the customer bends to your competitors. You have a short period before they make the final decision to change their mind.
• With the given question, advise your group to come up with the dumbest ideas to tackle the issue. Anything can be written down. 
• After each person has put forward a few ideas, go through the list, and analyze each plan to see which are the most feasible. List them from the highest level of feasibility to the lowest level.  

4. Wool Web 

• Benefits: Leadership, communication
• Time Duration: 30 minutes
• Materials Required: Some balls of yarn.

As hard as replicating the magnitude of the real-world problems is, that is no excuse not to try! Wool web creates a dilemma that appears complicated at first, but groups will learn to break down complicated challenges into solvable problems one move at a time.

This happens by using the right strategy and working together. Undoubtedly, this is one of the most stimulating problem solving activities for adults.

• Split the group into similarly large teams. Every time, it receives a yarn ball. 
• Tell each team to turn the yarn ball into a vast web. Give them around 5-10 minutes to do this. When done, rotate all the teams so that every team is on a yarn web they have not set up. 
• Every group must choose one person to untangle the web. That individual would be blindfolded and be guided by the rest of the team on how to unwind the web using only verbal instructions. The first team to achieve it wins the game.

5. Tallest Tower 

• Benefits: Creative thinking, collaboration
• Materials Required: 1 bag of marshmallows, one packet of uncooked spaghetti.

Simple building projects can help group members create strategies to overcome box issues. Tallest Tower is another one of the most creative problem solving activities. Groups will compete with only two materials to make the tallest tower in a fixed period.

• Divide the group into two, which have an equal number of players. Provide 20 – 30 uncooked spaghetti noodles and 3-4 marshmallows to every team. 
• Groups must compete in the provided period to build the tallest tower using only the materials supplied. A marshmallow has to be set at the top of the tower.

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10. Problem solving activities for students

Below is a bunch of problem solving activities for students and kids,

1. Brainstorm Bonanza – Brainstorm Bonanza is one of the best problem solving activities for students. As a teacher, making your students create lists relevant to something you are teaching at the moment can be a fantastic way to help them expand their knowledge of a subject when learning to solve problems.

• Benefits: Problem solving
• Materials Required: Pen and paper

1. If you are discussing a real, current, or fictional occurrence that did not work out well, let your students imagine ways that the protagonist or participants might have produced a better, more favorable result.

2. They can brainstorm independently or in groups. 

2. Clue Me In – this is one of the most enjoyable problem solving games. It facilitates logical thinking and cognitive development.

• Benefits: Cognitive development, logical thinking
• Time Duration: 20 minutes
• Materials Required: A bag, clues, items as necessary
• Select a collection of things relating to a specific occupation, social phenomenon, historical incident, object, etc.
• Assemble individual objects (or pictures of things) commonly linked to the target response.
• Place all of them in a bag (five-10 clues ought to be enough).
• Then, have a student reach into the bag and take out clues one by one.
• Select a minimum number of clues to draw before they make their first guess (two-three).
• After that, the student should guess, pulling each clue until they think it is right.
• See how quickly the student can solve the riddle.

3. Survivor Scenario – Create a hypothetical situation that allows students to think creatively to make it through. One example may be being stuck on an island, realizing that three days of help would not come.

The community has a small amount of food and water and has to establish shelter from the island’s objects. This would undoubtedly be one of the fascinating problem solving activities for students.

• Benefits: Logical thinking, collaboration
• Encourage working together as a group.
• Listen to each student who has an idea about making it safe and secure across the three days.

4. Moral Dilemmas – Create several potential moral dilemmas that your students can face in life, write down, and place each object in a bowl or container. These things may include items like, “I’ve seen a good friend of mine shoplifting. What is it that I would do?” or “The cashier gave me an additional $1.50 in change after I purchased candy from the shop. What is it that I would do?”

• Benefits: Logical thinking
• Time Duration: 5 minutes per student
• Materials Required: Container, bits of paper with moral dilemmas written
• Ask every student to draw an item from the bag one after the other and read it aloud. 
• They must then tell the class the response on the spot as to how they would handle the situation.

5. Problem solving box – this is an activity that will help on both cognitive and emotional levels for students. 

• Benefits: Logical thinking, decision making
• Materials Required: Box, paper, pen
• Have your students design and decorate a medium-sized box with a top slot. Name it as the “Problem Solving Box.”
• Invite students to write down anonymously and apply any concerns or problems they may have at school or at home, which they do not appear to be able to work out on their own.
• Let a student draw one of the things from the box once or twice a week, and read it aloud.
• Finally, as a group, let the class work out the best way students can approach the problem and eventually solve it.

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11. Problem solving activities for kids

Below is a bunch of problem solving activities for kids,

1. Puzzle-solving – Solving puzzles is one of the best problem solving activities for kids out there. Essentially, every puzzle is a big collection of muddled-up items to figure out and bring back together again.

Kids must be introduced to puzzles with regularity. These are useful for improving skills in reasoning. The best kinds to choose from are wooden puzzles with a wooden frame. They last long, and the structure serves as the foundation to direct children during construction. 

• Benefits: Reasoning skills
• Time Duration: Varies
• Materials Required: Puzzles according to the age level

Instructions: 

• Show the kids a demo of how a particular puzzle can be solved. 
• Then, let them choose a puzzle of their liking from the available choices. 
• Ask them to solve their chosen puzzles. 

2. Memory Games – Memory games will improve memory and attention to detail for your child. 

• Benefits: Attention to detail
• Materials Required: Matching pairs of images
• Using matching pairs of images and turn them all face down, shuffled, on a table.
• Take turns to pick any two cards, and face them on the table.
• You hold the cards if you turn over a similar pair, and if the pair does not match, turn the cards over before it is your turn to try again. 
• A teacher/parent must encourage the kids to concentrate on where the pictures are, and seek to find a matching pair on each turn.

3. Building games – Construction toys like building blocks, wooden blocks, or legos should be a staple in a kid’s home every day. Playing with them is one of the most fun problem solving activities for kids. Anything that your child builds is a challenge as it involves thinking about what to create and how to put together the parts to get a workable and usable design. 

• Benefits: Decision making
• Materials Required: Construction toys.

1. Let your child build a challenge openly and often, and ask him/her to build a particular structure, with conditions. For instance:

• Create two towers with a bridge that connects them.  
• Create a creature that stands alone and has three arms.

2. Observe how your child uses trial-and-error before finding a way to bring the idea into motion.

4. Tic-Tac-Toe – this is an excellent game for teaching decision-making skills. It encourages kids to think before they act and weigh the potential consequences. 

• Materials Required: Pencil, paper
• Draw a simple tic-tac-toe table on paper or chalkboard.
• Take turns to add a nought or a cross to the table to see who is the first to make a line of three.
• Your kid will likely catch on in no time before placing their symbol and start thinking carefully.
• Coloured counters or different items can be used to play this game as well.

5. Building a Maze – This activity is fun and fits for any age. It will also be a lot more enjoyable than doing a maze in an activity book, particularly for younger kids. 

• Materials Required: Chalk
• Draw a big maze with jumbo chalk on the paving. Make passages, including one or two, which end in an impasse. Teach your kid how to get out of it.  
• Make the maze more complicated and add more dead-end passages as your child gets better at figuring out a path and finding the way out.

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What is a problem solving process?

When a team or person faces an issue or obstacle, it can be tempting to quickly track a potential solution and set up a fast fix. This could happen without understanding the complexity of the problem and pursuing a systematic approach to seeking a solution.

The attempts to address issues or obstacles may become unstructured and frustrating without a consistent method. End-to-end processes for problem solving offer a mechanism for a community to tackle any size or nature, and see results. Problem solving activities for adults, kids, and students can help make the problem solving process very useful.

Army problem solving process

There are 7 steps to problem solving army model,

• Recognize and define the problem – The first step army problem solving process is defining the problem precisely and determining the root cause.
• Gather facts and make assumptions – You need to gather all information you have at your disposal. Common resources for information may be documentation and policies. Assumptions are unsubstantiated facts. Use facts rather than assumptions when you need to analyze the scope of the problem.
• Generate alternatives – One of the key steps in military problem solving is finding ways to solve the problem. Ideally, it best to have multiple approaches to solve the problem. Take input from peers and subordinates if possible.
• Analyze possible solutions – Analyze each possible solution with advantages and disadvantages. You evaluate each solution according to screening and feasibility criteria. Reject the solution when it fails in the screening process.
• Compare Alternatives – Another crucial step in the army problem solving model is to evaluate alternatives for cost and benefits. You need to consider your experience and immediate future. Tabulating each solution with the pros and cons will help clear the picture.
• Make an executive your decision – Make a decision and prepare an action plan, and put it in motion.
• Assess the result – You need to monitor the implementation of the plan and modify it if required. Establishing critical steps and milestones will help to ensure success.

Army problem solving games

• Capture the flag – the game helps in team building and army problem solving. Two teams compete against one another to retrieve a flag or object from the opposing team camp base and get into their camp base. This game is flexible, and ground rules need to be set before the game starts.
• Paintball – Paintball is a fun military problem solving activity. You can have many modifications and variations of the paintball game. The aim is to fire paint pellets at the opposing team. Laser tag is another variation of the game.
• Firing blind – Firing blind is a game where each team has a large number of water balloons. At the other end of the field has to hit the target is protected by a tarp from direct firing. The team has to hit the target that is covered. One team member acts as the observer and directs the team to hit the target with the water balloons.

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Obstacles to problem solving

Problem solving can take time and patience, one of the best ways to solve any problem is pausing and evaluating the problem. Obstacles to problem solving are,

• Misdiagnosis – Misdiagnosis is a common problem can occur due to preconceived idea, biases or judgments. Defining and having a concrete understanding of the problem is the first step in the problem solving activity. This can be difficult. If you are not careful, you may spend your time and resources solving the wrong problem and finding the wrong solution.
• Communication bias – Communication barriers are caused when we are unable to explain the problem to the team, or presuming we know more than everyone else. Everyone on the team must be on the same page. You may need to acknowledge you have a limited understanding of the problem.
• Solution bias – A common obstacle in problem solving is thinking there may be a universal solution or thinking the same solution can solve multiple problems. You need to evaluate a problem independently than try to force-fit a solution that worked previously.
• Cognitive bias – One of the barriers to finding an effective solution is cognitive bias, or the tendency to jump to conclusions. To find solutions fast firms often end up with an irrelevant solution. This may cause more problems down the line.
• Lack of empathy – Every problem is associated with human emotions or abilities. It is important to identify and recognize people affected by the problem or it will be difficult to find a solution that will solve help.

Also Read: Developing an NFT – hire an expert NFT developer now!

Famous virtual problem solving software

Traditionally watercoolers chat is a great way to bring people together and help team members interact with one another. A virtual water cooler has a similar concept where people interact in a similar virtual setting or a dedicated virtual room. It allows remote teams to bond. Software that offers virtual water coolers services,

• unremot.com – provides users with a unique water cooler experience. The app provides unique solutions to remote teams.
• Microsoft Teams
• Informal Whatsapp group
• Donut over slack channels

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45 team building games to improve communication and camaraderie

Team building games bring everyone together without the added pressure of work. Here, we’ve listed 45 of the top team building activities broken down by icebreaker, problem solving, indoor, and outdoor games.

As Ashley Frabasilio, Employee Engagement Manager at Asana puts it, “Creating a shared experience for teams to build relationships is one of the best ways to increase trust and encourage collaboration."

Whether you’re looking for indoor or outdoor activities, quick icebreaker games, or activities to bond with your remote team members, we compiled a list of over 45 team building games that you’ll actually enjoy. 

How to make team building inclusive

Teams with an inclusive culture tend to be more transparent, supportive, and happy because everyone feels accepted. It’s essential to make any team activity feel productive and enjoyable for the entire group, regardless of personalities or skill sets. Whether you’re working on building an inclusive remote culture or want in-person teams to feel more comfortable together, consider the following for an inclusive team building experience:

Inclusive team building means including everyone. Depending on the type of team building activity, you may benefit from hiring an outside expert to facilitate a team building event that everyone can participate in. Plus, the activity may feel more authentic because a professional is guiding you.

If you have introverts on the team, they may not be as excited about an exercise that involves lots of social interaction and do better in small groups. 

Teammates with speech, sight, or hearing impairments may feel left out during a game that involves blindfolding players and communicating without looking at each other.

