Are you on the lookout for team-building activities that won’t eat up too much time? Then we have something just for you!
Team-building doesn’t always have to mean a day at a laser tag arena or a 3-hour scavenger hunt. It can be a continuous process and you can help people get to know each other better bit by bit at your team meetings.
We collected our favorite ones for your inspiration. Here are 8 quick team-building activities that you can pull off during your meetings to foster relationships and enjoy some fun with your team.
#1. Would you rather…?
Want to spark a heated discussion at the start of your meeting? Try a ‘would you rather‘ (this or that) question. The harder the question, the better the discussion – trust us.
This one time, we asked: “Would you rather have 2-meter-long legs or 2-meter-long arms?” You wouldn’t believe what mind-blowing theories and thought processes went into people’s decisions!
💪 How to pull it off
Create a ‘this or that’ poll question via Slido and add the two options people can choose from. Then, activate the poll during your meeting, ask people to vote, and display the results. After you reveal the winning option, ask both camps to share why they voted the way they did.
Here are some other examples of ‘this or that’ questions:
- Would you rather work in an office where there’s no dress code or one where you have to wear fancy clothes?
- Would you rather give up social media or give up TV shows?
- Would you rather be a rockstar from the 60s or the pop star of today?
- Would you rather have nightmares with clowns or with spiders?
- Would you rather write a book about your life or shoot a movie about it?
Get more ideas here: 101 Would You Rather Questions to Cheer Up Your Meetings
#2. Quiz question of the week
A little brain teaser at the beginning of your meeting will get your colleagues nicely energized. Come up with a thought-provoking quiz question and then let your colleagues guess away.
You can even make this a tradition. Tie the question to the content of your presentation, to the subject of your meeting, or ask your colleagues something interesting from your niche/field/industry.
💪 How to pull it off
To pull this off, use a multiple choice poll. Add your options and mark the correct answer. Once you’re ready to run the quiz poll, simply activate it and keep the results hidden. Only reveal the correct answer once everyone has voted.
Also, it’s good to provide some background information or set a context for the question first, to not pose the quiz question just out of the blue.
Get more ideas here: 110 Trivia Questions for Team Bonding Quizzes
#3. Team trivia
Team trivia is a great get-to-know-each-other activity. Collect fun facts about your colleagues and create a quiz out of them.
You can run the team trivia either as a standalone quiz during one of your team-building meetings. Or, if you’re running recurring meetings (e.g. weekly team meetings), you can break the activity down into smaller chunks and run it one question at a time.
For example, if you want your teammates to get to know each other better, ask a question about someone new from your team each week. Then, give that person some space to share some cool story or an interesting fact about themselves.
💪 How to pull it off
Create a quiz question using either a multiple choice poll or – for a full quiz experience – use a Slido quiz. After each quiz question and revealed answer, ask the colleague to elaborate, or share a funny story about it. We’re sure you’ll dig out plenty of fun stuff!
Read also: 7 Awesome Quizzes for Your Virtual and Hybrid Meetings
#4. Word cloud of highlights
A word cloud is a great way to visualize your meeting participants’ thoughts. You simply ask your participants a question, they submit a one or two-question answer into an app, and all their submissions gather in a word collage – a “cloud” made of words.
One of the many ways you can use it is by crowdsourcing your teammates’ personal or professional highlights. It’s a nice way to get people talking before the meeting as well as learn something new about each other.
It’s a great activity for retrospectives or monthly team meetings (at Slido, we love this poll at our all-marketing meetings), but it’s a great morale booster for practically any meeting that you wish to open on a positive note.
💪 How to pull it off
Create a word cloud poll with the question “What was your highlight of the last month?”, activate it and ask your colleagues to submit their top moments of the last month.
Display Slido in full screen, comment on the submissions, and then call out the authors of each to share a story behind their highlights with the rest of the group.
