virtual critical thinking team building activities for adults

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Contributing Writer

Work Futurist

Senior Quantitative Researcher, People Insights

Principal Writer

18 virtual team building activities and games

This isn’t academic theory or some stuff we just made up. This is how real remote teams have fun and stay connected.

5-second summary

• Building bonds between teammates is extra-important when you’re in remote or hybrid mode, as a growing body of research confirms.
• Whether an activity is just for fun or helps move your work forward, taking time to help your virtual team to get to know each other is an investment that pays dividends in team cohesion and performance.
• We collected a list of activities used by real teams at Atlassian that can help virtual teams get to know each other as people and colleagues.

The bad news: team building is a lot more challenging when all or some of your people are working remotely. Try as you might, you just can’t do trust falls over Zoom. (Also, no one likes trust falls anyway.)

The good news: we have a trove of the best virtual team building activities to share with you. These are the same super-creative, road-tested, remote-team-approved activities that we use here at Atlassian.

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What is virtual-team building?

Virtual team building means creating human-to-human connections between your remote team members. Forging these bonds not only promotes team harmony, it can also help streamline communication and increase productivity.

Distributed eam bonding is a topic that matters deeply to us. We have a  Team Playbook  of exercises and workshops to help teams work better together (not to mention a guide to hybrid meetings for when it’s time to get down to business). It’s important to take time out to build connections while having fun, too. And, as a company of several thousand people distributed across five continents, we’ve had plenty of chances to act as test subjects for both flavors of virtual team-building activities.

Keep your virtual team connected with these proven rituals

How do you do team building virtually.

The best way to connect remote teams is to help them feel seen and heard, literally, and in ways that directly address the challenges of a dispersed workforce.

In mid-2020, we ran a survey on remote work , which uncovered the real-world complications we’re all facing with distributed work: feeling that our work is “invisible,” navigating new barriers to organic collaboration, and having less access to our managers. When we ran a similar survey in 2021 , we found that, although some of the initial challenges we faced have eased up a bit, teams are still struggling with belonging and cohesion.

The common thread here is that working from home can be lonely. Spending less time in an office environment means fewer built-in opportunities to form social bonds and build trust with colleagues. That can lead to disengagement, which, in turn, can lead to poor performance on the job.

That’s no small deal. In fact, 94 percent of  workers we surveyed  said that mutual respect and connection were critical to their team’s success, and 19 percent said it’s the most important factor in their sense of well-being at work. Understanding each other on a personal level means we can communicate more effectively and have an easier time distributing roles and responsibilities across the team.

So how can teams overcome these hurdles?

Tools of the trade

We use Trello boards as sort-of a virtual whiteboard, Slack as our chat tool, and Zoom for video conferencing. You’ll need at least one of these tools (or their equivalent) for each of the activities shared here.

Fun remote team building activities for any occasion

Choose what’s right for your team based on these categories:

Real-time vs. asynchronous – Do you need to do this simultaneously, or can each person participate at whatever time works best for them?

Practical vs. just for fun – Is the activity intentionally unproductive (which is not necessarily a bad thing), or does it serve the dual purpose of building social bonds and improving the way you work in a more tangible way?

18 ideas for virtual team games and activities

1. don’t overlook the classic: icebreaker questions 🧊.

Type: real-time, just for fun, on the regular

Time: 5 minutes

Tools required: video conferencing

Before you roll your eyes and go “Duh … like I hadn’t already thought of that,” understand that some of our distributed teams (my own included) do an icebreaker at the start of our team meetings every week. Even though we’ve been working together for a couple of years and feel pretty connected already, there are always more interesting tidbits to learn about each other. Some recent favorites include:

• Who was the last artist you searched for on your music streaming service of choice?
• What are your parents’ best qualities?
• Put these morning routine items in order: breakfast, coffee/tea, open up your laptop.
• What was something that always frightened you as a child?

Small talk at work has big benefits

2. have an online lunch date 🍱.

Time: 60 minutes

This one comes from the engineering team that built the Trello app for Android. Once a month, the team links up via video conferencing over lunchtime. Team members can even expense up to $25 so they can join from their favorite cafe, order delivery, or cook up a little something special at home (because, real talk: heating up leftovers gets old).

Only have 15-30 minutes to spare? No worries. Virtual coffee chats and virtual happy hours are fun variations on this activity.

3. Socialize over group chat 💬

Type: asynchronous, just for fun, on the regular

Time: varies

Tools required: Slack, Teams, or other group chat app

Group chat is an ideal way for distributed teams to stay in touch, but who says you have to keep it strictly business? Pre-pandemic, Atlassian set up a channel in Slack called #social-remote where we remote workers (which is now pretty much all of us), talk about what we had for lunch, compare notes on standing desks, share articles related to remote work, and generally discuss anything but the projects we’re working on.

There are even off-shoot channels for cities or states where clusters of “Remote-lassians” live. Let’s just say that more than a few hot-dish recipes have been swapped in the #minnesota channel.

4. Have a messy-desk photo contest 📸

When you work in an office, you feel compelled to keep your desk at least minimally clean: no used tissues, three-day old cereal bowls, or constellations of coffee rings.

But when you work from home, there’s no such social contract to uphold. So one of our rituals in the #social-remote Slack channel is “messy desk Thursdays” in which we out ourselves for the abysmal state of our workstations while the ROTFL 🤣and 🤦🏽‍♀️ facepalm emojis fly fast and thick.

It’s also a chance for your preternaturally tidy teammates to do some humble bragging about their austere, magazine-worthy office spaces.

5. How do you make online meetings fun? Presents 🎁

Type: real-time, just for fun, one-hit wonder

Tools required: video conferencing, Trello board

Whether your team prefers white elephant style or something more thoughtful, you can pull off a gift exchange even if you’re not at an offsite. Start by copying this handy Trello board template and inviting your teammates to join. It has full instructions in the “Rules” column, but here’s the gist. Each team member buys a gift that can be shipped easily. Instead of announcing what the gift is, you’ll add a card to the board with a picture and title that provides a hint.

During the game, you’ll take turns clicking on cards to reveal what the gift is. Once you turn over a card, you’ve claimed that gift. You’ll also get chances to steal a gift someone else has already claimed. After the game is over, mail the gift you contributed to the person who ended up with it.

6. Teach people how to work with you with “My User Manual” 📋

Type: asynchronous, fun but practical, one-hit wonder

Tools required: Keynote or PowerPoint

When you’re just forming as a team, or when a new member joins, it’s worth taking the time to share your personal workstyle. Do you prefer chat or email? What time of day do you do your best heads-down deep work? Are you cool with impromptu video calls? Check out this example from the CEO at CultureAmp:

Inspired? So were we. That’s why we created the My User Manual play, where you’ll find instructions on how to run this exercise in your team. Set up a meeting to review everyone’s “user manuals” in real-time, or share the decks so people can review them asynchronously. Either way, collect the decks in a central repository where future team members can access them.

7. Expand your professional skill sets together with “Learning Circles” 📚

Type: real-time, fun but practical, on the regular

Time: 30-60 minutes

Tools required: video conferencing, study materials as needed

It’s easy to get so caught up in executing on your work that you forget to expand your horizons, especially when working from home with no office banter happening around you. Plus, remote work can be isolating if you don’t make a point to connect with your teammates on a personal level.

Our Learning Circle play can address both issues. Choose a topic related to your work that you want to learn more about – anything from SQL to leadership styles to trends in recruiting practices – and find colleagues who share that interest. Each month, gather over video conference to discuss a book or article, or have someone in the group give a short presentation. The best part about learning circles is that you can extend them beyond your immediate team and connect with people across the entire organization.

8. Take your team’s pulse with “Health Monitor” 🩺

Tools required: video conferencing, Confluence, or Google Docs

Health Monitor is a variation on the classic agile retrospective. It prompts you to examine how you’re working together, instead of what you’re working on.

Through extensive research, we identified eight attributes that healthy, high-performing teams tend to have in common, then developed the Health Monitor as a framework for assessing how your team is doing in each area. Do you have the right balance of skills on the team? Are you making decisions effectively? Do you understand the dependencies around your work? Here’s a one-minute overview, staring yours truly.

Although this activity was not designed specifically for remote teams, it’s amazingly beneficial. When your team doesn’t sit shoulder-to-shoulder, it feels easier to sweep issues under the rug rather than address them head-on.

But little problems have a way of growing larger while you’re not looking, and eventually, you’ve got a crisis on your hands. Health Monitor prevents this by prompting teams to self-assess on a regular basis and keep their weaknesses from becoming full-blown liabilities.

9. You can’t have Nerf wars, but you still have .gif battles 💥

Time: 15-30 min

If you’ve ever been jealous of the Nerf dart wars waged by your co-located colleagues and friends, you’ll love .gif battles. Copy this Trello board template and invite your teammates to join it. (Click on the “How it works” card to see full instructions for the game.)

The game consists of four rounds, each with its own theme. You’ll use Giphy.com or Google Images to find a .gif that fits with the theme for that round and attach that gif to a card. Once everyone has their .gifs in, you’ll vote on the round’s best submission. At the end, the person who wins the most rounds will be crowned the Ultimate .Gif Battle Champion of All Time™. Just think of the glory! Don’t be afraid to add a tiebreaker round if needed.

10. Uncover your superpowers 🦸🏽

Type: real-time, fun but practical, one-hit wonder

Time: 30 min individual prep, 60 min as a team

If you think “water cooler moments” unlock creativity, you’re focusing on the wrong thing

If you’re ready to go beyond surface-level connections with your team, this is the activity for you. Each person will prepare for the session by taking an online strength finder assessment such as Clifton Strengths . During the group session, everyone hops on a video call and takes turns sharing their results.

When my team did this, each person shared top three strengths, lowest-ranked strength, and something in our results that surprised us. Then we’d discuss as a group how that person’s top strengths contribute to the team already, and how we could make even better use of them.

This is an intensely personal activity. You’re going to feel a bit vulnerable and exposed, so it works best if there’s already a sense of psychological safety amongst teammates. But because you’re discussing each other’s strengths, the conversation tends to be very positive and affirming. Chances are, everyone will walk away with a deeper sense of belonging and an understanding of the unique value they bring to the team.

11. “How you doin’?” 👋🏽

Time: 5 min

(This one is so much better if you say the words “How you doin’?” in a low, Jersey mobster voice – think Sal from “The Sopranos.” But I digress… ) The team that looks after the Atlassian Community website and our user groups added this five-minute ritual to the beginning of their weekly team meetings.

The board they use to track agenda items includes a space for each person to add a card representing how they’re feeling that week. Maybe they’re struggling with something in their personal life and are a bit low-energy. Maybe they finally ran that 10k over the weekend and are PUMPED for the week ahead. It’s an easy way for teammates to let each other know when they might need some extra support or patience, or when they’ve got good vibes to spare.

12. Make sweet music together 🎶

Tools required: Spotify or Google Play, Slack or other group chat app

Raise your hand if you and your remote teammates talk about music. (Thought so. Pretty much everyone does.) The content team at Trello is no different… but they’ve gone next-level with it. Using Spotify, they create collaborative playlists that anyone on the team can listen to and help curate.

Try creating an upbeat, “get $#!t done” playlist, a soothing “de-stress” playlist, or any other theme that suits your team.

13. DIY boba tea 🧋

Type:  real-time, just for fun, one-hit wonder

Time:  2 hrs

Tools required:  video conferencing, kitchen

Y’know how boba tea (sometimes called bubble tea) costs like $6 at a retail shop? It sounds overpriced until you realized how labor-intensive it is! About 50 members of our marketing team learned this first-hand when we did a virtual boba-making session. Each participant received a kit containing all the ingredients (we used this one ). Then, an expert guided the whole group through the process – it really does take two hours to make a batch! But that provided plenty of time for icebreakers and general chit-chat while ingredients cooked and/or cooled.