Physically active games could exclude physically impaired teammates. 

Before choosing one of the team building games from this list, take stock of everyone's abilities. Find an activity that everyone on your team can participate in. Maybe even send out an anonymous poll to see what kinds of activities your team would be willing to partake in. Ultimately, the best team building activity will be the one that everyone can enjoy.

Team icebreaker games

Icebreaker questions and activities are the perfect “getting to know you” games but they’re also fun to play with teammates you’ve known for a long time. You can play them to get everyone up to speed for a meeting (especially on those 8am calls) or use them to introduce new team members.

1. Two truths, one lie

Team size : 3+ people

Time : 2–3 minutes per person

How to play : Ask everyone in the group to come up with two facts about themselves and one lie. The more memorable the facts (e.g., I went skydiving in Costa Rica) and the more believable the lies (e.g., I have two dogs), the more fun the game will be! Then, ask each team member to present their three statements and have the group vote on which one they think is the lie.

Why this exercise is great : This game is perfect for groups who don’t know each other well yet. The details you share can be used as building blocks for late conversations (“What else did you do in Costa Rica?”) to give you a better idea of who you’re working with.

2. Penny for your thoughts

Team size : 5+ people

How to play : You’ll need a box full of pennies (or other coins) with years only as old as your youngest team member (not the time to brag about your 1937 collector’s penny). Ask every team member to draw a coin from the box and share a story, memory, or otherwise significant thing that happened to them that year. This can be anything from learning how to ride a bike to landing your first job.    

Why this exercise is great : This is a fun twist on a stress-free and simple icebreaker that gives everyone the chance to share a personal story with their team. You can play multiple rounds if the stories are on the shorter side or let team members elaborate on their stories to gain deeper insight into their lives.

3. Mood pictures

How to play : Prepare a variety of images before you play. You can collect newspaper clippings, magazine cutouts, postcards, and posters or print out different images from the internet (Pinterest is a great spot). The images should show landscapes, cities, people, shapes, or animals in a variety of colors and perspectives.

Lay all the images out and ask team members to each pick one that resonates with their current mood. Once everyone has picked an image, ask them to share what they resonated with, how it makes them feel, and why they picked it.

Why this exercise is great : This exercise is a great way to get a meeting or a workshop started because it allows you to get a feel of the room in a creative and unexpected way. You don’t always have to ask your team to pick an image that reflects their mood—it can also be their expectations for a workshop, their feelings about a current project, or how they hope to feel at the end of the day. As they say, a picture’s worth a thousand words, so this exercise makes talking about feelings easier for a lot of people.

4. One word exercise

Time : 5–10 minutes 

How to play : Pick a phrase related to the meeting topic and ask everyone to write down one word that comes to mind on a post-it. Then, gather these words on a whiteboard or put them in a presentation. For example, if you’re hosting a meeting about your annual holiday event. Everyone would take a moment to respond with the first word that comes in their head. If the team is responding with words like stress or exhaustion, you might want to rethink your process.

Why this exercise is great : This is a way to collect opinions, thoughts, or feelings about a meeting that’s well within most people’s comfort zone. You’ll have the chance to read the room before diving into the topic and may uncover some concerns or questions to focus on, which will make the meeting more beneficial to everyone.

5. Back-to-back drawing

Team siz e: 4+ people 

Time : 5–10 minutes

How to play : Split your team into groups of two and make them sit back to back. Hand one person a pen and piece of paper and show the other person a picture of something that’s fairly simple to draw (e.g., a car, a flower, a house). This person now has to describe the picture to their teammate without actually saying what the item is so they can draw it. They’re allowed to describe shapes, sizes, and textures but can’t say, “Draw a lily.” Once the blind drawing is finished, compare it with the original to see how well you communicated.

Why this exercise is great : This activity is a fun way to polish your communication skills, especially your listening skills. It also gives your team a chance to get creative and innovative by thinking outside the box to describe the image to their teammate.

6. Birthday line up

Team size : 8+ people

Time : 10–15 minutes

How to play : Ask your entire team to form a line in order of their birthdays without talking to each other. You can encourage other forms of communication like sign language, gestures, or nudges. If you want to add a little bit of pressure and excitement to the exercise, add a time limit! 

Why this exercise is great : Besides learning everyone’s birthday (which can always come in handy as a conversation starter later on), this exercise encourages your team to learn to communicate towards a common goal without using words. Although this can be a challenge and get frustrating, this exercise promotes problem framing skills, cooperation, and non-verbal communication skills.

7. Charades

Team size : 8–10 people

Time : 10–25 minutes

How to play : Divide your team into groups of four or five people. The person who goes first is given or shown a random object (e.g., printer, stapler, keyboard) in private. They then have to demonstrate how to use the object without actually showing it in front of their team. Their team gets 30 seconds on the clock to shout out the correct word (you can adjust the time depending on the difficulty of the objects).

Then it’s the other team’s turn. You’ll keep playing until every team member has had the chance to demonstrate an object to their team. 

Why this exercise is great : This classic game is a nice way to break up a mentally taxing day and get your team to do a creative exercise that isn’t work-related.

8. Swift swap

Team size : 10–20 people

How to play :  Split your team into two groups and line them up facing each other. Team A gets a quick observation period (15–30 seconds) in which group members have to memorize as many things about the people in front of them as possible. Then team A turns around while team B changes as many things about their appearance as possible. 

Anything from changing the line up order to swapping shoes with someone or changing your hairdo is fair game. After about 45 seconds, team A turns back around and gets 5–10 minutes to find out what’s changed. You can adjust the time depending on the size of your group.

Why this exercise is great : This game is a great way to break up a long day and take everyone’s minds off work for a little while. Your team also gets to practice time-sensitive non-verbal communication during the swapping phase.

9. Code of conduct

Time : 20–30 minutes

How to play : This game is a great way to tune into a new project or workshop. Write the two categories “meaningful” and “enjoyable” on a whiteboard and ask the group to share what they believe is needed to accomplish these two things for your project or workshop. This can be anything from “regular breaks'' to “transparency and honesty,” which could fall under either category.

Everyone will choose ideas that they agree are both meaningful and enjoyable . Record these values in a shared tool to establish the code of conduct for your upcoming project or workshop. This list will function as a reminder for the team to uphold these values.

Why this exercise is great : Whether it’s the first day of a workshop, the beginning of a new project, or simply a Monday morning, this exercise is great to get everyone on your team on the same page. By establishing group norms and values early on and holding everyone accountable with a written code of conduct, you can create a sense of cohesiveness. If you’d like to do this exercise virtually, use our team brainstorming template to collect everyone’s thoughts.

10. Common thread

Team size : 10+ people

Time : 30 minutes

How to play : Divide your team into groups of three to five people. Then ask your team to find things everyone in their group has in common. This can be a favorite TV show, an ice cream flavor nobody likes, or a common hobby. Encourage your teammates to find common threads that aren’t too superficial or obvious. The more things they can find that everyone in the group has in common, the better! If you have the time, bring everyone together afterward and ask the teams to share their experiences.

Why this exercise is great : This fun game allows your team to find commonalities that they may not get a chance to discover otherwise. It’s also a great way to reunite teams that feel a bit divided. Talking about shared likes and dislikes can be helpful to reconnect you with teammates.

Remote or virtual team building games

Bonding with your teammates can be more difficult when you’re working remotely. Remote or virtual team building games can improve remote collaboration , motivate teams , and create a sense of community even though you’re physically apart. You can use Zoom to connect with your teammates or do quick team building exercises via your remote work software during the day.

If your team is located across multiple time zones, you may have to get creative with scheduling. Ashley Frabasilio, Employee Engagement Manager at Asana encourages leaders to schedule these activities during normal work hours. Ensure that the activity is appropriate for all participants in all time zones so no one feels excluded. Using work hours for these exercises can also increase the participation rate because you’re not interfering with personal time.

11. Show and tell  

How to play : Ask everyone in your team to bring something they’re proud of or that brings them joy to your next meeting. This can be anything from a pet to a plant, a painting they did, or a certificate they received. Everyone gets two to three minutes to show off their item and answer questions from the team if they have any.

Why this exercise is great : Show and tell isn’t just fun for kids, it’s also a great way to connect with your team. You’re probably going to learn something new about your teammates and may get a couple of conversation starters for your next meeting from this game.

12. Photo caption contest 

How to play : Collect a few funny photos—for example a few memes that have recently been circling the internet. Send these to your team before the meeting and ask everyone to submit their best photo caption for each image. You can put these together in a quick presentation and present them to your team during the call. You can have a good laugh together and even vote for the best captions.

Why this exercise is great : This exercise is a fun way to get creative as a team and have a good laugh together.

13. Morning coffee 

Time : 15–30 minutes

How to play : Schedule regular coffee calls for your remote team to give everyone a chance to get to know each other like they would in an office setting. You can schedule team calls with four to five people or randomly assign two people to each other that switch every time. You can offer these casual calls once a week, bi-weekly, or once a month, depending on your team size and the interest in this opportunity. 

Why this exercise is great : Remote teams don’t often get a chance to just chit-chat and get to know each other without talking about work or feeling like they’re wasting meeting time. By designating 15–30 minutes on a regular basis to a casual call, your team members will have a chance to bond with people they might not typically interact with.

14. Lunch and learn

How to play : Hold a weekly or monthly “lunch and learn” where one team member presents a topic to the whole team during their lunch break. This presentation can be on a tool everyone uses at work, on a lesson learned from a recent project, or even on a book they read that everyone can learn from. 

Why this exercise is great : These events are a great opportunity for your team to connect in a more casual yet educational setting. If your team budget allows, send restaurant gift cards to your team members so they can order lunch for the call.

15. Online group game  

Time : 30–60 minutes

How to play : Invite your team to play a game online together. This can be an actual video game if everyone happens to use the same console at home or you can download an interactive game (like Jackbox ) which you can screen share with the rest of the group. 

Why this exercise is great : Playing a video game or an interactive game that has nothing to do with work can be a fun way to switch things up, create a more casual work environment, and get to know each other better. It will also give people with great sportsmanship a chance to shine!

16. Trivia games 

Team size : 6–20 people

Time : 30–90 minutes

How to play : Start a meeting with a quick game of trivia or host a regular virtual trivia night at the end of the work day. You can play a game of office trivia (e.g., facts about the company) or pick random other themes like TV shows, music, or national parks. To mix things up, ask other team members to host trivia night.

Why this exercise is great : Whether you’re making the trivia game office-themed or creating a regular team activity that takes everyone’s minds off of work, you’ll get to spend time with your team playing a competitive, educational, and entertaining game that gives everyone a chance to bond.

17. Quarterly challenge  

Time : One month

How to play : Create an optional challenge for your team to participate in. The challenge can be centered around healthy eating, meditation, journaling, or reading. Create a chat or thread where your teammates can exchange their experiences, wins, and questions to keep each other motivated and accountable throughout the month. 

Make sure your team knows that participation is optional. It never hurts to ask for feedback to spark future team challenge ideas.

Why this exercise is great : Creating a challenge like this for your team shows them that you care about their work-life balance. By offering a quarterly challenge, you provide your team with the opportunity to share an experience together. Plus, it’s always easier to complete a challenge when you have a team who supports you and an incentive to work toward.  

18. Personality test  

How to play : Send a personality test to your team and ask everyone to share their results in a chat or during your next team meeting. This can be a formal test like the Enneagram or StrengthsFinder . For something more lighthearted, you can send a fun quiz like the Sorting Hat to find out which Hogwarts house you belong in or a Buzzfeed quiz (e.g., “ What Kitchen Appliance Are You? ”).

Why this exercise is great : Depending on the type of quiz your team takes, this can become a funny icebreaker before you start a meeting or turn into a discussion on your team’s combined strengths and challenges. 

Problem solving games

Playing problem solving games with your team helps them level up their teamwork skills, resolve issues, achieve goals, and excel together. Whether you’re using new brainstorming techniques or going out for a team adventure, these fun team building activities are the perfect way to improve your team's problem solving skills.

19. Your first idea

Team size : 5–12 people

Time : 10–20 minutes

How to play : Ask everyone in your team to write down the first idea that pops into their head when they’re presented with the problem. Compile the list and review it as a team.

A fun twist on this game is to ask everyone to write down their worst idea. After reviewing with the team, you may realize that some ideas aren’t that bad after all. You can play this game with a real-life problem, a fictional one, or when you’re brainstorming new ideas to pitch.