Read also: 52 Word Cloud Examples for Your Meetings and Events
#5. Draw your mood
Starting a meeting by asking your colleagues how they are or how their weekend was is a great icebreaker, sure. But this time around, make it a bit more interesting.
Instead of asking verbally, ask your colleagues to draw how they are. Or, ask them to draw a simple picture of their weekend plans. It’s a cool exercise that will get people’s creative juices flowing and energize them for the upcoming meeting.
💪 How to pull it off
If you’re running an online/hybrid meeting, use a virtual whiteboard, such as Miro, or an integrated whiteboard within the video conferencing platform that you use (such as Zoom Whiteboard).
If you’re in a physical space, ask people to draw on a piece of paper, give people some 2 minutes, and then show their masterpieces to everyone around.
Read also: 35 Best Icebreakers for Your Virtual and Hybrid Meetings
#6. Caption this
If creative exercises are something that your teammates might enjoy, here’s another great one.
Show your colleagues a funny or thought-provoking picture, a cartoon, or a photo, and ask them to write a funny caption.
After showing the image, allow your colleagues some 5 minutes to come up with their creative ideas and then run a sharing round. You can even vote on the best one via a poll!
💪 How to pull it off
Upload an image to an open text poll and display the poll on the screen so your teammates can see the image well. Then, once they think up their answers, ask them to submit them into an open text field.
Read more about how to use image polls here.
#7. Emoji Quiz: Guess the song
This team-building activity is inspired by our colleague Martina who prepared a really cool quiz for us during one of our Brand team syncs.
She turned some of the 80’s song names into emojis and let us guess what song is hidden by the mysterious emoji combination.
Here are some examples:
🇺🇸🥧 = American pie (Don McLean)
👁 ➡️ 🐯 = Eye of the Tiger (Survivor)
📽🔪📻⭐️ = Video killed the radio star (The Buggles)
🟣 ☔️ = Purple rain (Prince)
☝️🏙 👩 = Uptown Girl (Billy Joel)
Get creative and come up with your own or google some for inspiration. Also, it doesn’t necessarily have to be songs. You can do this also with movie titles, or anything else.
💪 How to pull it off
You can simply put each emoji riddle on a separate slide and then during a meeting, show them one by one while your colleagues guess. Have your colleagues guess in silence (ask them to write the answers on a paper) and then, by the end, see who has the most correct answers.
#8. Icebreaker questions
Here’s another great 5-minute team-building exercise. Simply pose a thought-provoking question and have people discuss it in pairs or small groups.
A good icebreaker question can result in a really valuable discussion that will help your teammates socialize and get to know one another better.
Here are some example questions:
- If you could switch jobs for a week with one person on the team, who would it be and why?
- What’s on your bucket list this year?
- If you were writing your autobiography, what would be its title and why?
- What’s your new year’s resolution?
- If you met a genie, what would your three wishes be?
Find more ideas here: 80+ Best Poll Questions To Ask Your Online Audience
💪 How to pull it off
Put people in pairs. If you’re in a virtual/hybrid setup, you can do it via breakout rooms. Give people 5 minutes to talk to their partner and find out something new or interesting about them (ideally, something that they didn’t know before). After the discussions, ask some volunteers to share what they learned about their colleagues.
As an alternative, you can use a Slido open text poll to elicit the highlights from the group discussions (suitable for groups where there are shy or introverted people). After the time is up, just ask your teammates to submit one interesting fact they learned into Slido.
Did we get you inspired?
You don’t always have to spend an hour (or more!) on team-building. You can very effectively foster relationships and build trust among your team during your weekly meeting. All you need is a well-planned and sensitively facilitated team-building exercise.
In this article, we’ve shared a couple of great ways you can help your team bond in as little as 5 minutes. We encourage you to try one of the above. With Slido, this will be a piece of cake. Try live polls and quizzes during one of your upcoming meetings.
PS: Need any help or want to discuss how Slido can help improve your meetings? Contact us. We’ll be happy to help you. 💚