14. The fellowship of the traveling plush toy 📦

Type:  asynchronous, just for fun, on the regular

Time:  varies

Tools required:  Slack or other group chat app

A cross between the gnome prank in Amélie and the Flat Stanley craze, this ongoing activity yields months of fun. Choose a plush toy or doll that will be easy to pack up and mail – we had a custom plush made in the shape of our logo, and named it “Ace” – and set up a rotation so it travels between team members. When it’s your turn, use your chat channels to share photos of the plush hanging out with you, then pack it back up and mail it to the next person after a week or so.

15. Birds of a feather read books together 🤓

Type:  real-time, just for fun, on the regular

Time:  30-60 min for discussion; reading time varies

Tools required: video conferencing, Slack or other group chat app

Calling all bookworms! If you’re like me, then you know that the only thing better than reading a good book is discussing it with friends. Or, in this case, colleagues who also enjoy books (which, really, is pretty close to friends anyway).

Our brand content team runs a casual book club where the only parameter is that the books we choose must have nothing to do with our jobs. We use a Slack app called Polly to vote on book selections and when to meet over Zoom (and drinks) to talk about it.

16. Monday JAMM sessions 📆

Time:  5 min

Tools required: Slack or other group chat app

“So, how was your weekend?” The Atlassian brand and events teams took this time-honored Monday morning question into the virtual world by sharing stories and photos from their weekend over chat – but with a twist. To help put themselves in the best mental space possible for the week ahead, they focus on sharing the most positive and rejuvenating aspects of their weekend that will help them power through the week. Each entry starts with JAMM, which means “just another manageable Monday.” For example, “JAMM because I got to an amazing hike on Saturday!” Think of it as part gratitude practice , part pep-talk. It’s been such a hit that it’s spread to other teams, too!

17. Enneagrams for everybody 🥸

Type:  real-time, fun but practical, one-hit wonder

Time:  2+ hours

How well do you really know each of your teammates? Take time out for a deep dive into your personalities by using the Enneagram system . You’ll walk away with a better understanding of what makes everyone tick, and you’ll probably get some juicy insights into your own personality as well. (I sure did!)

Unlike finding your Myers-Briggs type or your zodiac sign, Enneagram asks you to self-identify your personality type based on the descriptions for each one. From there, you can explore how to best get along and communicate with other types. It’s a self-awareness + team harmony win-win.

18. A lightning round of mini-games 🕹

Time:  1-2 hours

Game apps for tools like Zoom and WebEx can be a ton of fun. (Hot tip for Zoom users: try the Kahoot! trivia app .) It’s a great way to add extra flavor to your virtual team lunches or kill a few minutes while you’re waiting for people to trickle in at the start of a meeting.

Now go forth and bond!

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27 Fun Virtual Team Building Activities for Your Remote Team in 2023

• Thriver Blog
• September 29, 2023
• 7 minute read

Every organization, regardless of size or specialization, faces one key problem at some point: how to improve and sustain overall employee productivity and performance. If your remote team is facing that challenge right now, remember one thing: productivity is closely tied to employee engagement. Therefore, it’s important to provide regular, quality opportunities for everyone to bond and collaborate in an informal setting.

One way to accomplish that for your remote team is by consistently hosting virtual team-building activities. But not just any trivial virtual team activities will do! After extended periods of working remotely, note that people are generally tired of online time. As such, it’s crucial to plan your online events very carefully and choose activities that suit your team’s interests and sensibilities. Also, since the goal here is to foster collaboration and team bonding, try to incorporate ideas that also involve learning and skill-building. 

Lacking inspiration? Then you’re in luck! This list combines 27 of some of the best virtual team-building activities available on the Thriver platform , so check them out to get your team bonding ball rolling!

Note that all ideas shared in this article have a recommended duration, format, group size and budget. Final cost and activity specifics may vary depending on your company and team requirements.

27 Immersive Team-Building Activities to Host Over Zoom

Before we dive into the virtual office game ideas themselves, here’s an important event scheduling tip to remember: try hosting activities around the middle or during the last hours of the work day. This will help your team avoid extended Zoom times which will add to the overall positive experience! Alright, let’s get to it.

Check out Thriver’s list of team-building activities for more fun at the workplace.

Virtual Icebreaker – Around the World

Have you ever seen Around the World in 80 Days? This virtual team-building icebreaker is like that but designed to help your team network and learn more about other cultures and each other! This is the perfect virtual game for coworkers that are new to the team or haven’t met up in a long time.

Duration: 60 minutes

Group size: Minimum of 8

Budget: CAD $40 / person

Name that Tune

You don’t have to be an expert at musical genres to enjoy playing Name that Tune, but it certainly helps! This online game is great for team-building because it naturally incorporates collaboration as teams compete in over three rounds of musical trivia!

Group size: Minimum of 30

Escape Room: Escape From the Alternate Dimension

As hard as it may be to imagine, escape rooms can also work online! This team-building activity is designed to promote teamwork and problem-solving, making it a fantastic game for remote teams. Participants must draw deeply on their critical thinking skills to escape from an eternity of being trapped in an alternate reality.   

Duration: 90 minutes

Group size: Minimum of 4 

Budget: CAD $35 / person

The Wilting Peony: Mystery Game

Who doesn’t love a good Whodunnit ? In this virtual team game, detectives must work together to unmask the murderer. Until then, the innocent can’t rest easy! 

Group size: 9 – 12 persons

Budget: CAD $35 / person 

Virtual Trivia

One of the easiest team-building activities to plan for remote teams is a trivia game. The rules are pretty simple: divide people into teams, choose a few topics, and ask questions. While fun and engaging, it’s also an excellent opportunity to incorporate collaborative problem-solving!

Group size: Minimum of 12 

  TV Game Show-Down

This virtual game idea is another option for teams who enjoy question-and-answer-style activities. Teams will compete in groups of 5-8 over three rounds of competition inspired by all-time-favorite game shows like Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. 

Group size: Minimum of 20

Budget: CAD $50 / person

Virtual Survey Says

Inspired by Family Feud – the Online Game Show, this fun virtual activity will inspire your team’s competitive streak! Participants will work to outperform each other over several game rounds with the guidance of a live, interactive game show host. 

Duration: N/A

Group size: 10 – 50 (or up to 1,000, at additional cost)

Budget: Starting from CAD $1,965 (plus $375 for each additional 25 participants)  

Taboo, Team Jeopardy, and Coffee! 

As the name suggests, this virtual group activity involves highly collaborative rounds of two different games, Taboo and Team Jeopardy. Get ready to ignite some team spirit like never before! 

Group size: Minimum of 8 

Online Office Olympics

If you’ve seen any of our previously published list of group game ideas, you’ve probably come across this suggestion a few times. That’s because this remote team-building activity never disappoints! Guided by a live host, this event brings together a fun collection of popular games and challenges that will challenge your team’s problem-solving, critical thinking and collaborative skills.

Group size: Minimum of 10

Budget: CAD $45 / person  

The Apocalypse

This fun, immersive team-building virtual activity will usher your team members into an imaginary world where they will solve unique challenges and riddles using real-world elements, making it another fantastic option for sharpening everyone’s problem-solving and collaboration skills. 

Group size: 3 – 50 persons

Improv Team Building Workshop

Improv is one of the best games for remote team building because it is a group-based activity where no one is singled out, making it perfect for introverts and extroverts alike. This activity will help your team to connect through icebreakers, word association, storytelling games, and more.

Group size: Minimum of 15 

Budget: CAD $30 / person  

Laughing and Bonding

Since laughter is said to produce many health benefits, you can count on this remote team-building activity to deliver lots of cheer every time. The performing comics have been featured on Conan, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and other comedy show classics, so you already know this is going to be good!

Duration: 30 minutes

Group size: Any order size

Budget: CAD $1,130

Mini-Games Adventure

This live-hosted event will deliver highly entertaining, fast-paced activities that your team will absolutely love, including a word puzzler, a scavenger hunt, and other fun virtual games for teams. Participants will be able to connect and build relationships as they collaborate in teams to find answers and complete challenges.  

Budget: CAD $40 / person 

Guess-My-Sketch

This exciting Pictionary-style group-based game will help your team bond as they unleash their collective creative energy to sketch and guess images. 

Celebrate Your Teams Wins

As you brainstorm team-building activities for work, don’t forget to include ideas that intentionally promote wellness. This event will help participants celebrate their successes as they pause, contemplate, and acknowledge the team’s wins, both individual and collective. 

Duration: 45 minutes

Group size: Maximum 50

Budget: CAD $600

Get creative with your team building! Paint Night is your opportunity to unleash your inner artist while enjoying some beverages and banter with coworkers.

Professional artists will guide you through completing your version of the featured image, step-by-step.

Group size: Minimum of 15

Get Drawn Together 

During this sketch-and-sip event guided by a live instructor, team members will spend time together chatting and connecting as they follow step-by-step instructions to bring their art ideas to life.      

Chocolate Tasting

Few people dislike chocolate, so you almost can’t go wrong with this virtual team-building activity. It promotes audience engagement through sensory exploration of some of the world’s best chocolate brands. Not only that, but participants will also learn things about the ‘Chocolate Revolution’ as they enjoy their sweets!

Budget: CAD $135 / person 

Classic Bourbon Cocktails  

During this activity, participants will learn how to prepare some easy versions of classic cocktails. This get-together will please your cocktail-loving team members and introduce the idea to those who are curious to try them!

Group size: Minimum of 10 

Budget: CAD $120 / person 

Meal Prep 101 Cooking Class

Cooking is arguably the most important skill for every adult to master! With the help of an award-winning nutritionist, your team will learn how to brainstorm, plan and prepare a fridge full of delicious, healthy meals with minimal stress.

Budget: Starting from CAD $595 

Hot Sauce Making Class

Pass the sauce, please! Those words will become commonplace around many a dinner table once you treat your team to this class. An expert will take participants through all the steps and tricks necessary for preparing a delicious hot sauce from scratch. They’ll even learn about various methods of canning, prolonging shelf life, and more. 

Group size: Minimum of 12

Budget: CAD $50 / person  

Virtual Chair Yoga

Help your team members bond, relax, strengthen their joints, and boost their overall wellness through this virtual class led by an expert instructor. 

Budget: CAD $10 / person

Creativity and Collaboration 

Most of us found creativity easy as kids, but over time, many of us have lost that ability. The good news is creativity is a skill that can be re-learned! This fun, interactive workshop will help your team unlock their creative power and strengthen their collaboration skills. 

Group size: 10 – 30 persons 

Budget: Prices are available upon request

Building Stronger Teams and Client Relationships 

This workshop is another perfect opportunity for team bonding in a virtual setting! It focuses on strengthening the emotional intelligence (or EQ) of participants, which will help with customer and team connections. 

Group size: Minimum of 1

Budget: CAD $2,105  

Virtual Communication Skills

This virtual team bonding activity specifically aims to hone your team members’ online communication skills. Participants will learn techniques and best practices for virtual delivery and engagement, improving overall team relations. 

Budget: CAD $2,110  

The Connected Team

Studies show that psychological safety impacts productivity. As such, this workshop is a must-do team-building activity! Participants will learn to create instant and deep connections that foster team-wide psychological safety for all.