Why this exercise is great : We often get too much into our heads about problems and solutions. By writing down the first solution that comes to mind, we can uncover new perspectives and fixes.

20. Back of the napkin

Team size : 6–24 people

Time : 15–20 minutes

How to play : Divide your team into groups of two to four and present them with a variety of open-ended problems. These can be work-related, imaginary, or even environmental problems. Every team gets a napkin and pen that they have to sketch or write their solution on after they’ve discussed the issue as a group. These will then be presented to the rest of the team.

Why this exercise is great : Some of the best ideas have allegedly been recorded on napkins (hey, when creativity strikes you’ll write on anything). This game imitates this scenario while challenging your team to collaborate on solving a creative problem.

21. Create your own

How to play : Each team member will create an original problem-solving activity on their own and present it to the group. Whether this entails a physical, mental, or creative challenge is up to your team. If you have the time, play some of the games afterward!

Why this exercise is great : Coming up with your own games is fun and a real creative challenge. It also allows your team members to showcase their strengths by creating challenges they’ll be prepared to tackle.

22. Spectrum mapping

Team size : 5–15 people

How to play : Present your team with a few topics that you’d like their opinions and insight on. Write them down on a whiteboard and give everyone sticky notes and pens. Ask them to write down their thoughts and pin them on the whiteboard underneath the respective topic.

Now arrange the sticky notes as a team. Try to group similar ideas together to the left of the topic and post outliers toward the right side. This will create a spectrum of popular thoughts and opinions on the left and more extreme ideas on the right.

Why this exercise is great : This game will help you map out the diversity of perspectives your team has on different topics. Remember that unpopular opinions don’t have to be wrong. Embracing this diversity can help you uncover new perspectives and innovative ideas to solve problems you’re facing as a team. 

23. What would “X” do? 

Team size : 5–10 people

Time : 45–60 minutes

How to play : Present your team with a problem and ask everyone to come up with a famous person or leader they admire. This can be a celebrity, a business person, or a relative. Challenge your teammates to approach the problem as if they were that person and present their solution (extra points for playing in character).

Why this exercise is great : Getting stuck in your own head can often keep you from solving a problem efficiently and effectively. By stepping into the shoes of someone else, you may uncover new solutions. Plus, it’s fun pretending to be someone else for a little while!

24. Team pursuit

Time : 1–3 hours

How to play : Form groups of two to six people that will compete against one another in a series of challenges. You can buy a team pursuit package online or create your own game, which will take a good amount of prep time. 

You’ll want to create a set of challenges for your team: cerebral challenges that test logic and intelligence, skill challenges like aptitude tests, and mystery challenges which usually ask for creativity and out-of-the-box thinking (e.g., come up with a unique handshake, take a fun picture, etc.).  

Why this exercise is great : A solid game of team pursuit will create a fun challenge that gives everyone a chance to shine and show off their talents. Whether you’re a good runner, a quick thinker, or a creative mind, everyone will be able to contribute to the success of the team. This game will bring your team closer together and show them new sides of their teammates that they may not have been aware of.

25. Code break

Team size : 8–24 people

How to play : This brain teaser is a fun activity that you can play indoors or outdoors to challenge your team. Outback Team Building offers self-hosted, remote-hosted, and on-site hosted events that include several codes your teammates have to find and break to make it through the course.

Why this exercise is great : This challenge requires creative thinking, creates a competitive environment, and works with large groups because you can break off into smaller groups.

26. Escape room

Time : 2–3 hours

How to play : Visiting an escape room is always a unique experience and a great way to spend an afternoon with your team. If you have multiple escape rooms nearby, ask your team if they have a general idea of what theme they’d like to explore (e.g., history, horror, sci-fi) and try to pick something you’ll think everyone will enjoy.

If you’re super creative and have the time and resources, you can put together an escape room on your own!

Why this exercise is great : Solving the mysteries of an escape room with your team will reveal the strengths and weaknesses of your teammates, foster communication and collaboration, build trust, and become a shared memory that connects you together.

Indoor team building games

Most of these indoor games can be played in an office, conference room, or a hallway with a small team, but you may need a bit more space if you’re inviting a larger group to join in.

27. Perfect square

Team size : 4–12 people

How to play : Divide your team into groups of four to six and ask them to stand in a tight circle with their group. Ask everyone to blindfold themselves or close their eyes and give one person a rope. Without looking at what they're doing, the teams now have to pass the rope around so everyone holds a piece of it and then form a perfect square. Once the team is sure their square is perfect, they can lay the rope down on the floor, take off their blindfolds (or open their eyes) and see how well they did. 

Why this exercise is great : This game is about more than perfect geometric shapes, it’s an amazing listening and communication exercise. Because no one can see what they're doing, your team members have to communicate clearly while figuring out how to create a square out of a rope. Besides, it’s often really funny to see how imperfect the squares come out.

28. Memory wall

How to play : You’ll need a whiteboard and sticky notes for this game. Write different work-related themes on the whiteboard such as “first day at work,” “team celebration,” and “work travel.” Hand each teammate a few sticky notes and ask them to write down their favorite memories or accomplishments associated with one or more of these themes. Invite everyone to share these with the team to take a walk down memory lane and post the notes on the whiteboard as you go.

Why this exercise is great : This is a nice way to end a week, long day, or workshop because you’ll share positive experiences with one another that will leave your teammates smiling. If you’re finishing up a work trip or multi-day workshop, you can also do a slimmed-down version of this by asking everyone to share their favorite memory or biggest accomplishment of the last few days.

29. Turn back time  

How to play : This team building exercise works best in a quiet atmosphere with everyone sitting in a circle. Ask your team to silently think of a unique memory in their lives. You can give them a few minutes to collect their thoughts. Then, ask everyone to share the one memory they’d like to relive if they could turn back time.

Not everyone may be comfortable opening up at first, so be sure to lead with vulnerability and make everyone in the room feel safe about sharing their moment.

Why this exercise is great : This exercise is a great way to help your team members remember their priorities and bond on a deeper level. In a team that’s facing disconnection or stress, sharing personal highlights that aren’t work-related can help create a sense of togetherness. Although the exercise doesn’t take too long, it’s best to do it toward the end of the day so your team has a chance to reflect on what’s been said.

30. Paper plane  

Team size : 6–12 people

How to play : Split your team into groups of two to four and hand out card stock. Give each team 10–15 minutes to come up with the best long-distance paper plane design (they’re allowed to do research on their phones or computers) and a name for their airline.

When the paper planes are done, have a competition in a long hallway or outside to see which plane flies the farthest. 

Why this exercise is great : This exercise requires team members to collaborate on a project with a tight timeline. It is a great activity to practice communication skills, delegation, and time management.

31. Build a tower

Team size : 8–16 people

How to play : Divide your team into groups of four or five and provide them with 20 sticks of uncooked spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string, and one marshmallow. Challenge each team to build the tallest tower possible using only the supplies you gave them. When finished, the tower has to support the marshmallow sitting on top. Set the timer for 20 minutes and ask everyone to step away from their masterpiece when it runs out so you can crown a winner.

Why this exercise is great : This challenge is a great way to improve problem solving skills and communication within your team. Your team members will have to prototype, build, and present the tower in a short amount of time, which can be stressful. The better they work together, the more likely they are to succeed.

32. Flip it over

Team size : 6–8 people

How to play : Lay a towel, blanket, or sheet on the floor and ask your teammates to stand on it. The goal is to flip the piece over without ever stepping off of it or touching the ground outside of the fabric. You can make the challenge more difficult by adding more people to the team or using a smaller sheet.

Why this exercise is great : This exercise requires clear communication, cooperation, and a good sense of humor. It’s a great way to find out how well your teammates cooperate when presented with an oddly difficult task.

33. Sneak a peek 

Team size : 4–20 people

How to play : Create a structure out of Lego pieces and hide it in a separate room. Divide your team into groups of two to four people and give them enough Legos to replicate the structure in 30 minutes or less.

One player per team is allowed to sneak a peek at the original structure for 15 seconds, then run back and describe it to their team. The person who gets to sneak a peek rotates so everyone gets to see the original at some point during the game. The team that first completes the structure as close to the original wins! 

Why this exercise is great : During this game your team gets to focus on teamwork and communication. Since only one person at a time is allowed to look at the original, team members may see and describe different things. The more complex the structure is, the harder this game will be.

34. Pyramids

How to play : Pick a large open area for this game like a hallway, a meeting room, or the cafeteria. Divide your team into groups of four to six and give each team 10 paper cups. Ask the teams to stand in a line with about 8–10 feet between the team members. Now it’s a race against time!

The first person in each line has to build a pyramid with four cups at the base. Once they’re done, the second player has to help them carry the pyramid to their station (this can be on the floor or at a table). They can slide it on the floor or carry it together but if the pyramid falls apart, the players have to reassemble it on the spot before continuing their journey. At the next station, the second player has to topple the pyramid and rebuild it before the third player gets to help them carry it to the next station. This continues until the pyramid reaches the last station. The team that finishes first wins the game

Why this exercise is great : This game is fun to play during a mid-day break, fosters communication skills, and promotes teamwork.

35. Shipwrecked

Team size : 8–25 people

How to play : The premise of the game is that you’re stranded on a deserted island and only have 25 minutes to secure survival items off the sinking ship. Place items like water bottles, matches, food, etc., in the “shipwreck area.” You can also print pictures on index cards to make things a bit easier. The quantity of each item should be limited, with some items having more than others (e.g., more water than food, fewer tarps than teams, more knives than ropes, etc.).

Divide your team into groups of two (or more if it’s a large team). Once the clock starts, they have to gather as many items as they deem worthy from the shipwreck and rank them in order of importance. Since the items are limited (some more than others), the teams will not only have to prioritize the items within their own group of people but also negotiate, trade, and exchange items with other teams. 

Why this exercise is great : This game will challenge problem-solving abilities, encourage collaboration, and enable your team to flex their leadership skills. Typically, teams with strong leadership qualities will have the most success in making these quick decisions.

36. Team flag

Time : 30–45 minutes

How to play : Divide your team into groups of two to four people and provide them with paper and pens. Each group now has to come up with an emblem or flag that represents their team. Once everyone has completed their masterpiece, they have to present it to the rest of the teams, explaining how they came up with the design. This exercise is also a great opportunity to discuss how each group identified their common values and created alignment during the design process.

Why this exercise is great : This is a great way to get the creative juices flowing. Your team will not only have to come up with a unique design that represents their collective identity but they’ll also have to collaborate on putting pen to paper and presenting their flag or emblem at the end of the game.

37. Salt and pepper  

How to play : You’ll need a list of things that go well together like salt and pepper, left sock and right sock, day and night, peanut butter and jelly, or yin and yang. Write these words on individual pieces of paper and tape one sheet of paper on every team member's back. 

Ask your team to mingle and find out what’s written on their back by asking questions that can only be answered with yes or no (e.g., “Am I sweet? Do you wear me? Am I cold?”). Once the participants find out who they are, they have to find their match!

Why this exercise is great : Your team can use this game to bond with one another and improve their communication skills. If you have a large team, this exercise also gives them a chance to interact with people they may not usually get to talk to.

38. Sell it

Time : 45–90 minutes

How to play : Ask your teammates to each bring a random object to the meeting. Everyone then has to come up with a logo, slogan, and marketing plan to sell this object. After 30 minutes, each team member has to present their new product to the rest of the team. If you have a larger team, divide them into groups of 2–4 people and ask them to collaborate on their product pitch.

Why this exercise is great : This game is great to switch things up if you don’t already work in marketing or sales. It’s also fun to play with others as it allows your team to get creative and have fun with everyday objects.

39. The barter puzzle

Time : 1–2 hours

How to play : Divide your team into groups of three or four people and give each a different jigsaw puzzle of the same difficulty level. Ask them to complete the puzzle as a team. The twist: each puzzle is missing a few pieces that are mixed in with an opposing team’s puzzle. The teams have to figure out ways to get the pieces they need from the other teams by negotiating, trading pieces, or even exchanging teammates. Every decision has to be made as a team. The first team to complete their puzzle wins.

Why this exercise is great : Every decision made will have to be a group decision which challenges your team to improve their problem solving skills.  

Outdoor team building exercises

If you want to get a larger group together for a team building exercise, why not take things outside? Outdoor team building is also a great way to get your teammates to interact without the distractions of screens or smartphones. Whether you want to catch a breath of fresh air or get some sunshine together, these exercises will help you bond with your teammates outside of the office.

