Suppose you are experienced in running regular team-building meetings or group training workshops with a few people. In that case, for sure, you have your favorite group activities that worked quite well in the past.
But what happens if you need to run a session with many more participants? In this scenario, the exercises you already use might not work for larger groups because it is hard to involve everyone in the conversation when you have so many participants.
While effective communication is the basis of every successfully organized team-building session, there are other factors to consider as well. With that in mind, this article has collected some of the most adequate and fun group work activities for big teams that you can run at your team events and training sessions in 2022.
#1 Group Improv Games
When it comes to collaboration, there is a lot your employees can learn from improv comedy. Working closely to create a scene, thinking creatively, and building something from nothing while having fun is a great way to improve team collaboration and energize a remote team.
Learning to improvise and have fun as a team has benefits beyond any individual workshop or meeting. As a result, we recommend that you try some improv games for work the next time you bring your group together or incorporate them into your regular team-building events. Bringing play into the workplace can do wonders for increasing happiness, decreasing fatigue, and managing burnout. And improv is one of the most effective and simple ways to encourage play.
#2 Ideas as Building Blocks
This exercise is excellent to show your team that you value everyone’s ideas, regardless of whether they are or are not vocal and dominant workplace personality types.
To start, create a fictional problem that your employees must solve. It could be a theoretical problem or a riddle — anything that needs a solution. Then, assemble your team, and have them write down an idea on a large sheet of paper. Next, have them pass their sheet to the next person and instruct them to use the new idea to build a solution.
Do this for a few rounds, and then see the results. Displaying all ideas on equal footing, so each team member is in a position to contribute, will make your employees feel appreciated and happy.
#3 Back-to-Back Drawing
This activity is another great idea for larger teams to work on communication and language. To organize it, start by dividing your participants into groups of two and have each pair sit back to back. Give one person a picture of a form or simple image and a piece of paper and pen to the other.
The participant with the picture must describe the image without using words that give it away (without showing it). At the same time, the other must draw what is being described. After a set amount of time, the drawing time ends. Then, the partners can compare their images and see which team drew the most accurate replica.
This exercise is great to show your employees how different the interpretation of instructions can be, even when talking about the same thing.
#4 The 3 Question Mingle
This activity is great to support a group of employees to get to know each other by answering questions they create themselves.
To start, every participant must come up with three thoughtful questions that they want to ask another team member to get to know them better. Once everyone has their list of 3 questions, participants can start mingling around and meeting each other one-on-one. In these one-one meetings, participants will swap one question each and then meet another group member.
This exercise allows people to learn interesting facts about each other. It is especially useful in the early stages of team development or for teams that need to reconnect after being a time apart.
#5 What Is on Your Desk
Especially for marketing or design teams, this activity is a great opportunity to clearly present the challenge of seeing old things in a new light, introducing teamwork, and critical brainstorming.
To start, have each participant bring one item from their desk to the exercise. Then, tell them that this item will be their new product, for which they must come up with a name, logo, and marketing plan. Next, dived them into small groups to make it more interactive or allow them to do it individually.
Finally, give them a set time after which each person or team should give a two-minute presentation on their “product” as if they were selling it. At the end of the presentations, discuss, jointly, which products were successfully sold and why.
Bottom Line
Whether you plan to run a team-building session at a company retreat or facilitate a large group workshop, the activities in this article can be just the inspiration you need. To discover which is the right for you and your team, try them and see how they will positively influence a happier, healthier, and more engaging company culture.