Duration: 120 minutes

Group size: Minimum of 40

Budget: CAD $55 / person 

Lastly, we can’t talk about virtual team games for the workplace without mentioning one of the most engaging games ever invented: chess. While chess can be highly competitive, this class creates a light-hearted atmosphere where participants can strengthen their strategic and critical thinking skills. 

There you have it, 27 remote team building games and activities designed to sustain a cohesive, well-bonded remote team that will communicate and collaborate more effectively.

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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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7 Best Virtual Critical Thinking Team-Building Activities for Adults

Is your team feeling a little dull? 

Are you looking for some fun, motivating, and engaging virtual team-building activities to help get things moving again? 

If yes, you’ve come to the right place! This article will share 7 of my favorite virtual critical thinking team-building activities for adults. 

So get ready to have fun and boost your team’s productivity simultaneously! 

Explore more! 

1. Build a story through Emoticons

In today’s virtual world, finding ways to connect with colleagues and build team morale is more important than ever. And what better way to do that than through the universal language of emoticons? 

Here’s how it works: each team member creates a story using only emoticons. The stories can be as long or short as you like, but they must be completely understandable to anyone who reads them. The other members of the team have to guess the story. 

The team which guesses the most wins! 

Instead of stories, you can also put in film names, short words, or a famous quote from your boss. It could also be a popular riddle. The idea is to make it complicated for the opposite party to think and reply.  Make it meaningful. Few clues can be provided after the first 5 minutes. Explore this link if you are looking for corporate team-building organizers in Sydney .

2. Shark Tank

A Shark Tank-inspired activity. 

To get started, each team member must choose a product or service they’d like to pitch. Then, they’ll have a few minutes to prepare their pitch before presenting it to the rest of the teams. 

As the pitches are being made, other team members will play the role of “sharks.” The sharks will be tasked with asking tough questions and negotiating for a better deal, while the entrepreneurs must stand their ground and make a convincing case for their product. 

At the end of the activity, everyone will have had a chance to practice their pitching skills. This activity is excellent for promoting critical thinking, teamwork, and creativity. 

Head to the link for more virtual team-building activities . 

3. Virtual Escape Rooms at Entermission Sydney

A fun and unique way to build team morale, virtual escape rooms are the perfect solution. Unlike traditional adventure based team-building activities , virtual escape rooms can be enjoyed by everyone in the office – no matter where they’re located. 

At Entermission Sydney , we have 3 escape game themes to play online. You may choose one or play all of them. 

Our team-building activity builds team morale, promotes problem-solving skills and creative thinking. These skills are more critical than ever in today’s increasingly virtual workplace. Teams will learn to communicate better and work collaboratively towards a common goal. 

So what are you waiting for? Contact us today for more information! 

Here is why Escape Rooms make the best team-building event ! 

Music brings people together. Music helps people bond as they have a common topic to speak on. Plus, if the taste is similar, there’s no going back! 

Here is how it goes – There can be a team, or it can be played as an individual game as well. The first 10 seconds of the song are played, and players must guess what song it is. 

The exact name of the song is essential. You can also keep the podium open to whoever can message the first in the group, and they’ll get the chance to say the name. If they fail, the opportunity goes on to the next one. 

If the first 10 seconds fall short, you can gradually increase the seconds from 10 to 20 and 30. 

This promotes collaboration and communication among team members. You get to know each other’s music taste, promoting listening and memory skills. 

If you want to make the game more challenging, you can have team members guess the artist instead of the song title. 

5. Situational Critical Thinking

This is a toughie but a great one for a virtual team-building session. 

The host starts with lateral thinking questions that are situational. Teams have to understand the situation and solve the problem with a creative approach. 

Players will have a minute before they come up with a solution. The entire group can discuss the individual’s approach at the end of their answer. 

Or, to make the game a bit different, everyone can weigh their opinion as their answer. This way, everyone gets to share their problem-solving skills, and the leaders understand their way of thinking. 

Ultimately, you can pick the best answers and tell your team why it is the best. This way, both ends understand each other’s perspective, helping you tackle them in the workplace more efficiently. 

Examples are taken from Reader’s Digest – 

“A woman enters a room and presses a button. Within seconds, she instantly loses 20 pounds. How did she lose the weight?”, 

“A man pushes his car until he reaches a hotel. When he arrives, he realizes he’s bankrupt. What happened?”, 

“After a night of partying with her friends, a woman arrives home and finds that she cannot enter the house. She’s sure that she’s at the right home, but she cannot get inside. What happened that makes entering her home impossible?” 

These can be a few to get you started. Players should be prepared to answer them in the most creative and intelligent way! 

6. Trivia Night

An excellent activity for groups who are already familiar with each other. Divide your group into teams of two or three and have them compete against each other in a trivia night-style game. 

You can make the questions about anything you like – current events, pop culture, history, etc. – and the team with the correct answers at the end wins. 

Trivia topics can be related to your workspace or culture, or industry. This game can also be played individually, but a group ensures more bonding. 

Trivia Nights help in bonding and increasing interaction among your team members.

7. Logic Puzzles or Crosswords

Logic puzzles are a great way to get your team thinking critically about a problem. 

Divide your team equally into teams, and give each a puzzle to solve. To make it more challenging, you can provide teams with different logic puzzles to solve or make the logic puzzles more complex by adding more constraints. 

The first team to solve wins! 

You can also try crosswords. By giving them different crossword puzzles or the same for each team, you help them bond over the game to find answers by working together. 

This helps promote teamwork and understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses. This also forces them to communicate and interact with each other. 

And finally, remember the prizes! A little incentive can go a long way in making a team-building activity a success. 

So, there you go! My 7 best virtual critical thinking team-building activities for adults. 

I hope you’ll try out a few (or all!) of them and let us know how they go in the comments below. 

And if you need help getting your team on board with online team-building, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We love helping teams work better together! 

What are your favorite virtual team-building activities ? 

Explore the link if you are still looking out for virtual team-building activities . 

Cheers! 

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33 virtual team building games (free and easy to use!)

Being remotely distributed doesn’t mean your team should be disconnected. It often falls to a facilitator or team leader to help virtual teams stay aligned and connected. Virtual team building games and online activities you can play on Zoom are a great place to start!

In this list of completely free online team building games, you can engage and excite your team with ease! We've picked our favourite team building games you can run online without a need for complex set-up or buying additional software.

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Creating and nurturing high-performing teams in an online environment can be challenging. Not all team activities are suitable for virtual meetings and creating engaging activities online requires extra consideration. Virtual team building is especially important during times of crisis or change. How can you ensure you’re using the right team building activities to develop, grow, and connect a successful team? Whether you’re developing a remote team from the ground up, resolving interpersonal issues, or just want your distributed colleagues to have fun, we have you covered! We’ve collected our best virtual team exercises and online games and organized them into several categories so you can find the right one for your needs!

What are virtual team building games?

Trust, alignment and good communication are fundamental building blocks for a high performing team. But how can we create them? Team building games are a fun, effective way of bringing a team together in a shared activity designed to cultivate skills and build shared bonds. These can take the form of highly involved activities with some friendly competition, or they can also take the form of party games where team members are encouraged to just hang out and get to know each other better.

Team building is especially important in virtual environments, where remote teams can somethings feel isolated or disconnected. By coming together online for something other than a meeting, you can help build bonds and create memorable moments.

Fun virtual team building games

Most of the exercises and activities you’ll facilitate during an online session will have definitive goals and outcomes in mind when you run them, such as building particular skills or solving problems.

When designing workshops, remember that improving team connection is a viable and worthwhile outcome. Having fun and connecting with your teammates is a vital part of being a productive team member, and it’s worth remembering that there is value in having some enjoyable exercises with your team to de-stress, connect and get to know each other a little better. 

Virtual Scavenger Hunt

Working towards shared goals and demonstrating team values in the course of an exercise is great practice for tackling complex business projects – if you can have fun while doing so, even better! The Virtual Scavenger Hunt is a great team activity for Zoom and an online whiteboard – encouraging teams to be creative, gently competitive and work together to get the best possible result. Start by creating a list of items to be found online. You can see an example in the method below. Then, split your team up into groups to go and find those items and collect them in the allotted time. Bonus points for encouraging the use of different tools, forms and media, and to allow teams to be creative in finding the items for the online scavenger hunt. We’ve found that having a debrief section and also creating a list that is almost undoable in the allocated time frame helps keep the stakes high and ask that a team prioritizes and communicates effectively. It’s also fun to see what different groups came up with at the end! 

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! 

Story Around the Circle

Human beings are naturally born storytellers. With this online energizer, you’ll take some time to connect with one another through telling a shared story and be encouraged to have fun while improvising too!

The organiser starts with a line like “Once upon a time, in a land far away, 5 people got together to solve all the world’s problems. Everything seemed easy, until one day, one of the people saw on the horizon…” and invites the next person in the group to continue the story and add the next line. This keeps going until everyone’s contributed to the story.

When it comes to recording the story – do so either in Google Docs or in your online whiteboard tool. If someone wants to draw images to go with the story, that’s great too! Remember that creative team activities that encourage personal responses are absolutely worth adding into your toolbox!

If you want to keep participants on their toes, add rules like the lines have to rhyme in couplets, or have a word that people can’t use or must use. You could even choose who creates the next line, rather than going around in order. We love this exercise as it’s simple, engaging and can be easily amended to your needs.

Story Around the Circle   #team   #storytelling   #teampedia   #remote-friendly   Creating a story together can be merely for fun, or it can help the team imagine its future or recall its past.

Sharing knowledge, experience and skills is something good teams do by default. Finding time to let your team share what they’re passionate about outside of a work context is also valuable when it comes to building a cohesive, connected team.

With Skillshare, you can invite members of your group to share a hobby, passion or skill with the rest of the team and teach them something. This can take the form of a practical session – a keen artist might take the team through a drawing exercise – or a person with an interest in jazz might talk about why they love the genre. You can go as big or as small as you want, though the key is to let your team lead the way and share a passion or skill that is close to them. Building team bonds through this kind of experiential exercise can really help bring a team together over distance.

Remote-friendly skills that are easy to teach over video chat are a bonus, though, with some creativity, you can share all kinds of skills online in a fun way – whether those skills include cooking, sculpting, writing, yoga or anything else!

Guess the Desk

A challenge all online teams face is the feeling of disconnection and distance from your group. Finding ways to feel connected to one another and build team bonds when working remotely should be a priority for managers of virtual teams.

Guess the Desk is a fun online team activity that can not only help teams get to know one another but share best practices for remote working too! In Guess the Desk, start by having each participant take a photo of their desk or remote working set-up and send it to the facilitator who then puts them into a shared whiteboard or Google Doc. Don’t tell anyone whose desk is whose!

During the first round select one member to be the Desk President: they cast the vote on whose desk is whose after a group discussion. After each round, the previous Desk President elects the next and the group moves on to guess the next desk. Here’s the fun part. If your desk is up it’s your job to convince everyone that it belongs to someone else: if the group votes incorrectly on your desk, you get a point! If you successfully guess the right desk while you are Desk President, you also get a point.

After all the desks have been guessed, debrief and point out any particularly good remote working set-ups and best practices you notice and want to share!

Guess the desk   #remote-friendly   #energiser   #teambuilding   An energiser game for remote teams where participants share images of their work set-up and attempt to guess opponents’ desks while bluffing their own!

Virtual Trivia 

Every organization has a history filled with unique stories, in-jokes and memorable events. Creating a company quiz and inviting your team to see how well they know the organization can be a fun way of celebrating your history, what you’ve achieved and have some fun along the way!