40. The minefield

Team size : 4–10 people

How to play : Create a minefield in a parking lot or another large, open space by sporadically placing objects like papers, balls, cones, and bottles. Split your team into groups of two and ask one person to put on a blindfold. The other person now has to guide the blindfolded teammate through the minefield only using their words. The blindfolded person is not allowed to talk and will be eliminated if they stop walking or step on anything in the minefield. 

The objective of the game is to make it to the other side of the minefield. The teams can then switch so another person will be blindfolded and guided through the field on their way back. You can also distribute pieces the blindfolded person has to pick up on their way through the field to add another difficulty level.

Why this exercise is great : This game is not just a trust exercise for your teammates but also a fun way to practice active listening skills and clear communication.

41. Earth-ball  

Team size : 5–20 people

Time : 15–45 minutes

How to play : You’ll need a balloon, beach ball, or volleyball for this activity. Ask your team to stand in a circle and keep the balloon or ball in the air for as long as possible. To make it a real challenge, no one can touch the ball twice in a row. The bigger your team, the more fun this game will be!

Why this exercise is great : This fun challenge is a great way to get your team moving. If you’re struggling to keep the ball up for longer, try to come up with a strategy to improve your time.

42. Scavenger hunt

How to play : Put together a scavenger hunt for your team. This can be in the form of a list of photographs they have to take (e.g., something red, all teammates in front of the company logo, the CEO’s car, etc.), items they have to collect (e.g., company brochure, yellow sticky note with manager’s signature on it, ketchup packet from the cafeteria, etc.), or other activities they have to complete on a designated route. 

Why this exercise is great : The more people that tag along, the more fun this game will be. You can group people together who don’t know each other very well to allow them time to bond during this exercise. Try to come up with company-specific quests for your team so they learn a few fun facts along the way. You can offer prizes for the most creative team or the first to finish the challenge to boost motivation.

43. Egg drop 

Time : 60–90 minutes

How to play : Divide your team into groups of two or three people and give each team a raw egg (keep some extras in case they break before the grand finale). Then put out supplies like tape, straws, rubber bands, newspapers, and balloons so the teams can build a structure for the raw egg that will protect it from a fall out of a second or third story window. 

Each team has 60 minutes to complete their structure. When the time is up, ask your teams to gather their eggs and egg cages to drop them out of the window. This grand finale will reveal which team engineered and built the best cage.

Why this exercise is great : Collaborating on a design and building a cage will challenge your team’s problem solving and collaboration skills.

44. Team outing

Team size : Any

How to play : Plan an outing for your team. You could attend a cooking class or go to a museum together. If you want to have something your teammates can work toward, plan to run a 5K together or host a ping pong tournament. You can also do something more casual like inviting your team to hangout at a bowling alley after work where you can play a few games in a casual and fun setting.

Why this exercise is great : Taking your team somewhere new will help break down some of the walls we often build in a professional setting. While you’re still at a company function, you’re more inclined to connect through casual conversation at a restaurant or park than you would at the office.

45. Volunteer as a team

How to play : Organize a team event during your regularly scheduled workday. This can be a charity event, yard sale, or fundraiser for a cause your team cares about. Even though these are enjoyable, scheduling them during work hours makes this feel like more of a perk than an obligation.

If your team members have a few causes they’re truly passionate about, consider making this a monthly or quarterly event. You can also rotate the charities that you’re helping out to accommodate your team’s different interests.

Why this exercise is great : Experiencing helper’s high can improve your personal health and mental state. Sharing this rush that doing good can give you will help your team bond on a deeper level. 

Benefits of team building

Team building is more than a fun break from your everyday routine at work. It also:

Improves communication, trust, and collaboration skills

Promotes a collaborative culture by bringing teammates together

Fosters agile decision making and problem solving skills

Boosts team productivity and morale

Uses creativity and outside-of-the-box thinking

Ashley Frabasilio believes that:

A common goal is to create a memorable and meaningful experience for folks to connect. Some questions to consider when planning an impactful team-building activity include: What do I hope folks walk away with? I.e., a new skill, a deeper connection to one another, personal development, a moment of delight, etc.”

Ask yourself these questions before proposing a team building activity so you can reap the full benefits of the exercise.

Bring your team together, creatively

As you can see, there are plenty of ways to build your team’s confidence, connection, and teamwork skills. While team building is fun, it’s also important to connect with your team on an everyday basis. To build one of those connections in your day-to-day work, the right collaboration software is key. 

Looking for the right collaboration tool? See how Asana keeps your team connected, no matter where you’re working. 

Related resources

How to accomplish big things with long-term goals

Fix these common onboarding challenges to boost productivity

30-60-90 day plan: How to onboard new hires with ease

15 types of employee performance reviews

66 team building activities to bring your team together (and have fun!)

Team building activities can make all the difference when it comes to job satisfaction , employee engagement and organizational success . But even with the best intentions, it’s not sufficient to simply bring a group of people together. Effective team building activities can help your group feel more connected and able to collaborate more effectively .

But how do you choose the right activity, and where do you get started when trying to encourage team bonding or alignement? We're here to help with this collection of simple and effective team building activities!

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Building a highly effective team takes effort , consideration, and the deployment of a thoughtful group process . Remember that teams are composed of relationships between people and all relationships need care and attention. The team-building activities below are a great place to start!

That said, some employees may bristle or cringe at the mention of team building activities, and with good reason. Done badly, team building at work can be frustrating , unproductive, or a waste of time for all involved . 

We’ve put together a collection of proven team-building activities, games, and exercises that cover everything from communication and collaboration to alignment and vision . 

Whether you’re working in a small team or as part of a large organization, taking the time to develop your team and enable everyone in your group to do their best work is time well spent. Let’s take a look!

What are team building activities? 

Team building is an activity or process designed to help build connections between members of a team, create lasting bonds, and enable better teamwork and working practices.

Team building activities might include running team games and activities, holding group discussions, hosting away days, or simply doing things together as a team. They key is that the exercise is designed to bring your team together in a fun and engaging way.

What is the main purpose of a team building activity? 

The main purpose of any team-building activity is on improving some aspects of how a team works together while bringing everyone together in a shared experience .

This might include working on communication, collaboration, alignment, team values, motivation, and anything else that can enable a group to work together more effectively. It might also include resolving conflicts, sharing skills, or simply bringing your group together in a shared experience.

Broadly speaking, any team building effort should be designed to help bring team members closer or find ways to first define and then move towards your shared goals as a group .

As Forbes notes , team building is “most important investment you can make for your people.” On this point, it’s worth noting that team building doesn’t just happen during the activity and so being purposeful your choice of exercise is important.

The best team building activities hold space for building connections in a way that spills over into day-to-day work and creates lasting bonds. It’s not enough to throw your team into an escape room or scavenger hunt without first thinking about why or how this will benefit your team!

After you’ve chosen some engaging team building activities, it’s time to design a complete process that will engage your team while achieving your desired outcomes.

SessionLab makes it easy to build a complete team building agenda in minutes . Start by dragging and dropping blocks, add activity timings and adjust your session flow to create an effective session.

What are the main types of team building activities?

Team building activities are games and exercises that help a group collaborate on a shared goal, discuss important issues constructively, share in a fun experience or find better ways of working together.

These activities can take forms – from quick and funny games you use in your regular meeting, or the may be part of a larger process or team development workshop.

Being purposeful and knowing the objective of your session means you can choose an activity accordingly. Sometimes, your team will come together because they have problems to solve, or you might just want to have fun and celebrate your wins. Pick the right activity for the right time to ensure your team is onboard and ready to engage!

Here are the main categories of team building activity that you might want to use with your team. We’ve made it easy to get started with the right activity for your team by including the length of each game, how many participants can play and how hard it is to run alongside clear instructions.

Team building activities for work

Starting the team building process can be difficult, especially if you’re working with a new team who don’t yet know each other well. The activities in this section are focused on helping teams and employees get to know each other better and start to develop bonds and trust.

Even if your team has been around a while, learning more about one another and building deeper bonds is useful for both team cohesion and group happiness. These are also great activities to use when trying to improve employee engagement and company culture – any organization is only as strong as the bonds between its people!

Try these team building games for work to encourage conversation and break the ice – especially if you’re working with a remote team who might not be in the office together.

3 Question Mingle

Conversation is often the best starting point when it comes to team building, but without structure, it can be difficult for groups to get moving. In 3 Question Mingle, each team member writes three questions on sticky notes and then has a one minute meeting with another person. They each ask another one question and then trade those post-its. Invite the group to move around the room asking questions in pairs and swapping questions afterwards. 

Not only does this team building activity help an entire team get to know each other, but it also invites the group to ask the questions they want to ask. By combining structure with self direction, you can get your team building workshop off to the right start! Bonus points for adding those sticky notes to a memory wall for later reflection!

3 Question Mingle   #hyperisland   #team   #get-to-know   An activity to support a group to get to know each other through a set of questions that they create themselves. The activity gets participants moving around and meeting each other one-on-one. It’s useful in the early stages of team development and/or for groups to reconnect with each other after a period of time apart.

9 Dimensions Team Building Activity

Building better team relationships and improving group dynamics often means sharing something about ourselves and finding space to discuss and be honest. In this team building exercise, give each team member a set of red, green, yellow and blue dots alongside the 9 dimensions you’ll be looking at. Each participant puts a dot on each dimension based on whether they believe they’re crushing it or need to do more work. 

By sharing some of their 9 dimensions, your team gets to surface things they’re proud of, as well as those that need work. You’ll explore what your group is aligned on in the debriefing section and then move forward together as a team.

9 Dimensions Team Building Activity   #icebreaker   #teambuilding   #team   #remote-friendly   9 Dimensions is a powerful activity designed to build relationships and trust among team members. There are 2 variations of this icebreaker. The first version is for teams who want to get to know each other better. The second version is for teams who want to explore how they are working together as a team.

Awareness Circle

Getting to know people is easier for some members of a group than it is for others. While extroverts can start chatting to new team members with ease, introverts may find it more difficult to bond with their team and create meaningful team bonds.

In this activity, you’ll encourage a group to get to know each other without speaking and show that everyone in a team has a connection. Another great takeaway from this activity is to take note of the diversity (or lack thereof) in the room and consider this as a point for future team development. 

Awareness Circle   #teampedia   #team   #icebreaker   #opening   This activity helps participants to get-to-know each other without saying a word.

Break the Ice with The Four Quadrants Activity

Sometimes pictures are better than words when it comes to helping a team get to know one another. Creative games like this one can also be especially effective at helping introverts or distanced teams share with the group.

Start by handing out sheets of paper and inviting each participant to draw a 2×2 grid and pose four questions to the group. Each team member draws their answer in one of the grid squares and once the time limit is up, invite the group to share. If you’re looking for a fun game that encourages creative thinking while being visual and memorable, look no further! 

Break the Ice with The Four Quadrants Activity   #team   #icebreaker   #get-to-know   #teambuilding   The Four Quadrants is a tried and true team building activity to break the ice with a group or team. It is EASY to prep for and set up. It can be MODIFIED to work with any group and/or topic (just change the questions). It is FUN, COLORFUL and works every time!

Just One Lie

Not all team building games need to reinvent the wheel. Particularly with new teams or groups that aren’t used to team building, keeping it simple with a tried and tested method can be your best bet.

Just One Lie is adapted from the well-known icebreaker two truths and a lie, though encourages participants to mingle and share lots of facts about themselves with one another – great for breaking the ice and getting to know one another too!

Just One Lie   #icebreaker   #energiser   #team   #get-to-know   This method is adapted from the well-known icebreaker ‘Two Truths And A Lie’  to create an activity that you could return to throughout a meeting.

Both groups and individuals go through many twists, turns and changes throughout their life. At its best, team building not only helps create better teams but allows time for reflection and deeper sharing between participants.

With Life Map, encourage your group to draw or create a collage of their life story they can then share with the team. This kind of deeper getting to know your exercise can really help bring a team together and allow for meaningful self-reflection too! 

Life map   #team   #teampedia   #icebreaker   #get-to-know   With this activity the participants get to know each other on a deeper level.

Personal Presentation

Team building is all about building trust and openness between teammates. Sharing personal experiences and enlarging the social aspects of the group with presentations not only allows everyone to get to know each other but also encourages team development skills too.

For this team building method, ask each participant to prepare a presentation including three things that have shaped who they are as a person. Encourage creative thinking by asking teams to use simple drawings and words to visualize their presentation too.

Personal Presentations   #hyperisland   #team   A simple exercise in which each participant prepares a personal presentation of him/herself sharing several important experiences, events, people or stories that contributed to shaping him or her as an individual. The purpose of personal presentations is to support each participant in getting to know each other as individuals and to build trust and openness in a group by enlarging the social arena.

Passions Tic Tac Toe

Helping employees get to know each other more deeply and connect beyond the scope of their job roles is a great space to explore with a team building exercise. In this activity, your entire team fills in a 3×3 grid with a passion or core value in each of the boxes. Then, ask your group to mingle and compare passions.

When someone finds a match, they each sign for the other person in that square of the grid. Declare your first winner as the person who gets three passions in a row. This team building exercise works well for remote workers and is a great way for your entire team to get to know each other a little better.

Passions Tic Tac Toe   #get-to-know   #values   #icebreaker   #thiagi   This simple game that explores the concepts from these two quotations: “Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you”. —Oprah Winfrey. “Getting to know someone else involves curiosity about where they have come from, who they are.” —Penelope Lively, novelist

Quick team building activities

Team building doesn’t have to take all day. While running dedicated team workshops like a team canvas workshop can have a profound effect on team dynamics, you can also run team building exercises in as little as 5-10 minutes.

In this section, we’ll share some effective yet quick team building activities you might use to warm-up your group or inject some team building into the start of a meeting or event. If you’re looking for 5-minute team building activities to easily slot into your meetings and events, this is a great place to start!

Best and Worst

Teambuilding activities are often at their most effective when you ignite the passions of everyone in a group and bring up talking points that enable people to share something of themselves with the team.

Best and Worst asks each participant to ask one question about the best and worst thing they want to learn from the group. For example, “What’s the best recipe you know?” or “What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had?” After putting all the questions in a hat and choosing a random pair, invite the group to share their answers and related stories.

Best and Worst   #teampedia   #get-to-know   #opening   #icebreaker   #team   This activity could easily break the ice at the beginning of a workshop, enabling participants to get to know each other in a fast process.

Group Order

Supporting the get-to-know process at the start of a session or with a new team can be as simple as asking participants to group themselves together based on what they know about each other and inviting them to find out what they don’t.

This activity requires nothing more than getting your group together in a room and asking them to line themselves up in an order based on a criterion such as distance from home to the workplace, birth date in the calendar year or number of different countries visited. You’ll be surprised at how easy it is to get people talking and sharing when in pursuit of a common goal.

Group Order   #get-to-know   #energiser   #icebreaker   #thiagi   #team   This is an energizing activity that helps members of a group get to know each other, network, and recognize what they have in common.

Happiness Exercise

Good teams know how to appreciate one another and share joyful, happy experiences. When a new team is getting to know each other, using an exercise that encourages the sharing of positive stories and experiences not only allows people to connect but also builds a positive atmosphere in the room.

You might also use this team building activity at work or with a more established team. If your team has been going through a challenging period, it can be transformational to share things that make everyone happy and defuse stress or tension as a team.

Happiness exercise   #teambuilding   #icebreaker   #warm up   #remote-friendly   This exercise is a simple application of the principles of Appreciative Inquiry.

Name Juggling

Working with new teams means having new names to learn. Team building starts with getting to know everyone, but how can we make this more fun and dynamic than simple introductions?

In this get to know you game, start by having everyone stand in a circle and introduce themselves by name. Introduce a ball and have people state someone’s name before throwing the ball to that person. That person thanks the person who passed the ball by name before then passing the ball on to someone else. Once people get comfortable, spice things up by introducing more balls and trying to keep them in the air!

Name Juggling   #teampedia   #icebreaker   #energiser   #get-to-know   #team   Name Juggling is another variation of a try-to-learn-everyone’s-name but the game guarantees high energy level as well as some strategic thinking.

Finding you have things in common with other team members is one of the cornerstones of effective teamwork and communication. While conversation games or other team building activities might ask for an in-depth approach, Open Fist helps teams bond with a simple, effective activity.

Sharing little known facts about ourselves can help teams be more cohesive and by limiting the number of shared facts to the amount of fingers on a hand, this quick team building activity can fit into an agenda with ease.

Open Fist   #get-to-know   #icebreaker   #thiagi   #team   Teams work better when they find things in common. Stronger teams reduce turnover, increase pleasant interactions, and improve productivity.

Cross the Circle

Finding common ground and shared experiences across a diverse group is what team building is all about. In this playful team building activity, participants are encouraged to cross the circle in response to questions posed by a person in the middle.

For example, “Cross through the circle if you have worked here more than 5 years.” or “Cross through the circle if you can play an instrument.” After each stage, a new person gets to pose a question and your team gets to know one another and their commonalities in a simple, effective way.

Cross the Circle   #teambuilding   #get-to-know   #energiser   #team   #thiagi   This activity provides a playful way for participants to find commonalities among themselves.

This fast-paced exercise is fun but gently challenging game that helps create focus and presence in a group. Get started by getting your team into a circle and ask them to move a clap around the room quickly by having two members clap at the same time.

By asking your group to synchronize and move quickly, sync claps is a fun way to energize the room and help your group feel more connected.

Sync Claps   #hyperisland   #energiser   This circle exercise is simple, but challenging and very effective for generating focus and alignment in a group. Participants stand in a circle and send a clap around the circle. Each clap involves two members of the group clapping their hands at the same time. The group tries to move the clap around the circle faster and faster with as much synchronization as possible. The exercise gets even more challenging when the “double clap” is introduced and the clap can change direction.

Fun team building activities

In an increasingly stressful environment of deadlines and meetings, it’s worth remembering the value of joy, play and simply have fun as a team.

Injecting fun and laughter into your team building event is effective on many levels. We often recommend starting a session with one of these activities, as they can help set a more relaxed and personable tone in an instant.

We’ve also found that some of the more memorable moments of our sessions have come out of these kinds of activities. It’s lovely to have something funny to reference in future meetings too!

Bringing team members out of their shells and loosening them up with a funny game can also help prevent existing hierarchies or team structures from affecting the team building session. 

You can also use these funny team building activities to kick off your session, or when the energy levels drop and you need to get your team re-engaged for the team workshop ahead. Let’s take a look.

Having fun and energizing your team is a great way to kick off your team building event. Bang is a simple and effective game that encourages quick reactions and fun – perfect for both new and established teams to play together! 

Start by electing a sheriff and having the rest of the group stand in a circle around them. The sheriff spins around and points at one person in the circle and says “bang!” That person then crouches as quickly as possible. The two people on either side of the person crouching must quickly point at each other and shout the other’s name. Whoever does not react quickly enough is eliminated. Try using this one at the beginning of a team building event to really loosen up the group!

Bang   #hyperisland   #energiser   Bang is a group game, played in a circle, where participants must react quickly or face elimination. One person stands in the middle of the circle as “the sheriff”, pointing at other players who must quickly crouch while those on either side of them quickly “draw”. A good activity to generate laughter in a group. It can also help with name-learning for groups getting to know each other.

Build-a-Shake

Creating a secret handshake was something many of us did as kids. This team building activity taps into that same sense of creativity and also encourages team members to get to know each other while sharing and building on their handshake in pairs. By moving between pairs and teaching others the steps of your handshake, this also helps create group closeness and cohesion. We love team building activities or office games that encourage people to bring a little of themselves to the table and Build-a-Shake is a great example of that!  

Build-a-Shake   #teampedia   #energiser   #get-to-know   #opening   #team   How to introduce yourself in a fun, creative way? Build a handshake!

Simple tasks that require team focus, cohesion, and awareness are great for any group working on team building. In Count Up, a team has to come together and count up to twenty with their eyes closed and without any other communication. People cannot say more than one number at a time, and if two people speak at the same time, the group must start over. 

Though it seems simple, this team building exercise can really demonstrate the power of effective teamwork and is a great opener for a team building workshop. 

Count Up   #hyperisland   #team   #energiser   #remote-friendly   In this short exercise, a group must count up to a certain number, taking turns in a random order, with no two people speaking at the same time. The task is simple, however, it takes focus, calm and awareness to succeed. The exercise is effective to generate calm and focused collective energy in a group.

Follow the Leader

When performing online team building, simple activities are often the best strategy in ensuring participation and removing frustration. Follow the Leader is a great team building energiser suitable for online and offline teams.

In virtual settings, put Zoom into gallery view and invite people to perform an action in the frame of their screen that other participants have to follow. Being a little silly is encouraged and this team building exercise often results in laughter and energy as a result! 

Follow the Follower   #zoom   #virtual   #physical   #teambuilding   #connection   #energiser   #opening   #remote-friendly   #ericamarxcoaching   One person is designated as the leader.  Others copy exactly how the leader moves.  The leader calls on a new person to be the leader, and so on. Follow the follower variation is when the leading gets passed to the entire group and no single person is leading.

Portrait Gallery

Creative team building activities are great for breaking the ice or energising a team via play. In Portrait Gallery, you and your team will collaboratively create portraits of everyone in the group and have a fun, electric set of portraits to display afterward.

Start by splitting your group into two teams. Team B will draw portraits of Team A, though every 10-15 seconds, they’ll pass their current drawing to the next person to continue. By the end of this team building game, you’ll have a set of eclectic portraits for everyone in the group and have broken the ice significantly too! 

Portrait Gallery   #hyperisland   #team   #icebreaker   The Portrait Gallery is an energetic and fun icebreaker game that gets participants interacting by having the group collaboratively draw portraits of each member. The activity builds a sense of group because it results with each participant having a portrait drawn of him/herself by the other members of the group together. It also has a very colourful visual outcome: the set of portraits which can be posted in the space.

Fun team building games are a great way to start any group development process, and they’re even better if they energize the team too! Snowball is a great activity for getting people out of their seats and moving around while also breaking the ice. 

Start by asking a question relevant to your group and ask each participant to write an answer on a piece of paper. Once that’s done, invite everyone to crumple their paper and come to the centre of the room to have a snowball fight! After a few minutes, ask everyone to keep a snowball and find the person who wrote the answer. Not only does this team building exercise invite energy into the room, but it encourages people to get to know each other too.

Snowball   #get-to-know   #opening   #energiser   #teambuilding   #team   This is a great activity to get people up and moving around in a playful way while still learning about each other. It can be related to any topic and be played at any time during the group’s life.

Celebrity Party

You’ve likely played the game where you stick the name of a random celebrity on your head while then asking questions to help you guess who it is. (Or at least seen a film where someone else does it!) It’s simple, but it absolutely works when you want to break the ice or just generate some laughter and conversation.

This classic team building game is a great way to warm up large groups, encouraging mingling and have fun too. Ask participants to be creative, keep it light and not to give hints and you have all the makings of an effective team building exercise.

Celebrity Party   #teampedia   #icebreaker   #communication   #diversity   #team   #action   Great activity to help people warm up in a new environment.

Non-verbal improv

Whether you’re working with remote teams or co-located groups, having fun when you get together should never be undervalued. We love simple games that are also ways to begin conversations about how we’d like to work together more effectively.

This improv game is easy to touch and is a great way to build team connections while raising some smiles. Start by preparing some actions on post-it notes, such as drinking a glass of water or eating pasta. Next, invite participants to mime the action without speaking. Include more difficult and amusing scenarios to challenge the group and create some funny opportunities for team connection!

Non-verbal improv   #improv game   #energiser   #fun   #remote-friendly   An improv game where participants must use non-verbal communication and actions to communicate a phrase or an idea to other players. A fun game that’s a great way to open a discussion on better communication!

Rock, Paper, Scissors (Tournament)

Encouraging team members to play and have fun is an often overlooked aspect of building better teams. Play is an inherently human activity, and by doing this as a team, we can start to see ourselves as more than just a group of people who work together.

In this version of Rock, Paper, Scissors, large groups pair off until only two players remain for a final showdown. We love that losing players become fans of the winners and cheer them on. This is a quick and easy team game that can build excitement and get the group ready for deeper team building activities to come!

Rock, Paper, Scissors (Tournament)   #energiser   #warm up   #remote-friendly   This is a fun and loud energiser based on the well-known “Rock, Paper, Scissor” game – with a twist: the losing players become the fan of the winners as the winner advances to the next round. This goes on until a final showdown with two large cheering crowds! It can be played with adults of all levels as well as kids and it always works! 