A pub quiz format where one person asks questions that teams or individuals answer in a Google Doc, the text channel or in a Zoom session works great for energising and engaging your participants. Have a prize for the winning team and be creative with your questions to make your online office trivia sessions a release valve for your team and to create a relaxed, fun atmosphere.

When choosing the questions for your virtual trivia game, it can be useful to get input from different heads of department and have themed rounds. Pair with a virtual happy hour and a treat of your team’s choice to make this a memorable experience!

GIF challenge

Team members often have fun and idiosyncratic ways of communicating with each other, and finding ways to share your personality is an important factor when connecting with others. In an online environment, having fun and creative outlets that help your group communicate and get to know one another really helps build effective, happy teams.  

For this remote team game, set-up an online whiteboard or shared Google Doc and post a phrase or statement that participants then have to search for a suitable GIF in response. It might be something as simple as, “That Monday morning feeling,” or “Good management looks like this.” You can have a couple of questions just for fun, then include some that invite people to creatively respond to organizational challenges and prepare them for the next exercises.

After each round, you can invite everyone to comment or vote on their favorites, and have additional rounds to crown a winner if you wish. One great way to use this exercise is by sprinkling several rounds of questions throughout the workshop to keep energy levels up and create some moments of fun and creativity as counterpoint to other exercises.

GIF challenge   #energiser   #fun   #remote-friendly   Create space in your agenda for a fun online energiser where participants are encouraged to find creative GIF-based responses to your questions.

Team Eurovision

Music is a universal language, and sharing music we love as a group can create some interesting conversations and facilitate team bonding – even the music we like is very different! In Team Eurovision, invite everyone in your group to select a song made by an artist from the country where they were born and add the song to a shared Spotify playlist. Want to make it more interesting? Have a rule where everyone’s song had to come out in the year 2000, or from the year they were born. Play the songs in a dedicated after work session (alcohol, treats or snacks encouraged!) and invite each team member to introduce each song and tell the team why they should vote for it. Collect the votes at the end and crown a winner!

You can use the Team Eurovision method as a standalone virtual team activity, or have the shared Spotify playlist playing in the background of a remote working session. Remember that the purpose of the exercise is to have fun and start conversations that can help your team get to know each other, so don’t worry if it falls apart! 

Virtual Cribs

Remember MTV Cribs? In that TV show, celebrities invited a film crew into their homes and gave them a guided tour. In Virtual Cribs, you invite a volunteer from your team to give us a guided tour of their home over Zoom and share part of their lives with the group. Invite the other members of the group to ask questions and comment on what they love. Seeing how other people live and work in their remote set-ups can help virtual teams get to know one another and feel more connected.

Want to spice things up? Have your team find a place they love on Google Street View or a virtual museum tour and give the rest of the team a guided tour as if it was their home. This can be a fun way to explore new places virtually, while also encouraging your group to be creative. Visiting the National Gallery of Australia and trying to explain why you put a statue of a crocodile in your front room can make for a fun team activity! 

Virtual Bingo

Even a regular team meeting can be made a little more fun with a game of virtual bingo. Start by distributing your bingo cards to everyone in the virtual meeting. We recommend customizing your own to make the items resonate with your company culture or to share (nice!) jokes with your co workers.

As you go through your meeting, ask participants to keep track and announce when they’ve filled their card! This is a great way to keep your team engaged throughout a virtual team building event, and you can even offer prizes to the winners too!

Virtual Bingo   #team   #skills   #remote-friendly   #group game   A bingo game that is played throughout a live session using common virtual session occurrences. 

Bad Movie Night

Watching movies as a group is always a great way to spend time together. With online services like Netflix, it can be easy to get your remote team to collectively watch a film together and de-stress with company. Watching any film out of hours with a virtual team can be a nice way to spend time together outside of work and feel connected, but how can we make this even more fun and include a competitive element?

In Bad Movie Night, have each member of your group suggest a “so bad it’s good” film and vote on which you should watch together. Cult films, old horror movies or schlocky B-movies are a great place to start! Your team will likely have some suggestions but if you need a hand, Rotten Tomatoes and Buzzfeed have some good examples. If in doubt, try The Room ! After you’ve watched the terrible/great film together, have everyone write a one sentence review of the film and post it anonymously into a shared document or whiteboard. Encourage everyone to be as savage, critical and creative as possible, then vote on whose review is the funniest! 

In an office environment, it’s easy for team members to do nice things for one another in order to show their appreciation: you might get your colleague a coffee or a cake they love, or help out with a tough piece of work. For remote teams, making these kinds of gestures is difficult and while it’s not a necessary part of having an effective team, taking the time to show your colleagues you appreciate them is a lovely way of saying thank you!

With Gift Chain, invite your online team to send a small, personal gift to a team member in appreciation. You can use a secret Santa like system to pull names out of a hat, or have each person choose someone they’d like to say thank you to once they received a gift to keep the chain going. Set a small price limit or alternatively, have each gift be a handwritten letter that is sent in the post. It can feel really special to receive a thoughtful gift or letter from a colleague and it’s a great way of bringing positivity and appreciation to remote teams during difficult periods. 

Breakout Room Tag

Recreating a sense of fun and possibility for remote employees is tough. This virtual team building game is a fun and easy way to bring the high-energy of a game of tag to your online meeting.

Start by setting up Zoom breakout rooms and giving participants the option to move between them. Next, invite someone to be “it”. That person needs to enter a breakout room, count to ten and then say someone’s name to make them “it”. Randomly assign the entire team to breakouts and then let the fun begin!

We particularly like this online game for teaching remote team members how to use your video call software while also energizing the group! Try running a few rounds of Freeze Tag too, where people must hold a pose until someone else sings happy birthday to unfreeze them, if you want to up the ante.

Break-out Room Tag   #large group   #virtual   #zoom   #remote-friendly   #energizer   #high energy   #ericamarxcoaching   Everyone plays tag, using breakout rooms in Zoom

Team Gallery

Whether you’re an expert photographer, proud parent or amateur snapper, most of us regularly take photographs on our phones. In Team Gallery, set a weekly photograph prompt and invite your team to take a photograph and anonymously submit it into a shared online whiteboard. You might ask your team to take a photograph of some natural beauty or an image to go with a phrase like, “How I spent my summer vacation” or “This is me in a nutshell.”  Your prompts or questions can be fun, creative, or ridiculous but should encourage everyone to respond creatively!

As a facilitator, you can make it into a competition where everyone votes on their favorite image or caption, or have your gallery be a place to share and connect asynchronously. Whatever you go with, ensure the photographs stay up and are collected and shared. Think of all the great stories and images you’ll have after a few months of running this activity! It can be a lovely shared resource for new team members getting to know everyone and is a great way to connect and engage with one another outside of a work context. 

The Exciting Sponge Game

In this improv game, team members each have a minute to find a random object in their space and return to their desk. The more humdrum or ordinary the object, the better!

Next, invite everyone to spend another minute brainstorming an idea for a story that elevates that ordinary object (a sponge, for example!) into an exciting one. Finally, invite your group to take turns telling an improvised story featuring the object for sixty seconds on zoom.

This team building game is an opportunity for your group to be creative, share something personal and create memorable moments on the spot! Bonus points for taking screenshots of each person with their exciting sponge and adding it to your Mural or company handbook!

Virtual team building games to get to know each other

Online meetings can take time to get comfortable with, particularly for teams who are just transitioning to remote working. Communicating with colleagues in an online environment can be challenging because of the lack of physical cues, non-verbal communication and all the potential distractions one might have when working from home or in a remote office. And just like any skill, it needs practice. Breaking the ice and getting people comfortable with interacting with each other is a vital part of any effective working session. This is particularly important if you have a new or freshly formed team to deal where people don’t yet know each other as much.

One of the first barriers many people face in online meetings is speaking up – by starting with an inclusive online team games, you can get everyone over this hurdle right at the beginning. Furthermore, helping your team get to know one another and become comfortable working together virtually helps lay the foundation for deeper team development exercises. Let’s take a look at some of our favourites! 

Break the Ice with The Four Quadrants Activity

The Four Quadrants activity is a creative, visual exercise that is a great way to help your group get to know each other and encourage personal responses. You can use this with any four questions that will help a virtual team align, get to know one another, or outline challenges or working opportunities. It’s super flexible and works with teams of any makeup. 

In an online environment, this exercise works well using an online whiteboard like Mural or Miro to collect responses and have people participate in real time. You can use digital drawing tools or invite participants to draw on paper and upload photos to the shared whiteboard. 

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!

Happiness Exercise 

Sharing personal experiences and generating positivity can help groups bond and improve team relationships. The Happiness Exercise is a great, remote-friendly team activity to build trust and help people share honestly and openly.

Start by asking members of the group to share an occasion when they were happy. Join in yourself to give your team the idea! Once everyone has spoken, ask everyone to give an example of a time they made someone else happy. Choosing just one can be a challenge, but you’ll be surprised at how much you can learn and share with these very simple prompts. If you’re using an online whiteboard or collecting notes in a shared document, it’s fun to collect these experiences for later reflection and sharing!  

Happiness exercise   #teambuilding   #icebreaker   #warm up   #remote-friendly   This exercise is a simple application of the principles of Appreciative Inquiry.

Icebreaker: The Group Map

Many great remote team activities were born in live workshops with large numbers of people and big open spaces. Translating some of those activities into an online workshop can be tricky, though it’s no reason not to do them! With a little creativity and the right tools, many existing exercises can be reworked for remote environments successfully. 

The group map is a fun virtual icebreaker for Mural, Miro or any other online whiteboard. By creating a virtual space with either an imaginary or virtual map where participants can position themselves and add images, you can foster an environment of sharing and reflection that can be fun to interact in too! Encouraging participants to be creative can also lead to great shared resources and team boards to reflect on and share later! 

Icebreaker: The Group Map   #get-to-know   #icebreaker   #remote-friendly   Ask people to place themselves on an imaginary map laid out in the room representing the country according to where they grew up. Ask them to share one internal value they got from that place, and why is that important for them. Encourage people to share a short story if they want

Three Wishes

Simplicity is your friend when it comes to remote team building. Facilitating structured conversations around concepts people are familiar with can make the virtual team building process a little easier and help drive quick results. Three Wishes is a flexible virtual icebreaker that can work well in a video conferencing tool like Zoom or Google Meet, or can be expanded to use images and GIFs in an online whiteboard tool. We recommend adjusting this activity based on the flow of your session: if your agenda is discussion heavy, encourage participants to share their three wishes in the forms of images, memes, songs, or GIFS. The opportunity to do a little solo-work before sharing can be a welcome change and as with any online icebreaker, the opportunity for humour helps too!

Three wishes   #get-to-know   #icebreaker   #remote-friendly   The activity serves as a brief energiser during a workshop, and helps to get creativity flowing. At the end of this method, each team member will be a little more familiar with each other.

Magic Box is a great team workshop activity but with a collection of images and some creativity, it can be an ideal icebreaker for Mural or team workshops using an online whiteboard. In the live version of Magic Box, the facilitator brings a collection of items to the workshop and invites participants to choose an object. In turn, each member of the team then gets to explain who they are, why they’ve chosen the object, and also talk about the connection between the topic of the workshop and the object. 

In an online setting, you get to go one step further and include items, concepts or even people that you could not possibly fit in a real box. You might ask participants to choose someone to join the team from a group of world leaders or fictional characters. You might include pictures of objects that are directly related to the workshop or your company. Whatever you choose, ensure you include a mix that allows for varying personal tastes and gives people the chance to express themselves.  