Fun team building activities often ask the group to let go of their inhibitions and find space to be playful and silly. This game from Hyper Island encourages the group to perform some loud, exuberant moves to emulate our favourite historical raiders – the Vikings.

You might use this activity during a longer workshop or meeting to energize a group and create a memorable moment with your team. For bonus points, have a group photographer capture those moments and put them on a history wall for reflection later!

The Viking   #hyperisland   #energiser   In this group game, players stand in a circle and perform a series of loud physical moves, passing from one person to the next. When a player hesitates or makes a mistake, he or she is eliminated and the game continues. The game generates laughter and playfulness in the group.

Wink Murder

We love team building exercises that include space for friendly competition and laughter. Wink murder is a variation on a classic party game that asks every team member to try and catch the wink assassin, whose job it is to eliminate the other players by winking at them without being caught.

We especially like the fact this game makes team members to use creative thinking while playing. Run multiple rounds with extra rules such as adding an accomplice to spice things up and have even more fun!

Wink Murder   #icebreaker   #energizer   #group game   #team   #teambuilding   A fun energizer where one player must try and eliminate the rest of the team by winking – all without being caught.

Corporate team building activities

Running team building games in the office can be a great way to finish up the week, onboard new team members or just boost employee engagement.

While all of the activities in this post are suitable for the office, the team building games in this section are especially effective in a corporate environment where some team members may need some coaxing or you want to gently introduce important topics.

Try these activities if you want to add an opportunity for your team to bond during a corporate training session, all-hands or other office event.

Appreciations Exercise

Office trivia can be fun, but you know what’s better? Taking a moment to appreciate each team member and uplift everyone in the group.

This method is designed to help everyone in a group receive appreciative feedback on their strengths from others. Start by sitting the group in a circle and having each participant write their name on a piece of paper and pass it to the person on their left. Each person writes down what they have most valued about the person whose name is on the sheet before passing it along.

At the end, share these appreciations and celebrate everyone in the group! You might even include this activity during a happy hour to truly celebrate one another!

Appreciations Exercise   #team   #appreciation   #self esteem   #remote-friendly   When you hear about your strengths from others and acknowledge them to yourself, this builds your motivation and self-confidence. If you do this at the end of a workshop, you go away feeling good about yourself and your colleagues too.

Cover Story

Bringing an activity that encourages creative thinking and imagination can be an effective method for getting team mates involved at your next corporate event. In this game, small groups create a magazine cover with your team on it and add headlines and taglines that show the best possible version of your team.

By defining the ideal future state for the organization your group can see what actions they might take today while also creating a fun and useful artefact for the team. Use as many sheets of paper as you need!

Cover Story   #gamestorming   #idea generation   #organizational development   #vision   #strategy   Cover Story is a game about pure imagination. The purpose is to think expansively around an ideal future state for the organization; it’s an exercise in visioning. The object of the game is to suspend all disbelief and envision a future state that is so stellar that it landed your organization on the cover of a well-known magazine

Coat of Arms

Even established teams have more to learn about one another. A corporate team building activity is a great time to encourage groups to go deeper and share who they are as a team.

In Coat of Arms, each team member begins by drawing a personal coat of arms and then sharing it with a partner. The partner interprets the coat of arms and then presents it to the rest of the group. This kind of getting to know you activity taps into group creativity and is a fun way of helping your team bond. 

Coat of Arms   #teambuilding   #opening   #icebreaker   #team   #get-to-know   #thiagi   Coat of Arms exercise provides a way for participants to introduce themselves and their colleagues, particularly for groups who think they already know each other very well. Almost invariably participants discover something about their colleagues of which they previously had no idea. Occasionally this revelation has an immediate and direct application to another participant’s current project or challenge.Because this activity forces people to use drawings rather than words, it is particularly useful as a dual-purpose introductory exercise in training sessions that deal with such topics as innovation, creativity, and problem-solving.

My Favourite Manager

Leaders and managers can be a deciding factor in creating a great company culture and employee happiness. In this game, get started by bringing your team together to discuss their favourite and least favourite managers.

This corporate team building activity is great at creating a safe space to discuss management styles and create empathy between teams. You’ll often find team members can shift their perspective, learn something about how they relate to their leaders and have fun too!

My Favourite Manager   #management   #leadership   #thiagi   #teamwork   #remote-friendly   Participants work individually, assuming the roles of three different people and brainstorming their perceptions of three most favourite managers and three least favourite managers. Later, they work with a partner (and still later, in teams) to prepare a list of dos and don’t-s for improving employees’ perception of a manager’s style.

Who are you? The Pirate Ship exercise

Explore team roles and responsibilities in a lighthearted manner is a great way to spend time during an office event.

In this simple but powerful team building exercise, share the image of the crew of a pirate ship. Next, invite participants to reflect on who they most identify with on the ship. Who is the captain? Who is looking out for land or maintaining the deck? By reflecting together around a fun premise, you can encourage meaningful discussions with your grop.

Who are you? The pirate ship exercise (dinámica del barco pirata)   #team alignment   #team   #remote-friendly   #teamwork   #warm up   #icebreaker   This an easy but powerful exercise to open a meeting or session and get participants to reflect on their attitudes or feelings about a topic, in the organization, team, or in the project.

History Map

Building effective teams is often a process of ideation, reflection and iteration over time. Sometimes, it’s easy to lose sight of just how much a team or organization has grown. With this corporate team building activity, invite your group to reflect and build on their collective experience with a memory wall that collects moments over a fixed period of time.

It’s a great way of reinforcing major takeaways, celebrating the highlights and creating a sense of closure and progress. By also encouraging the creation of a shared visual resource, History Map also enables creativity and a sense of fun that can provide the perfect end to a project or working session. 

History Map   #hyperisland   #team   #review   #remote-friendly   The main purpose of this activity is to remind and reflect on what group members or participants have been through and to create a collective experience and shared story. Every individual will gain a shared idea of what the group has been through together. Use this exercise at the end of a project or program as a way to reinforce learnings, celebrate highlights and create closure.

Birds of a Feather

It’s not uncommon for teams to naturally form sub-groups with common characteristics. This exercise effectively shows how consciously creating more diverse groups can make teams more resilient and productive.

Get started by giving each team member an index card with a single letter on it. Then ask people to form a group of five people as quickly as possible without any further instructions. Next, ask the groups to form the longest word possible from their cards. It will quickly become apparent that the best way to win the game is with a team that has diverse cards.

This simple game is a great introduction to a wider conversation about diversity or inclusion. As always, debrief learnings and invite deeper conversation in the group to make this activity a success.

Birds of a Feather   #teamwork   #diversity   #team   #creativity   #thiagi   Participants naturally want to form groups with common characteristics. This exercise illustrates how diverse groups have access to more resources and provide a greater variety of solutions. Each person is given an index card with a letter on it, and then asked to form a group of five people. Participants assume that they should get into groups with others who have the same letter. However, when the facilitator asks them to form the longest word possible with the letter cards, they realize that it would have been more beneficial to have created a diverse group.

Corporate meetings can sometimes be heavy going, but they don’t need to be. In this fun teambuilding game, encourage your group to loosen up while working together to solve a puzzle that involves their bodies!

Start by getting your team members into groups of 7-12 people. Ask each group to stand in a circle, close their eyes and then link hands with two other people in the circle. Next, ask each group to work to untangle the human knot they have created without breaking the chain. This is a really fun game that requires clear communication, collaboration and a little flexibility too!

Human Knot   A physical-participation disentanglement puzzle that helps a group learn how to work together (self-organize) and can be used to illustrate the difference between self-organization and command-control management or simply as a get-to-know-you icebreaker. Standing in a circle, group members reach across to connect hands with different people. The group then tries to unravel the “human knot” by unthreading their bodies without letting go of each other people’s hands. As a management-awareness game to illustrate required change in behavior and leadership on a management level (e.g., illustrate the change from ‘task-oriented’ management towards ‘goal/value-oriented’ management).

Team building activities for small groups

Team work doesn’t always come naturally, and effective team collaboration needs attention, reflection and work in order to happen. It’s not enough to just assume your team members will be able to work together efficiently: all teams can benefit from a strategic and well-thought approach to how they communicate and collaborate.

Whether you’re having a team away day or using methods expressly designed to improve collaboration and communication in small groups, you’ll find inspiration in the activities here!

These team building games are helpful whether you’re trying to solve miscommunication or collaboration issues, or just want to strengthen your company culture or communication skills in small groups.

Conflict Responses

It’s important to remember that every team is made up of individuals and sometimes, conflicts or disagreements can arise. While its regular working practice to disagree, our responses to conflict and how we deal with them when they arise are in our control and can be improved.

In this exercise, reflect on previous conflicts as a team and collectively create a set of guidelines to use in the future. Resolving issues effectively is a massive part of team collaboration, and by including all team members in this process you can get more meaningful results too.

Conflict Responses   #hyperisland   #team   #issue resolution   A workshop for a team to reflect on past conflicts, and use them to generate guidelines for effective conflict handling. The workshop uses the Thomas-Killman model of conflict responses to frame a reflective discussion. Use it to open up a discussion around conflict with a team.

Heard, Seen, Respected

Team empathy is a vital ingredient of good team work though whatever the size of your organization, it can sometimes be difficult to walk in the shoes of others and see things from other perspectives.

Heard, Seen, Respected is a team building activity designed to help participants practice deeper empathy for colleagues and build the kinds of bonds and working practices that can improve team collaboration. By inviting participants to notice patterns in the stories shared and find common takeaways, it’s a great way to get everyone involved on the same page and improve communication skills too.

Heard, Seen, Respected (HSR)   #issue analysis   #empathy   #communication   #liberating structures   #remote-friendly   You can foster the empathetic capacity of participants to “walk in the shoes” of others. Many situations do not have immediate answers or clear resolutions. Recognizing these situations and responding with empathy can improve the “cultural climate” and build trust among group members. HSR helps individuals learn to respond in ways that do not overpromise or overcontrol. It helps members of a group notice unwanted patterns and work together on shifting to more productive interactions. Participants experience the practice of more compassion and the benefits it engenders.

Myers-Briggs Team Reflection

One potential obstacle to effective team collaboration is when members of the group don’t fully understand one another. Team building activities for work that encourage participants to not only try and understand their colleagues but themselves can be especially helpful when helping a team be more cohesive.

In this activity, invite your group to first take a version of the Myers-Briggs personality test. Start by asking each team member to reflect on their own personality type before then moving towards small group discussion. 

When using this activity, it’s important to correctly frame the usage of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) framework: This can be a useful framework to understand different communication preferences between people, but team members should not be labeled or put into boxes based on their self-reported preferences. 

Myers-Briggs Team Reflection   #team   #hyperisland   A workshop to explore personal traits and interpersonal relations using the Myers-Briggs personalities model. Use this tool to go deeper with your team to understand more about yourselves and each other on personal and professional levels.

Strength Building exercise

Exercises for team building come in many varieties. In this activity, the emphasis is on the team championing one another and increasing confidence, self esteem and mutual trust.

Start by asking team members to share an event where they accomplished something that made them feel good about themselves. The rest of the team chimes in to suggest two to three strengths they must have exhibited in order to achieve the accomplishment. Team collaboration often means helping others on the team achieve their best, and this activity helps the group uplift one another meaningfully and effectively.

Strength Building exercise   #team   #appreciation   #self esteem   #remote-friendly   People develop confidence and self esteem as they discover that their achievements and skills are valuable. This is an exercise for team building and for increasing self esteem and mutual trust.

Strength Envelopes

All members of a team have unique strengths, capabilities and working preferences. When working as a group, you can improve engagement and group workflow by having each participant utilize their strengths and do work that interests them the most.

With this team building activity, ask participants to write their name on an envelope and invite other members of their team to spend a few minutes writing down strength statements for that person. Place these in the envelope and pass them along so at the end of the session, each person has a set full of strengths they can use as the basis for reflection. 

Strength Envelopes   #appreciation   #self-awareness   #feedback   #team   #thiagi   #teambuilding   #action   This activity helps working teams to discover and share individual strengths and to increase their engagement by structuring their jobs around these strengths. Suitable for people who work together (for example, members of an intact work team) organized into playgroups of 5 to 9 members.

Team of Two

Whether you work in a small startup or a multinational organisation, the reality is that a large part of your working day will be spent working in pairs and interacting on a one-to-one basis. Whether in-person, over email or on video chat, finding ways to work together more effectively is vital for effective teams.

Try this team building exercise to help empower your groups toward more effective communication skills and have more meaningful interpersonal relationships at work. As a member of a remote team, I’ve found this method to be personally useful time and time again.

Team of Two   #communication   #active listening   #issue analysis   #conflict resolution   #issue resolution   #remote-friendly   #team   Much of the business of an organisation takes place between pairs of people. These interactions can be positive and developing or frustrating and destructive. You can improve them using simple methods, providing people are willing to listen to each other. “Team of two” will work between secretaries and managers, managers and directors, consultants and clients or engineers working on a job together. It will even work between life partners.

What I Need From You (WINFY)

Some of the best team building activities focus on helping your group improve their teamwork skills and communicate and collaborate better as a team. A sometimes overlooked part of working as a team is clearly articulating what you need from other people and knowing how to ask for it.

What I Need From You is a team building method designed to help team members better articulate their core needs and be transparent with the group. This leads to a more cohesive team that works together with integrity and understanding.

What I Need From You (WINFY)   #issue analysis   #liberating structures   #team   #communication   #remote-friendly   People working in different functions and disciplines can quickly improve how they ask each other for what they need to be successful. You can mend misunderstandings or dissolve prejudices developed over time by demystifying what group members need in order to achieve common goals. Since participants articulate core needs to others and each person involved in the exchange is given the chance to respond, you boost clarity, integrity, and transparency while promoting cohesion and coordination across silos: you can put Humpty Dumpty back together again!

Team building games for problem solving

Teams often come together to solve collective problems as a group . Whether these are large projects or simply finding better ways to work together on a day-to-day basis, solving problems is something all teams should do – in or out of a conference room!

Improving problem solving skills with a game that asks for communication, collaboration and creative thinking is a wonderful way to bring everyone together. We love using these kinds of team building exercises to bring large groups together to solve a fun, simple problem.

By engaging team members in this way, they not only have fun, but they learn how to work together more effectively and reflect on how they can take that learning back to their day work.

In this section, we’ll look at team building exercises you can use to encourage creative thinking, build problem solving skills and teamwork in an experiential way!

Blind Square – Rope Game

Nothing energizes a team workshop like a seemingly simple problem that also gets everyone moving and engaged. In this team problem solving game, start by tying a length of rope into a circle and invite the participants to plan how to make the rope into a perfect square while blindfolded.

After planning time, team members is blindfolded and has ten minutes to form a perfect square. By debriefing afterwards, your group will find communication, planning and attention to detail are all important aspects of creative problem solving – all while having fun too!

Blind Square – Rope game   #teamwork   #communication   #teambuilding   #team   #energiser   #thiagi   #outdoor   This is an activity that I use in almost every teambuilding session I run–because it delivers results every time. I can take no credit for its invention since it has existed from long before my time, in various forms and with a variety of names (such as Blind Polygon). The activity can be frontloaded to focus on particular issues by changing a few parameters or altering the instructions.

Crocodile River

We love team building activities that challenge the group to work together in inventive ways and also help energize a workshop setting. Crocodile River is a team problem solving exercise that challenges team members to support one another physically as they look to move across a wide outdoor space and reach the finish line together.

By changing the setting and inviting problem solving and strategic thinking to solve a challenge, your group not only stretches their problem solving muscles but also works on team communication, leadership and cooperation. As with any more abstract team building game, be sure to debrief afterward for best results!

Crocodile River   #hyperisland   #team   #outdoor   A team-building activity in which a group is challenged to physically support one another in an endeavour to move from one end of a space to another. It requires working together creatively and strategically in order to solve a practical, physical problem. It tends to emphasize group communication, cooperation, leadership and membership, patience and problem-solving.

Classic team building games like Egg Drop offer tried and tested ways to encourage teams to solve problems together while improving the way they communicate. This game often generates a bunch of laughter and creative thinking too – how can we save this poor egg!

In this team problem solving activity, invite small groups to build a freestanding structure that can support the dropping of an egg from seven feet. Include some caveats and challenges to make it more difficult and encourage an even greater degree of team collaboration. Just make sure you bring a mop for afterwards!

Egg drop   #teampedia   #collaboration   #teamwork   #icebreaker   #team   This fun activity could be used as an icebreaker for people who have just met but it can be framed as a method that shows and fosters team communication, collaboration and strategic thinking as well.

Helium Stick

Bringing team members together with problem solving activities that also encourages play can perform multiple functions. Not only do you encourage teamwork and the building of various team skills but you can have fun and promote laughter too.

Helium Stick is an example of a simple team building game that does double duty by encouraging fun, physical activity while introducing and exploring some core team building concepts. Ask the group to lower a long pole to the ground while keeping all of their fingers in contact with the pole at all times – more difficult than it first appears!

Helium Stick   #teampedia   #team   #teamwork   #icebreaker   #energiser   A great and simple activity for fostering teamwork and problem solving with no setup beforehand.

Lego Challenge

Creating something is often the purpose of bringing your team members together. Tap into the engaging process of co-creation and collaboration with this team building game using LEGO.

Building on the concept of LEGO Serious Play, this exercise is a great way of encouraging play, out-of-the-box thinking and creative approaches to existing problems. Additionally, each team member has a secret assignment which increases the challenge and encourages finding inventive ways to cooperate effectively and achieve both personal and team goals. 

LEGO Challenge   #hyperisland   #team   A team-building activity in which groups must work together to build a structure out of LEGO, but each individual has a secret “assignment” which makes the collaborative process more challenging. It emphasizes group communication, leadership dynamics, conflict, cooperation, patience and problem solving strategy.

Marshmallow Challenge with Debriefing 

Real-life challenges are often time-sensitive and need to be considered thoughtfully and pragmatically. Team building activities for work are especially effective when they help create this same sense of urgency while encouraging team work.

In just eighteen minutes, groups must build the tallest free-standing structure out of materials including: spaghetti, tape, string, and one marshmallow, placing this last item on top. In this version of the team building game, there’s a debriefing section which encourages reflection on the roles of everyone in the team. 

Marshmallow challenge with debriefing   #teamwork   #team   #leadership   #collaboration   In eighteen minutes, teams must build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string, and one marshmallow. The marshmallow needs to be on top. The Marshmallow Challenge was developed by Tom Wujec, who has done the activity with hundreds of groups around the world. Visit the Marshmallow Challenge website for more information. This version has an extra debriefing question added with sample questions focusing on roles within the team.

Getting outside and doing fun, physical activity can be a great way to bond teams and mix up a normal working routine. In this team problem solving game, participants are asked to work to make holes in a grid of string and rope that can safely and effectively accommodate everyone in the group getting through at once. Team members are not allowed to touch the string or rope and with diverse groups, the difficulty this presents makes for an interesting problem solving challenge for teams to solve. 

Spider web   #team   #teampedia   #warm up   #outdoor   #physical   This is an active team building game and requires participants to move about a lot and so can be also used as an energiser.

Stress Balls

At one point or another, most teams will be asked to perform effectively under pressure, whether that’s generated by internal or external stressors. By using team building games that help participants work together and communicate effectively even under difficult circumstances you can prepare your team members for almost anything!

Stress Balls is a fun game to help start exploring team resilience and problem solving under pressure, and it’s easy to run with large groups too! Start by simply passing a single ball around the room before adding more complex rules to help team members learn a valuable lesson about communication and teamwork!

Stress Balls   #energiser   #communication   #teamwork   #team   #thiagi   #action   #icebreaker   Understanding the importance of communication and teamwork is an important requirement for high performance teams of knowledge workers. This exercise is an effective energizer that requires communication and teamwork. Ask participants to form a circle and throw a ball around to simulate the movement of a message. Change different variables such as speed, quantity, and complexity to create a mess.

Scavenger Hunt

Activities that encourage groups to use teamwork and communication to achieve their goals are great ways to build team spirit. A classic scavenger hunt is a wonderful way to bring large groups together and have fun doing something a bit different!

Be sure to use office trivia, inside jokes or aspects of your company culture to inform this fun team building activity. You’ll find it much more effective if it’s tailored to your group. Bonus points if you can mix in activities that speak to the various departments or skillsets in the group during your scavenger hunt!

In the virtual-friendly version below, you’ll also find rules to help you run this activity with a remote team.

Virtual scavenger hunt   #energiser   #teambuilding   #remote-friendly   A fun team-building energiser that encourages groups to recreate the scavenger hunt experience in a fully remote environment! 

Team bonding activities

Mutual trust is a vital ingredient for any group of people working together, though it doesn’t always emerge organically. Taking the opportunity to build team bonds and create trust creates benefits for team connection, happiness and your company culture too!

While many of the fun team building activities above will bring your team together in some way, these methods are designed to expressly create better team bonds and build trust.

When working on improving team trust, we recommend being open about the goals of the exercise and encouraging the group to be honest . Being intentional during these activities can really help bring the group together!

Trust Battery

Great teamwork isn’t just about bringing a group of people together into the same space. Without honesty, openness, and trust, your team can’t collaborate effectively and can lead to frustration or frazzled relationships.

Trust Battery is a team building activity designed to help all members of your group reflect on their trust levels and rebuild those batteries with lower levels. By encouraging all members of a team to meaningfully reflect, you can enable better team collaboration and help your team feel closer and more cohesive too.

Trust Battery   #leadership   #teamwork   #team   #remote-friendly   This self-assessment activity allows you and your team members to reflect on the ‘trust battery’ they individually have towards each person on the team, and encourages focus on actions that can charge the depleted trust batteries.

Telling Our Stories

Everyone has a story to tell, though without a framework or guiding principles, surfacing those stories in a way that makes everyone feel safe and head can be tricky – especially for new teams. Team building activities that combine self reflection, sharing and structure are great for helping people to get to know each other deeply and build better bonds.

In Telling Our Stories, invite participants to reflect on childhood, young adulthood and today while answering questions on colored post-it notes. By sharing from the full gamut of our experiences, your team can get to know one another meaningfully and create trust too. 

Telling Our Stories   #hyperisland   #team   #teambuilding   To work effectively together team members need to build relations, show trust, and be open with each other. This method supports those things through a process of structured storytelling. Team members answer questions related to their childhood, young adulthood, and now; then weave them into a story to share with the rest of their team.

Better Connections

Great teamwork and collaboration is all about building stronger relationships and connections and this often means taking the time to see each other as more than just our job title. Once we get a fuller picture of who we are outside the office, everyone can feel more seen and understood. This is one of the cornerstones of team bonding and trust!

Encourage people who know each other the least to pair up and create space for meaningful reflection too – your team culture will thank you for it! It’s also a great way to improve communication skills and break down silos.

Better Connections   #interpersonal relationships   #teambuilding   #team   #connection   #thiagi   #get-to-know   We build a stronger relationship with people when we see them as human beings with whom we share similarities in terms of family and life situations. It is very difficult to form strong relationships with people about whom we know very little.We feel more connected to “full” people. For example, take John, the accountant. If I think of John as an accountant, I might put him into a box of what I think I know about accountants. I might not feel connected to accountants and will treat him accordingly. But when I think of John as a keen mountain climber and outdoor adventurer with two children, one of whom is graduating from university next month, then John becomes human to me, and I can feel connected to him.

Feedback: Current Strongest Impression

Giving and receiving feedback is a great team building activity that sees benefits long after your session. When we find ways to be more open with one another and say what we really think, the results can be transformative for any group.

This activity is a great one to bring to any event where you want to improve team bonding, as it creates a safe and simple way to start practicing more honest feedback. The next time you think about how to improve the way your team works together, think about whether you have a good feedback culture. The trust that good, open feedback can create is a fundamental part of any high performing team!

Feedback: Current Strongest Impression   #hyperisland   #skills   #feedback   Regular, effective feedback is one of the most important ingredients in building constructive relationships and thriving teams. Openness creates trust and trust creates more openness. Feedback exercises aim to support groups to build trust and openness and for individuals to gain self-awareness and insight. Feedback exercises should always be conducted with thoughtfulness and high awareness of group dynamics. This is a good first feedback exercise. It supports individuals to try out giving and receiving a very basic form of feedback in a safe way.