Magic Box   #team   #icebreaker   #get-to-know   #teambuilding   #remote-friendly   Ice breaking at the beginning of the workshop/meeting

Snapshot of my life

We all know that one aspect of effective virtual team building is giving your group the opportunity to get to know each other as individuals and form personal connections. Trust, team awareness and good working practices are almost always better with people we really know. Snapshot of my life asks participants to bring an image to the team workshop that says something about their life and upload it into an online whiteboard or shared workspace. It might be a great memory, something that is important to them or a dream they have. Sharing these kinds of personal experiences with your online team can help sow the seeds for your online team building session and can help people feel seen and heard by sharing what they find most appropriate. You can also do this exercise asynchronously and invite participants or team members to continue adding to the board after the meeting! Team games and exercises that are flexible and malleable are great methods to add to your toolbox.

A snapshot of my life   #remote-friendly   #energiser   #teambuilding   This exercise is great for building empathy amongst team members, and giving each participant a deeper understanding of their colleagues’ backgrounds (particularly great for international or remote teams). It’ll also set a casual atmosphere for the workshop ahead.

Starting your video call with an exercise that builds trust and helps your group get to know each other is a wonderful way to build team morale. In this game, ask everyone in the virtual meeting to cover their cameras and then invite one person to make a statement that is true of them. Everyone that the statement is also true of then shows themselves, gives a way and then covers their camera.

Go around the group so everyone has a chance to share their voice and have a quick moment with some of their colleagues. Follow this online team building game with breakout rooms to help people get to know each other even better!

True of Me   #virtual   #group exercises   #connection   #zoom   #remote-friendly   #trust   #energizer   #ericamarxcoaching   #opening   #psychological safety   #group game   #large group   Everyone covers their camera and one person makes a statement that is true about themselves. If it is true for others on the call, they show their face to the camera as well. The initiation for the next prompt is passed to another person in the group.

Virtual dance party

You don’t need a dancefloor to have fun with your team, do you? This is a quick game designed to get people moving, lower inhibitions and let people show their personality – all without leaving Zoom!

In Dance, Dance, Dance, ask participants to create some space so they can move around. Next, put on a playlist of popular songs and kick-off with a dance that everyone else in the team has to follow. Change songs every so often and give everyone in the group a chance to be the leader. Bonus points if your video conferencing platform allows a gallery view so you can all see each other and follow accordingly!

Dance, Dance, Dance   #hyperisland   #energiser   #remote-friendly   In this short and physically active energizer, participants dance playfully in small teams. Periodically, the music changes and members take turns leading the dance. The aim is to generate fun energy and playfulness in a group, often as a counter-balance to more “serious” group work.

Virtual team building activities to improve collaboration

Great teams make it a habit to reflect on projects, group processes and how they work together as a team. Unstructured discussions on subjects like working processes or team dynamics can escalate in the wrong direction if not properly framed and facilitated. 

Using team games, exercises or activities to facilitate the team reflection process can help ensure your team moves forward productively. In an online environment, taking the opportunity to reflect as a group is imperative to building bonds and improving the awareness of each member of the team. 

Strength Building Exercise

The members of a team will invariably get to know one another as a by-product of working together, but is this enough to build the kinds of bonds and relationships that can make a successful remote team? Dedicated time to encourage participants to share, reflect and celebrate success should be a part of your virtual team workshop.

With the Strength Building Exercise, you’ll encourage positivity, mutual appreciation and respect among your team and help build a productive team culture. This method is great for boosting positive energy and creating space for your virtual team to celebrate one another and build a confident, self aware group. Many of the best remote team activities have benefits that extend beyond the workshop and this exercise is up there with the best of them!

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.

9 Dimensions

Even the best groups and online teams will face challenges. Discussing and resolving those challenges and reflecting on how the group is performing can take many forms though it’s important to create spaces where all opinions are heard, and dominant voices are tempered with those of less vocal group members. 

The 9 Dimensions Team Building Activity is a great, remote-friendly approach to structuring a team discussion. Begin by distributing or having your team create a 3 x 3 grid with nine areas for discussion. Invite each team member to fill in the grid with a colour based on their feelings about that area. They might feel that an area needs improvement and add a red dot, or use a green dot to show they think the team is nailing that area. 

The facilitator then asks the team to share some of their results before focusing on what areas of improvement the team is aligned on and where perspectives differ. This approach allows people to contribute as they feel able and keeps the process running smoothly.

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.

Trust Battery

Trust is one of the foundations of a healthy, effective team. Creating a team culture where everyone feels seen, heard and valued while also able to reflect on their interpersonal relationships should be a priority. 

With Trust Battery, you invite your team to reflect on their relationships with one another, be open and grow together. In an online environment where face time is limited, checking in and encouraging honest, constructive reflection is essential for healthy teams. While it can be useful to think of your team as a single organism, it’s important to remember that any group is composed of individuals, all of whom have complex and differing interpersonal relationships. 

Using an exercise like Trust Battery can help bring areas to improve to the fore and allow you to work on them as a team in a structured, thoughtful manner; creating a stronger, more open team as a result. Bonus!

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.

Leadership Coat of Arms

Ask two members of your team what makes a good team and you’ll likely get two answers that are as different as they are the same. Using a remote-friendly exercise like Leadership Coat of Arms is a great way to encourage a creative exploration of the subject that also creates room for different ideas. Why can’t we do the same thing for teamwork?   In this creative virtual team exercise, participants are asked to draw their own coat of arms symbolising the most important elements of their teamwork philosophy. The coat of arms drawings are then debriefed and discussed together with the group. What items are consistent for the whole team and what stands out? Being asked to condense complex ideas into a simple visual format can be refreshing and also creates a gallery that can be shared and ideated upon in the future!

Your Leadership Coat of Arms   #leadership   #leadership development   #skills   #remote-friendly   #values   In this leadership development activity, participants are asked to draw their own coat of arms symbolising the most important elements of their leadership philosophy. The coat of arms drawings are then debriefed and discussed together with the group. After the exercise you may prepare a coat of arms gallery, exhibiting the leadership approach and philosophy of group members

Team Self-Assessment

All teams develop a default way of working together over time. Most of these working practices are dictated by necessity (online meetings for remote teams, for example) or organically as people work together on projects. While this approach can work in the short term, a deliberate and considered assessment of team working methods can help your team be more effective and happy. The Team self assessment method from Hyper Island is a team activity which asks your group to think of their team as a system with interlocking parts, much like the model of a computer’s Operating System. By thinking of your team in this new way and assessing it thoroughly, new things can come to light and your team can then make the necessary changes. This method also encourages your team to take ownership over creating this change – which is a great way of helping team members feel connected, valued and a part of the process. 

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.

Virtual team building games for communication

Anyone working in a team knows how important communication is: when it’s good, your team works like clockwork and you feel like you can achieve anything; when it’s bad, tasks take twice as long, things get missed and people get frustrated. 

Virtual teams whose primary method of communication might be Slack or email especially need to consider how they communicate and work together. Some things which may come across easily with verbal communication might not be clear in text, and when working together online, good standards of communication are important to keep things moving effectively.

Proper and transparent documentation, kick-off meetings and retrospectives are only one part of the puzzle. Combine these with experiential learning and remote-friendly communication exercises in order to get real results. Team communication activities like the below are great for helping virtual team members think about how they might better communicate. Let’s dig in!

Blind Drawing

Whatever the organisation, teams invariably have members with different skill sets and knowledge bases. One of the challenges of team communication comes when one team member tries to explain an unfamiliar concept to another team member. If teams aren’t great at communicating, this process can be frustrating for both parties. In Blind drawing, one person has to describe an object while another has to accurately draw it from this description alone. The rule is that the person describing the object cannot say anything which clearly gives away what the object is or is closely related. For example, if describing a tree, you might say, “It’s a tall cylinder with lightning coming out of each end, one set of lightning spreading out into the air, the other going into the ground. It has rough, weathered skin, and at the ends of each fork of lightning there are hundreds of children that grow until they’re ready to fall.” It’s a fun exercise to see how people interpret abstract instructions, but it also shows how what might be obvious to one person is not obvious to another, and underlines the need for clear, effective communication. 

Blind Drawing   #teambuilding   #communication   #creative thinking   #remote-friendly   Test your communication and interpretation skills with Blind Drawing!

Humans are storytellers by nature. Sharing stories of where we’ve come from, what’s happened to us and how we feel about the world is part of being alive, and by tapping into this instinct, you can enable perspectives to come to the surface and encourage meaningful exchanges that can help your team grow together. 

Begin by creating a word cluster in a shared online space as triggers for the session. These might include company specific words, or more general terms like: partnership, venture, first day, work travel, fun project, opportunity, and so forth. 

Invite your participants to look over the collected notes and have a volunteer take one of those words and move it to the campfire space and share a connected work story. This works most effectively in an online whiteboard where you can clearly delineate the working areas. 

Continue to share stories connected to words from the wall or the previous participant’s story until everyone has shared a work-related story. Sharing experiences in this way can help teams feel connected, communicate their perspectives and practice sharing work related thoughts in a positive, considered manner.

Campfire   #gamestorming   #team   #remote-friendly   #storytelling   Campfire leverages our natural storytelling tendencies by giving players a format and a space in which to share work stories—of trial and error, failure and success, competition, diplomacy, and teamwork. Campfire is useful not only because it acts as an informal training game, but also because it reveals commonalities in employee perception and experience.

Team of Two

Regardless of the size of an organisation, most business communication actually takes place as an exchange between two people: a manager asks for something from an individual, or a customer support agent liaises with a customer, for example. While teams might be composed of many people, it’s vital to remember that each of those people is an individual and those individuals all have different working relationships with one another. 

Team of Two is a focused team communication activity designed to help two individuals work better together and ensure they each are contributing to the process. This one works great in Zoom breakout rooms or private sessions though it’s worth noting that this activity might also benefit from a moderator. 

While this technique is highly effective, it’s not suitable for all situations, particularly if communication has broken down completely. Attentive team managers will want to deploy this exercise when challenges arise and to help teams move past communication issues.

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.

Feedback: Start, Stop, Continue

Giving regular, thoughtful feedback is one of the most important ingredients in building meaningful relationships and ensuring teams can communicate effectively. While team members might give feedback on an ongoing and ad-hoc basis, creating a space for a structured online feedback exercise can help a group give more thoughtful feedback in a constructive way. 

The Start, Stop, Continue exercise encourages groups to reflect on group dynamics from three angles and create actionable steps to improve communication in their remote team. By having these guiding principles, you can ensure the feedback given is constructive and that the session is productive: a must for any online team workshop!

Feedback: Start, Stop, Continue   #hyperisland   #skills   #feedback   #remote-friendly   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 an exercise for groups or teams that have worked together for some time and are familiar with giving and receiving feedback. It uses the words “stop”, “start” and “continue” to guide the feedback messages.

Seven Words

When online team communication isn’t working or has broken down, it’s often because of miscommunication or differing interpretations of an email or message. Considering how we use words and how they can be interpreted can really help improve interpersonal communication and make us more efficient, considerate communicators.

In Seven Words, begin with a seven word sentence and ask your group to list some possible interpretations – it can be really interesting to see all the different ways even a simple sentence can be interpreted depending on the individual receiving it! Moving into pair work afterwards means that each participant gets to see how their sentences are interpreted in action. For distributed teams who might primarily communicate over email or on Slack, this kind of focused reflection on team communication can lead to meaningful improvements very quickly!

Seven Words   #thiagi   #communication   #skills   #remote-friendly   Ever heard the cliché, “It’s not what you say, but how you say it”? The Seven Words jolt dramatically demonstrates this principle. You demonstrate how the meaning of a sentence changes as you emphasize different words. Later, you invite pairs of participants to explore this concept.