When a team doesn’t trust one another, the atmosphere and culture of a team suffers. Creating space to align and create a shared understanding of what trust means to your team is a great way to build team bonds and improve the way you all work together.

Start this activity by bringing together a set of trust cards containing characteristics, behaviours, attitudes, habits, values, and beliefs associated with trust in the workplace. Next, ask participants to create their own trust cards and move towards creating three core trust cards for your team.

By co-creating the output together, this team building activity is great for ensuring buy-in and creating long-lasting trust.

Trust   #thiagi   #issue analysis   #trust   One of the most important concepts in the workplace is trust. It affects performance, informal and formal relations, atmosphere of the workplace etc. With this activitiy you cn discover what one thinks about trust.

Translated Rant

Team building workshops are a great place to give your team room to have fun, vent and be honest with one another. Creating space for honesty while also building communication skills is the goal of this fun team building activity!

Split your group into pairs and have one person rant about a pet peeve for 60 seconds. Next, have the other person translate this rant while focusing on what the person really cares about. This kind of deep listening activity is fundamental to creating team trust, and sharing some of our annoyances in the group is great for building bonds too!

Translated Rant   #active listening   #emotions   #values   #trust   #conflict   #introductions   #opening   #connection   One person rants for 60 seconds. The second person translates their rant into what they care about and value.

Team building exercises for purpose and alignment

Even the best teams can have differences of opinion and approach. While different viewpoints and perspectives are useful in many situations, it’s also vital that everyone is aligned on team purpose and vision.

Aligning on how the team will work together is an important part of helping the team be happy, productive and pulling in the same direction.

In this section, we’ll look at team work activities to help improve team alignment and get everyone working towards the same purpose. Let’s get started!

Alignment & Autonomy

Activities that help improve each member of your team work more effectively and feel empowered to operate autonomously can be great for improving employee happiness and productivity. If we feel aligned on the core purpose and goals of our team while also being given the space to work in the way that is right for us, we can boost employee engagement and job satisfaction too! 

In Alignment & Autonomy, invite participants to reflect on times when they felt aligned and autonomous versus non-aligned and non-autonomous. By sharing, reflecting, and then ideating on solutions, your whole group can move forward together.

Alignment & Autonomy   #team   #team alignment   #team effectiveness   #hyperisland   A workshop to support teams to reflect on and ultimately increase their alignment with purpose/goals and team member autonomy. Inspired by Peter Smith’s model of personal responsibility. Use this workshop to strengthen a culture of personal responsibility and build your team’s ability to adapt quickly and navigate change.

Engineering Your Team OS

When seeking to improve teamwork, it can be useful to think of your team as a system with complex, interlocking parts which may need a gradual refresh and redesign. This kind of abstraction can help prevent discussions from becoming too personal or difficult and ensure that your team alignment efforts are a success.

In this activity, your team designs an ideal working system by making aspirational statements and then methodically chooses a single statement to work towards ahead of the next meeting. By making positive changes incrementally, your team can achieve alignment and better working practices in a meaningful and sustainable manner. 

Engineering Your Team OS   #team   #hyperisland   This is designed to work as a standalone workshop or as a companion to the Team Self-Assessment tool . Using reflections and insights on your working process, your team will ‘update’ its operating system by making deliberate choices about how to work together. The goal is gradual development, not a radical shift. You will design an ideal-state for your team and slowly work towards that.

Generative Relationships STAR

Better working relationships start with shared reflection and the discovery and discussion of existing working patterns. This team alignment activity invites participants to assess their team along four vertices: Separateness, Tuning, Action and Reason and jointly shape next steps and future actions.

By including the whole team in the alignment process from start to finish, you can get meaningful buy-in and see real results! We love using this on an online whiteboard too. It can be a great way to help remote workers consider their inter-personal relationships!

Generative Relationships STAR   #team   #liberating structures   #teamwork   You can help a group of people understand how they work together and identify changes that they can make to improve group performance. All members of the group diagnose current relationship patterns and decide how to follow up with action steps together, without intermediaries. The STAR compass tool helps group members understand what makes their relationships more or less generative. The compass used in the initial diagnosis can also be used later to evaluate progress in developing relationships that are more generative.

Team Canvas Session

Team alignment isn’t always straightforward. The more large, complex or multi-discipline your team is, the trickier it can be to help the group mesh and understand their roles and responsibilities to the team and each other.

In Team Canvas Session, you and your team create a shared visual resource for understanding and articulating your goals, values and roles of your team. It can be used for general alignment, for onboarding new team members and even for defining the structure and purpose of a brand new team – simply recreate or download the team canvas and get started today!

Team Canvas Session   #team alignment   #teamwork   #conflict resolution   #feedback   #teambuilding   #team   #issue resolution   #remote-friendly   The Team Canvas is Business Model Canvas for teamwork. It is an effective technique to facilitate getting teams aligned about their goals, values and purposes, and help team members find their role on the team.

Team Self Assessment

All groups need to go through a period of reflection and self-assessment in order to grow. But without structure or a guiding framework, these discussions can become bogged down or unproductive. With this reflective team building activity, you can enable a thoughtful and thorough team self-assessment along six guiding dimensions.

Start with individual reflection before bringing everyone back together to debrief and see what you’re aligned on and what needs more work. By then narrowing these down to the most important elements, you can align and enable better co-working practices quickly and efficiently!

Team Self-Assessment   #team   #hyperisland   #remote-friendly   This is a structured process designed for teams to explore the way they work together. The tight structure supports team members to be open and honest in their assessment. After reflecting as individuals, the team builds a collective map which can serve as the basis for further discussions and actions. The assessment is based around 6 dimensions. Each one encouraging the team to reflect and analyse a different and crucial element of their behaviour.

Letter from the Future

Without a cohesive shared vision, teams can become unproductive or harbor frustration on team direction. By spending time with visioning activities, you can help everyone push in the same direction while still utilizing their unique talents.

In Letter from the Future, invite your team to imagine all the changes that might impact them in the next 5 years and write a letter back from that point. Ask your team to cover what’s been accomplished in those five years, and what kind of challenges and obstacles were overcome to make this happen. Remember to remind teams that good letters have a beginning, middle, and end and that they should read clearly – this will help during the sharing and debriefing section of this method!

Letter from the Future   #strategy   #vision   #thiagi   #team   #teamwork   Teams that fail to develop a shared vision of what they are all about and what they need to do suffer later on when team members start implementing the common mandate based on individual assumptions. To help teams get started on the right foot, here is a process for creating a shared vision.

Team Purpose & Culture

Defining your team’s purpose and culture is an integral part of team building. By clearly articulating why your team exists and how you will all work together to fulfill that purpose, you can align and bring focus to all the work you do. This team values and vision activity aims to create a shared visual resource that your team can refer to in the future.

It also uses wisdom from other successful organizations to help enable meaningful conversation and move from individual purpose statements to a single one for the whole team. If you’re looking for a complete process that can guide your team values and vision efforts, this method from Hyper Island is worth a try!

Team Purpose & Culture   #team   #hyperisland   #culture   #remote-friendly   This is an essential process designed to help teams define their purpose (why they exist) and their culture (how they work together to achieve that purpose). Defining these two things will help any team to be more focused and aligned. With support of tangible examples from other companies, the team members work as individuals and a group to codify the way they work together. The goal is a visual manifestation of both the purpose and culture that can be put up in the team’s work space.

Checkout and recap activities for your team building workshop

The process of team building and enabling a group to work together more effectively can be involved and exhaustive.

As with any group process or workshop, taking the time to reflect, recap and check out can ensure the lasting impact of what was covered in the session.

You’ll often find that finding time to close team building activities creates space for further employee engagement and reflection. Getting team members involved in choosing the next activity or coming up with a theme for the next round of office trivia!

In this section, we’ll take a look at some great team building activities for closing a session and for recapping the main learning points. Let’s dive in!

Check-in / Check-out

Ensuring everyone in a group is present, focused and committed to the work of a session is a vital ingredient in making a team building session a success. With this workshop method from Hyper Island, you can not only start and end your session the right way, but you can help everyone in your group be seen, heard and understood by the rest of the team.

This is especially useful with a remote team, where ensuring clear connection between team members who don’t share a physical office is especially important.

This activity also helps encourage reflection and brings the workshop to an effective close – be sure to give it a try!

Check-in / Check-out   #team   #opening   #closing   #hyperisland   #remote-friendly   Either checking-in or checking-out is a simple way for a team to open or close a process, symbolically and in a collaborative way. Checking-in/out invites each member in a group to be present, seen and heard, and to express a reflection or a feeling. Checking-in emphasizes presence, focus and group commitment; checking-out emphasizes reflection and symbolic closure.

The trip back from a team building event is a great place to share feedback and appreciate one another. Don’t have a bus? No worries! Create a few rows of chairs and simulate the experience for this reflective closing activity.

Once you’ve gotten the chairs of the bus set-up, ask participants to speak the person next to them and share: what they like about the other person, what they appreciate and what about the other person makes them happy. Speak for just 45 seconds each and then ask the group to switch seats.

Bus Trip   #feedback   #communication   #appreciation   #closing   #thiagi   #team   This is one of my favourite feedback games. I use Bus Trip at the end of a training session or a meeting, and I use it all the time. The game creates a massive amount of energy with lots of smiles, laughs, and sometimes even a teardrop or two.

One Breath Feedback

In particularly large teams, it can be tempting to forgo the closing activity or individual feedback steps just because it will take so long and it can be hard to maintain energy and interest. One Breath Feedback solves this problem by giving each participant the space of a single breath to check out and reflect on the session. By ensuring that everyone has room to speak and be heard while also placing a time limit on the reflection, you can cap off a team building workshop effectively and intelligently.

One breath feedback   #closing   #feedback   #action   This is a feedback round in just one breath that excels in maintaining attention: each participants is able to speak during just one breath … for most people that’s around 20 to 25 seconds … unless of course you’ve been a deep sea diver in which case you’ll be able to do it for longer.

Team building workshop templates

Building better teams often starts with designing an effective group process. Whether this takes the form of a workshop or meeting, you’ll want a balance of activities, ice breakers and reflective methods in order to help your group align and grow together.    

In this next section, we’ll take a look at some example processes with a complete workshop template you can use to get started. Let’s take a look.

Team development day for a new team

Helping new teams to bond and find a shared purpose and value system is often best achieved with a well designed group process. Try the team development day template when working with a brand new team or one which has seen large growth and is in need of development.

Here, you’ll find a complete one-day group process full of team building activities that can take a group from getting to know each other all the way through to defining their needs and making commitments. 

Team Development Day for a New Team

Emotional Culture Workshop

Good teams are empathetic and in touch with their emotions. Using the emotional culture deck , this workshop can be run in under 3 hours and helps your team define and improve working relationships and the emotional culture of your team.

Taking the time to articulate and define these items ensures that everyone in your group is seen, understood and valued, and that you have a shared language for moving forward.

Team Dynamics Workshop

Cohesive teams that work well together are those with an understanding about what makes a team and how it functions.

Support your team building activities with this half-day workshop template and guide your group through a process of understanding and building on the dynamics of working together. 

Team Dynamics Workshop Template

Team building sessions made easy

Designing an effective team building workshop means creating a balanced agenda of activities and group discussions while also keeping everything on time.

With SessionLab, you drag, drop and reorder blocks to build your agenda in minutes.

Your session timing adjusts automatically as you make changes and when you’re done, you can share a beautiful printout with your colleagues and participants.

Explore how teams use SessionLab to collaboratively design effective workshops and meetings or watch this five minute video to see the planner in action!

Over to you

Enabling better teamwork and building stronger, more cohesive teams isn’t easy. Whether you’re running a team building day, team workshop, or simply adding some team building activities to your meetings, we hope that some of the methods above can help you and your group come together and do better work. 

Got a team workshop to plan? Check out our complete guide to workshop planning to make the process a breeze. Want to start creating your agenda quickly? Use a meeting or workshop template to save time designing or get inspiration.

Which of these team building activities is your favourite? Is there anything missing from the list above? Let us know in the comments! We’d love to hear about how we can all improve our team building efforts.

Hey there, Thank you so much for sharing this interesting stuff ! I will share these ideas with my HR Departments. And I am sure this blog will be very interesting for me. Keep posting your ideas!

All the training techniques have been well thought pit, planned and illustrated with tangible objectives which in itself is incredible to say the least. Have learnt so much which O shall incorporate and refine in my Workshops…Than you Team Session Lab

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