Powerpoint Karaoke

Presenting a slide deck is a fairly common aspect of office life, but what about presenting a powerpoint you’ve never seen before?

Start by creating a Powerpoint deck of random slides, images, words – try and get other team members involved where you can! Next, invite a player to be the first to share a slide and try to “sell” or “explain” whatever appears on the slide. This virtual game can be so much fun, while also helping remote workers get more comfortable with presenting material online.

Powerpoint Karaoke   #improv game   #communication   #presentation skills   #skills   #remote-friendly   Powerpoint Karaoke is an improv game where volunteers take turns presenting slide decks that they’ve never seen before, in front of a live audience.

As the world changes and more teams turn to remote work and distributed workforces, the need for thoughtful approaches to virtual team building rises. It’s not enough to hope for the best – find time and space to develop your team and find better ways of working together in this new online environment. Not only will your team be happier and more productive, but you’ll find new ways of working and feeling connected.

We hope the above exercises give you plenty of food for thought and lots of ways to bring your remote team together for fun and productive team activities online. Have a virtual team exercise or game that’s worked well with your team or want to see more? Get in touch in the comments below. We’d love to hear from you!

Great post!

Having attended a few online icebreakers recently and not being inspired by them, I decided to go away and create my own :-)

https://www.ThinkLinks.cards

Hopefully it will be helpful to some.

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5 Team Building Games For Adults That Teach Critical Thinking Skills

Team building games are not only fun; they break the monotony of daily routines and help us to develop valuable skills. Some games help us to acquire critical thinking skills, which make us productive and increase our output in the workplace. Corporate training through critical thinking games is beneficial for both small and established organizations because it fosters trust and problem-solving skills among the employees. Brain training activities are quite common; however, critical thinking games are much better if you want to teach skills faster.

So keep reading on and learn if you want to learn a 5 new games for boosting critical thinking in your team.

Why Team Building Activities are Important

The leading organizations know the importance of corporate training. A business can either succeed or fail, depending on the ability of its employees. Regular training inculcates relevant skills and knowledge to the workers who in turn use it to boost production.

Team building activities improve work relations, therefore creating a conducive working environment. Working together to solve different problems shows the employees that they need each other to reach their organization’s goals. This knowledge is applied in the office as each one understands how to work with different individuals and talents.

Team building activities also allow employees to socialize, network, and get to know each other. Making friends in the workplace is the first step to increasing productivity. Employees can work together to solve problems. This is the moment when critical thinking games step in: a common goal to achieve in a playful format brings out each team members’ stregths.

When employees work together in team building games, they celebrate and have fun together, which inspires them to work harder and win more. Cheering and supporting each other in these activities promotes team bonding and motivates them to rise to the next level. Working together also promotes creativity and innovation. This is why critical thinking activities for employees need to be planned ahead and implemented withing your company.

Create games, self-guided and audio tours, team building events and educational content that captures peoples' attention.

Teaching critical thinking through team building games for adults

The good thing about corporate training and team building games is that they equip you with knowledge in and out of office. The following team building games will teach you critical thinking skills while having fun:

1. If You Build It

This critical thinking game for adults is not only simple, but it’s also flexible – this means that anybody can participate. The game starts when the teams are divided into small groups, given equal amounts of different materials, such as building blocks, pipes, or even marshmallows. The teams are assigned a task that involves construction. This can either be to build the tallest structure, for instance, a castle. The groups should work together until they come up with the required structure. This game inculcates problem-solving and communication skills.

Zoom is an exciting game that can be used both in the classroom and to foster cooperation in the workplace. The team sits or stands in a circle, and each is given a unique picture of an animal, object, or other items. To make it more exciting, the instructor starts a unique story then the next member continues the story following the picture provided. This team building game inculcates creative collaboration skills for adults and children alike. You can get more critical thinking and other games for Zoom here.

3. Shrinking Vessel

Critical thinking can be difficult to master with brain training; however, with fun team building games such as shrinking vessel, it becomes effortless. The activity starts with dividing members into small teams. Each group has to work together to fit into a shrinking space until; there is no room in between. The boundary can be made of cones or a rope. This game equips you with teamwork and problem-solving skills .

4. It’s a Mystery

Many people love a good mystery, and this can be exciting when people work in groups. In this critical thinking game for adults, each team member is given a numbered clue. In order to solve this mystery, for instance, if you are told to find the missing eggs, teams must work together following the clues in order. Solving this case might require the groups to move around to uncover more clues to solve the mystery. This game is important because it teaches you problem-solving and communication.

5. The Worst-Case Scenario

The objective of this activity is to foster teamwork. In this case, every team has to collaborate to come up with a list of must-have items in extreme circumstances. The members are divided into smaller groups; then the instructor explains an example of the worst scenario. For instance, one group could have a scenario where they are stuck in a burning house or a hijacked plane. Each group has to decide on 5 or 10 must-have items to get them to safety. The decision to choose the items must be unanimous. Among critical thinking games this activity draws out everyone’s personalities, expert knowledge and helps to prioritize.

Some managers don’t give them the attention they deserve, choosing to concentrate only on work itself, however, team building activities are important because they break the monotony and equip employees with relevant skills. Especially in the form of critical thinking games for adults, which are created with the purpose of training participants into making better decisions. These activities are beneficial to both the workers and the organization, and this boosts the output and productivity.

Waiting game for virtual meetings is a bonus in our list of games for critical thinking. This game needs input from people with different skills and knowledge base. Common goal to clean the gameboard and reveal hidden picture gets everyone talking. Logical puzzles promote discussion and breaks silence!

We hope you enjoyed this list of critical thinking team building activities and manage to implement some of them in your organization!

Authors Bio Hazel is an entrepreneur at heart and has built a regionally recognized and successful multi-million dollar businesses – Biz Group , starting the company in 1993 with just $700. The group now employs 62 professionals and provides services in the fields of design and delivery of corporate training, teambuilding, meeting facilitation and organizational health through culture and engagement.

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Virtual Team-Building Exercises

Building connections when you're working remotely.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

Remote teams have fewer opportunities to socialize, making it difficult to get to know one another or new members. This can lead to feelings of isolation and disconnection from our colleagues, and it may even lead to team conflict and reduced productivity.

Virtual team-building exercises can help remote teams to overcome these difficulties, and to drive a sense of community and shared understanding.

In this article, we'll explore why virtual team-building exercises matter, and how they can benefit your team. We'll also look at five team-building exercises that you can try with your team.

Virtual Team-Building FAQs

What are virtual activities.

Virtual activities require team members to take part remotely, using technology such as virtual meeting software, online chat, or instant messaging.

What do I need to get started with virtual team-building exercises?

Reliable video conferencing technology, and the skills to use it. Ideas for activities that will help to build teamworking skills. And, most importantly, good facilitation skills. Aim to keep the exercises moving so that people stay engaged.

What are some virtual team-building challenges?

You may sometimes encounter problems with the technology or with your internet connection. Virtual team building can also take longer to produce the desired results.

Why Virtual Team-Building Is Important

Teams can find it difficult to build rapport when they never meet "in real life." But developing and nurturing good working relationships is important for individuals to feel able to communicate openly, solve problems, and collaborate well. Virtual team building can also reduce feelings of isolation and loneliness in remote teams.

While some people question the value of team-building exercises, studies have shown that they improve teams' effectiveness and help to build trust. [1] These exercises can be equally effective for virtual teams.

Our article, Working in a Virtual Team , and Skillbook, How to Set Up a Virtual Team , provide advice on using technology to collaborate with people remotely, and on how to build effective virtual teams.

Setting up a Virtual Team-Building Exercise

Start by defining your purpose and objectives. For example, do you want to improve project management or negotiation skills? The outcome of your team-building exercise needs to meet your objective, and promote individual and team growth.

When setting up your exercises, consider how much time you have for each activity. Collaborative problem-solving exercises will take longer than quick "ice breakers."

Think, too, about the participants' cultural expectations and individual personalities. Introverts may find it harder to open up during team discussions. They may also be suffering from overstimulation if they're working from home. On the other hand, extroverts may tend to take over.

Some people on your team may not have met, so allow enough time for introductions. Where people don't know each other, use short, fun Virtual Ice Breakers to get started. And consider different ways people can contribute, so everyone has a voice.

To be truly effective, any team-building exercise must be part of a continual process, embedded into your team and organization's culture. They are not a "quick fix."

Five Virtual Team-Building Exercises

Let's look at some team-building exercises that you can use remotely with your team. They are designed to improve communication, build trust, develop listening skills, and enable your people to understand one another better.

Exercise 1: Four Facts and a Fib

This exercise is ideal for a team whose members don't know one another very well. It provides an informal platform for individuals to share personal information and build trust.

People and Materials

Suitable for groups of any size. Each participant needs a pen and paper.

Allow around 20 minutes for completion, depending on the size of the group.

Instructions

Ask the participants to write down five "facts" about themselves, one of which must be a lie – but a plausible one. For example, "I once swam with dolphins," not "I wrestled a shark!"

Allow participants enough time to write down their facts. Once they are finished, go around the group and ask each participant to read out their five facts.

As a group, guess which facts about each person are true and which is the lie. When each person has revealed their truths and lie, discuss the outcomes. Were any surprising? If so, were the truths more surprising than the lie?

Advice for Facilitator

If the group is not forthcoming at first, ask people directly which of the speaker's facts they think is a fib and why.

Exercise 2: Escape Room

An Escape Room is a themed challenge event where players collaborate to find clues, complete tasks, and solve a variety of puzzles. It can improve communication, collaboration and decision-making skills.

Escape Room games are typically suitable for teams of between three and six players, and require a significant amount of creative setup. In fact, it's often easier to use an external supplier.

Mind Tools Club members and corporate licensees can access our exclusive and original Escape Room game, "The Lost Labyrinth," comprising a downloadable game pack and Game Master Guide. See our Escape Room article for details.

The classic scenario is to escape within a time limit – usually an hour.

These vary from game to game, and can involve codebreaking, word games and math puzzles.

Advice for the Facilitator

Invest the time you need to understand and prepare the game properly. If teams get stuck, have some hints prepared to keep the action moving.

Exercise 3: Blind Origami

The purpose of this activity is to highlight the importance of listening and asking for feedback.

Any number of people, in virtual pairs.

Phone (without video) or messaging app.

A sheet of Letter or A4 size paper for each person.

Around 25 to 30 minutes.

Email one person from each pair a set of origami instructions. You can get these from many hobby websites. Try origame.me , for example.

The person with the instructions should guide their partner (the receiver) through the steps to create an origami structure, via messaging or videoconferencing software (but with the camera turned off).

The receiver can ask questions, request clarification, and offer feedback during the call.

When each group has finished, participants can turn their cameras back on to see whether the receiver got the origami structure right.

Rotate around the groups to see how they're getting on. When each group has finished, ask the partners to switch roles and repeat the exercise with a different design.

Once the second exercise has been done, ask participants how accurate each structure was. How difficult was it to listen and follow verbal instructions? How good was the feedback provided? Use the answers to identify areas where each pair could improve their listening and feedback skills.

Bring everyone back into the meeting to share some thoughts on listening effectively, and get them to think about some takeaways.

Exercise 4: Scrabble Scramble

This fun activity is designed to trigger creative thinking, encourage collaboration, and develop communication. It works best when you use a virtual meeting package like Zoom, which enables teams to split off into virtual breakout rooms.

This exercise is suitable for groups of approximately 12 or more. You'll need a bag of Scrabble tiles, and participants will need pens and paper.

Allow 20 minutes for completion.

Assign two or three letters chosen at random to each person.

Then split the group randomly into teams. The exercise will work best with six to nine people per team.

Ask each group to create as many words as they can in 10 minutes using their letters. Before starting, outline the rules below to the group:

• Each letter tile can be used only once in each word.
• Words must be three or more letters.
• Plurals of an already used word are not allowed. For example, you can have "tree" or "trees" but you can't have both.
• Proper names are not allowed, e.g. place names or forenames.

Each team can swap up to two of their letters before they start if they wish.

Teams get two points for three-letter words, three points for four-letter words, and so on. The longest word earns a bonus of five points.

Make clear whether or not teams are allowed to use a dictionary. If appropriate, offer a prize for the highest team score and longest word. Ask the teams to reflect on what they've learned. How did they work together to build words? Who took the lead? Who had the best ideas, and how did they arrive at them?

Exercise 5: Lost at Sea

This activity emphasizes decision making, collaboration, and critical thinking.

Teams of about five or six people. You can download our worksheet for the exercise here . Each participant needs their own copy.

Flexible, but aim for 25 to 40 minutes.

Give your team members a scenario where they're stranded at sea with just a handful of objects. They have to rank the objects in order of how useful they'd be in helping the group to survive. They should work individually first, and then as a team.

Divide participants into their teams, and provide everyone with a ranking sheet .

Step 1: 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.

Step 2: 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.

Step 3: Ask each group to compare their individual rankings with their collective ones, and consider why any scores differ.

Step 4: Now read out the "correct" order, collated by the experts at the U.S. Coast Guard. You can find that here . Participants should add these to the sheet.

Step 5: Have the teams consider why they made the choices they did, and evaluate their performance against the experts' choices.

Ideally, teams will arrive at a consensus decision where everyone's opinion is heard. If discussions are dominated by a few people, draw the quieter people in so that everyone is involved. But explain why you're doing this, so that people learn from it.

Virtual team-building exercises are a great way to improve communication, build trust, increase creativity, reduce conflict, and help your team members to understand one another better.

They're also a useful way for people to get used to remote meetings and videoconferencing software.

Holding these exercises regularly gives your team members fun ways to interact and get to know one another. It encourages them to connect and to collaborate, and this can benefit your team and the organization as a whole.

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Critical Thinking Team Building Activities for Adults

During the pandemic, new formats of working were introduced, which made it possible for workers to complete most of their every day tasks through online platforms. As a result, remote team-building is now one of major challenges faced by companies whose employees work at home. While it's fairly easy for teams to build their team in the traditional offline setting, managers may encounter the same issues when trying build relationships within their remote teams.

Virtual team-building events for remote groups are the right way to go if you're looking enhance team collaboration and engagement of employees and enhance the overall atmosphere in your team. Your online team should not be solely about work especially when informal interactions have proved to boost the effectiveness of teams.

One way to get started on remote team-building activities is to invite your employees in brief virtual meetings during their breaks. Weljo offers a range of interesting options for virtual team members starting from simple chats to online office games, to yoga sessions and physical workouts through a virtual conference. Continue reading to learn more about the significance and benefits of team bonding via virtual technology.

Critical Thinking Team Building Activities for Adultswith Weljo

Team setting up for remote workers common errors.

Before implementing the virtual team building activities within your company, know what is best avoided in the first place. Virtual event programs often do not succeed due to other issues that prevent teams from functioning efficiently. To ensure that your employees are engaged at their maximum capacity, work at removing the problems listed below.

1. Mixing up the Roles

Remote work can become the burden of your company when there's no clear boundaries between the responsibilities of each worker. This might result in overworking of some employees, as well as slowness of your virtual staff.

Moreover, not only the job responsibilities of every member of the team has to be clearly stated However, the job description should be made clear to other employees. This will allow everyone to know what their contribution to the business is and how they can assist.

2. Conflicting Team Members

We are all human and when working in the virtual world, conflict could arise. For people working in person, these kinds of situations are easy to deal with. The team leader can choose to either separate the workers such that their actions do not coincide or find a solution to those common issues or avert the conflict by negotiating possibilities of communication that meet the needs of both parties.

When employees work remotely, the conflict might be hard to identify in the first place. A group-building activity which can help in learning about all employees' concerns or complaints to other employees could be suggested. If the conflict has already appeared within the team, provide suggestions on ways of solving it or give your team methods to resolve personal clashes.

In order to improve team morale, it is necessary for creating a comfortable environment for everyone to work in. Furthermore, once any challenges faced by the team online are overcome it is possible for healthy communication to be reinstated as well.

3. Poor Information Exchange

If you're talking about communication within a team that works remotely, it's vital to have channels of information which everyone can access. People who are involved in common information systems will work more efficiently, since the time of searching for any necessary data will be reduced.

Remote teams that are productive engage through active information exchange which lets them communicate their accomplishments and contribute to the goal of the group. In the event of a daily video call or an online platform where different workers post their thoughts A reliable communication system is required to be developed.

4. No Trusting Relationships Between Remote Workers

When there is no trust between the employees, the various aspects of the job are ineffective. In the case of an employee, for instance, they might become isolated in terms of contributing new ideas, communicating their opinions, or providing details that other team members could find useful. Virtual offices can also be an problem of feeling isolated and not being on the same wavelength as others.

This is another aspect that makes virtual team building essential. Engaging in team building exercises for remote teams will aid in developing relationships between team members and also facilitate communication. Online team building activities can be a fantastic opportunity for employees to show their personalities that others may not recognize.

Thus, teamwork that is remote can be quite difficult. But that doesn't necessarily mean that developing a cosy and productive culture for remote employees is not possible. By implementing efficient virtual team-building programs and virtual games, like the ones provided by Weljo, you will be able to connect with your team members and gain positive results.

Critical Thinking Team Building Activities for Adults - Weljo

Team building activities benefits for remote employees.

To build strong remote teams, proper virtual activity should be implemented. When team leaders begin the concept of team building online you will see a range of interpersonal and working aspects are improved and make it easier for teams to achieve the same goals.

If you're not sure whether your virtual Team actually needs to build a team, take a look at the following enhancements that are a result of these kinds of activities:

• Employees take part more actively to the process of work and growth of the organization;
• The turnover rate has decreased;
• Corporate culture has been developed and appreciated by employees;
• The competitive spirit will increase the engagement of the entire team.
• Employees divide the work among themselves and prevent burning out and overload;
• The workflow is effective;
• The sharing of information and knowledge among team members can make the work more efficient;
• Employees are content with their working environment.
• The group stays in touch with one another despite they are at different locations.
• Employees join forces over a common company goal.

Virtual team-building exercises are essential for any modern-day company that wants to see its workers succeed. Implementation of team-building activities and bonding methods creates a healthy work environment and increases motivation for employees. Team leaders should help their remote team members to take part not only in their daily work, but also in the virtual team activities as well.

To get remote teams involved in your virtual team-building ideas experiment with different methods to make your virtual meetings exciting and enjoyable. If you are not sure how to transform an event into a jolly activity or to bring your virtual teams closer to one another, continue reading for some suggestions.

Team Setting up Remote Teams

Virtual team building activities do not need to be big events which require high levels of organization. In fact, daily virtual conference calls with colleagues for discussions about off-work things or simply to have an enjoyable time together could prove more beneficial instead of a huge team-building celebration that happens once every year.

Recent research has shown that the factors of a productive remote team are the amount of energy put into the interactions, communication between workers, and the interaction between groups of various specializations within the company. One online team-building activity that can help improve all these areas is taking virtual breaks.

Weljo can provide teams and corporations of any size and sphere of work methods of incorporating healthy communication tools. A virtual break-time conference call can be made easier when the workers have a choice of how they spend in their leisure time after the working day. By adding Weljo to the video software for conferencing you like is one of the most efficient methods of virtual team building.

Team Building Tools That Work

With the help of Weljo, workers can regulate the duration of their breaks, ranging from 5 to 30 minutes, and also the number of participants for the virtual gathering. Team members can engage in virtual group games, or take coffee breaks with the guidance of Weljo bot. Online games are a great occasion for workers to unwind and talk to each other in a casual manner while having enjoyment and relaxing.

Taking care of your team's mental health is just as important. To practice mental health care practices, you can introduce your workers to videoconference calls that include guided meditations, or simple physical exercises to aid in relaxation after a long and tiring day. Working on team building via video is not a difficult task when there is an opportunity for your employees to interact with each other after a Zoom call or Microsoft Teams conference.

Utilizing a virtual team-building tool like Weljo Workers will be less isolated, even when they work from home. Communication between team members is a gradual process of building trust and, consequently, make the work process more productive. What is more, the impression of unity in regular virtual break-ups will motivate the team members to remain in the team for long periods of time.

Why Weljo Works for Virtual Team Building

A lot of companies have added Weljo breaks to other virtual events that facilitate team building. This tool is simple to use, as it has many customizable features that allow workers to make their breaks as comfortable and productive as they possibly can.

A good example is the chance to modify the duration of the break in any interval between five and thirty minutes is a great way to ensure that you are able not to get lost in the midst of important team meetings. The fun and interactive team building breaks can be with two or a whole team, depending on the preference and duration. Chat briefly about films you've recently experienced, or participate in an active virtual dance with your whole body bit.

Another advantage of Weljo is the way it helps to connect employees based on their activities. Find a colleague who shares similar interests or who likes to spend their free time similar to you and take advantage of breaks.

Whatever your online conference is all your data will be secure. All the connections are protected by safe algorithms that don't transmit any personal information of workers in any location.

Weljo is used by the majority of companies' online communication tools, like Slack, MS Teams, Zoom, MS Outlook, Gmail and Google Calendar. So, taking a break is just a couple of clicks away. Automated bots will offer participants with tips on how to spend a good time together with colleagues and build their bonds.

Virtual Team Building Takeaway

In today's world as everyone shifts towards working remotely It is an uphill task to keep the employees involved as well as active within the team. Prior to this, common office gatherings and social events can aid in enhancing the trust and communication among employees. With everyone working from home, it's become a lot harder. A lack of team-building activities can result in feelings of loneliness, disinterest on the job, and problems getting healthy connections with other workers.

Fortunately, modern challenges have provided modern solutions. When you regularly implement virtual team building activities management and leaders are able to form the most powerful teams both in terms of working productivity and inter-personal connections.

Playing a game of online team-based trivia game, celebrating your successes by enjoying virtual hours as well as being environmentally conscious by taking part in the challenge of a virtual trash bin: There are many ways to bond together.

Increase the Performance of Your Team with Weljo

Implementing tools like Weljo will help any remote team improve their communication capabilities and active listening. It can also motivate them to push their work beyond a leisurely break and establish trust, which is important for a successful business. Team building, particularly for virtual working teams, is a process that should not be ignored if you would like your team to efficiently work towards the common goal.

The team members should be invited to take part in fun breaks on Weljo in which they can meet with friends and colleagues, have tea to boost their energy or converse about the most recent news. informal chats are as vital to working than the performance of formal tasks, so do not take them lightly!

Invite your team members to join Weljo now and watch them build strong relationships with each other. Similar to that, you will notice improved results at work as well as lower rate of turnover. Play games with friends as well as take care of your psychological wellbeing, or discuss something that you are fascinated by using simple Weljo tools. The motivation, and the effectiveness of the remote team begins with a few small steps, and you are able to take them today!

Frequently Asked Question -- FAQ

How do you build a team in remote teams.

Team building is a thing that everyone in remote teams should be attentive to. There are lots of activities you can introduce in your online working environment in order to allow your team to more productive and to enjoy the process. For example, online games can be utilized. Another option is to arrange breaks that allow employees to converse and enjoy their spare time how they like.

What are the activities for building teams remotely?

Remote team building comprises the techniques employed to build trust between workers as well as to improve their communication and involve them in the working process. Through the introduction of appropriate activities into the group, the effectiveness as well as the outcomes of general work increase dramatically.

How can team building be carried out in virtual reality?

Modern technology permits us to implement different team bonding techniques as well as virtual. The team can hold virtual meetings to discuss various off-work things and have informal chats to increase their trust each other. Additional activities that are enjoyable, like exercising remotely, or taking a break for coffee with other co-workers, can be arranged as well.

How can you be productive together as a team via remote?

To reduce the risk of burnout as well as feelings of being a part of a group that is remote Different methods of team bonding need to be utilized. These could vary according to the preferences of your group.

More articles:

• Finance Team Building Games
• Team Building Activities for Engineers
• Virtual Puzzles for Team Building
• Virtual Puzzle Team Building
• Meaningful Team Building Activities
• Free Disc Team Building Activities
• Funniest Team Building Activities
• Team Building Yoga
• Coat of Arms Team Building Activity

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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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And stay updated, related articles.

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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!

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Skill-based team building

5 critical thinking team building activities for adults [research-based]

This just in: Critical thinking is one of the top 10 job skills of the future.

While that's not entirely shocking, most leaders aren't sure how to develop critical thinking. If you're one of those people, we've compiled five activities that will sharpen your team's skills and bring them closer together.

Dive deeper:   Reverse-engineering Google - Team building for high-performance teams.

How employers see critically thinking employees 

Thanks to critical thinking, you can stand out during the recruitment process and excel throughout your career. But what makes a powerful workplace critical thinker?

In 2020, the Journal of Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues (JESI) published a phenomenography study dedicated to an average employer's expectations from their workers . 

It identified 3 most-valued "categories" of critical thinking at the workplace : 

• Decisions to act here and now. Quick decision-making makes problem-solving and crisis management easier. To master this type of critical thinking, you need to take responsibility for your actions and opinions. 
• Verified and assured decisions to act. Here, team players driven by the company's values stand out. Learn to manage conflicts, highlight each others' strengths, and work as a team for the good of the organization. 
• Innovative decisions for operational improvement. This aspect of critical thinking encourages you to work with others and socialize, finding solutions that will improve the existing processes in your company. 

As you can imagine, it's pretty difficult to come up with a training that would cover all three specifics at once. Instead, work on each of the critical thinking categories on their own.

Anna Kvasnevska

Team Building Expert & Writer

Large groups

Prep required

Share fun facts and bond with a team quiz

Have your participants choose from a list of questions they’d like their coworkers to answer about them, before watching as they guess the right answer.

share-fun-facts-and-bond-with-a-team-quiz

Run a guided recognition activity

run-a-guided-recognition-activity

Organize a virtual cooking class

Hire a professional chef to help your team cook a delicious lunch or dinner. May be difficult for co-workers with families. To find providers and get tips, read our blog about virtual cooking classes.

organize-a-virtual-cooking-class

Hire a stand-up comedian

hire-a-stand-up-comedian

No items found

Table of contents

Stop googling ideas. Get a long-term team building plan.

Critical thinking team building games to practice acting here and now.

According to the JESI research, this type of critical thinking directly relates to your internal inspiration and courage. You need to believe that what you decide is right and act accordingly . 

Classical team building activities like survival simulation and escape rooms are perfect for this practice. 

1. Take part in survival simulation activities

Survival simulation challenges your on-the-spot decision-making. This type of exercise puts you in situations where you need to think fast as if your life depends on it. 

2. Go to an escape room

Carefully scripted challenges of modern escape rooms work similarly to the survival simulations. It forces you to act here and now, knowing that your decisions will affect the rest of the team.

This kind of team building is perfect for remote teams , as you can do the most sophisticated escape rooms online ! 

Critical thinking team building activities for adults who want to make verified decisions

This type of employer-oriented critical thinking helps you understand professional activities better. Here, it's not just about finding the right solution. Instead, it's about discovering as many solutions as possible and justifying them . 

Try team building activities dedicated to research and group problem-solving, like the timely classics: SWOT analysis or group debates. 

3. Make a SWOT analysis together

SWOT analysis is a popular marketing framework for analyzing a project's Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It encourages research, outside-of-the-box reasoning, and teamwork. So it also makes a fruitful critical-thinking team building experience! 

4. Hold a debate

Another great way to practice making verified decisions is by holding a debate-style team building event. This way, you'll get valuable experience backing up your statements with facts. Also, you will practice public speaking and argumentation - the other two highly-valued professional skills.

Build engaged teams with zero effort

Critical thinking team building activities to promote innovation.

You can use critical thinking to drive innovation and change. Innovators feel safe sharing their ideas and are ready to become leaders . For this, focus on team building activities that promote communication , creativity, and empathy . 

There are many team building activities for work that promote these behaviors. But today, we wanted to share the one that encourages innovation particularly well:

5. Create a vision board with your team

Think of a company you'd be proud to represent. Brainstorm the values it stands for. Present the opportunities it opens for the employees and the clients. Highlight the good things you already have. And think about what you could do as a team to turn it into reality. 

This powerful team building exercise works on many levels:

• It allows you to appreciate the benefits you may be taking for granted ;
• It demonstrates what goals and values you share with your team ;
• It creates a sense of direction for the positive impact you could have on the company;
• It promotes creativity, critical thinking, and trust among the participants. 

All these critical thinking team building activities work for remote teams as well as the on-site ones and are affordable ! All you need is a reliable virtual conference platform (like Veertly !) and some of the must-have software to make your online team building feel like a face-to-face one. 

Have fun and drive the change you want to see! 

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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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The Best Problem-Solving & Critical Thinking Team Building Activities, Games & Ideas! Virtual & In-person!

January 19, 2023

Eugene Alcide

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"Problem-solving is arguably one of the most crucial skills and aptitudes for your team to develop. Improving your team's problem-solving skills will enhance the creativity and innovation aptitudes of your team! When you incorporate critical thinking into a fun and engaging team-building activity, you're onto a winner!"

In most cases, teams can see problems and complications as a barrier. Critical thinking team building activities allow your team to widen their train of thought to see roadblocks as opportunities for growth, personal development, and innovation! It is one of the most important skills to develop with your team. No matter what your job title is, you will always experience roadblocks and complications, problem-solving games are one of the best ways to not only improve employee engagement but also help develop your teams' soft skills! So let's dive straight into our list!

1. Virtual Escape Rooms

Virtual escape rooms take our number one spot when it comes to problem-solving and critical thinking ideas. Escape games require strategy as well as an out-of-the-box thought process in order to get through the action-packed puzzles, red hearings, and brain-teasing moments. This activity is the perfect way to improve your team's communication whilst improving their problem-solving skills. Virtual escape rooms are fun to play and will always keep your team on their toes!

Arctic Survival - Will see your team take part in an arctic expedition and you've suddenly been separated from your main group! It's cold, it's dark and the storm is closing in! You'll need to use everything available to you inside any shelters you can find as you unlock riddles and clues and take on 3 exciting levels! Your team will need to use image recognition and augmented reality to get through all of the interactive challenges! Play Now

Art Heist - Don't panic, but you've just been framed for an art heist and even worse, you're locked in the art gallery! You'll need to use the clues around you to escape before the police arrive. You are 100% innocent, but think of how it will look if you don't get out in time and the police arrive, you'll need a day to explain the mix-up! Your team will use the interactive clues and challenges to see if you can crack the code to make it out in time. Find those clues to avoid spending a life behind bars! Play Now

Zombie Apocalypse - Calling all The Walking Dead Fans! In this suspenseful game, your team will be virtually transported to a post-apocalyptic, zombie-infested state of New York. The aim is to survive, just like in The Walking Dead! You'll need to hurry and complete 12 sets of challenges across 3 levels. Each level will comprise of puzzles, codebreaking, challenges, and riddles! There will even be the use of Google Street View and what3words, which will really immerse your team into the location! Play Now

2. CSI Team Building Jury Games

Nothing says problem-solving quite like Jury service games ! Your team will immerse yourselves into the courtroom to observe some very complex cases! This is the perfect team building game for really challenging your team's problem-solving and critical thinking skills, as your team will need to dive into evidence files, read witnesses' statements and even listen to relevant phone calls to form your narrative. There is so much for your team to unpack and it will really challenge your team to apply their critical thinking, whilst working together and communicating! Jury games are full of loads of red hearings, so be sure not to take everything at face value. You'll also need to decide if the defendant is guilty or innocent!

MacLean House Jewellery Heist

The case of solving a high-end jewelry heist which is definitely a case of organized crime! Your team will need to decide the fate of a man that is currently standing trial. You'll have to review the case files and evidence all in the name of deciding if the defendant is innocent or guilty! A man's fate is in your team's hands! Play Now

The Vanderwit Murder

Your team will need to decide the fate of a father who is standing trial for the supposed murder of his son! You'll need to put your detective and critical thinking hats on to decide whether you think he is guilty or innocent! Be sure to go through the evidence thoroughly, as with any jury case there will always be some red hearings! Play Now

3. Murder Mystery Team Building Activities

Murder mystery games are another favorite of ours. These games are perfect for encouraging your team to apply both critical and problem-solving logic to the situation being analyzed. Your team will need to balance speed and precision to investigate the murder. Strategy is so important with these games as naturally, everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, and delegating the tasks to suit everyone's strengths will also help your team to improve their communication and overall cohesion. Most importantly, murder mystery games are fun and when it comes to bringing teams together, fun is one of the most important elements to consider!

Murder On The Train

We've got some bad news, there's been a murder! We're hoping your team can help us solve this case, so be sure to bring your best detectives in order to solve this mystery. You'll need to work together to solve the clues, piece together the evidence and work out who the killer is. The train conductor, Raul will be your best guide for this, or will you suspect him as well? You'll have just 1 hour to catch the killer! Play Now

Murder On The Slopes

You and your team are on your way to a wonderful ski resort when things suddenly take a deadly turn! One of the resort's staff has gone missing! Everyone is now considered a suspect and it's up to you and your team to figure out who the murderer is. The aim of the activity is to earn as many points as possible but more importantly, find out who the killer is. The evidence board will be your best friend in this situation. So get ready to uncover clues via augmented reality as well as some red-hearing interactive challenges. Will your team solve this chilling case in time? Play Now

Manor House Murder

7 people attended a school reunion, but only 6 left alive! We need you and your team to explore the manor house, work through the evidence and catch the killer before it's too late! As top detectives, you'll need to use the interactive evidence and examine the witness cards as you progress your way through the crime scene. Get ready to use image recognition as well as augmented reality to try to piece together the jigsaw in order to create a timeline to catch the elusive killer! Grab your magnifying glasses, check for fingerprints and catch the killer before it's too late! Play Now

4. The Pitch

Nothing says critical thinking and problem solving like The Pitch . The Pitch is a team game based on the popular US and UK tv show, The Apprentice! Your team will work together to create a product, as part of the process, you'll develop, market, and pitch your ideas to see if you can make a case to be on the winning team! Strategy will be key here, as you'll need to delegate tasks that play to each individual team member's strengths. You'll even need to pick your own project manager, just like The Apprentice! Get ready to create marketing, finance, and design teams as you head to the studio to design your product and logo to bring your team's vision to light! Play Now

Why Organize a Problem-Solving Team Activity?

Bringing your team together is always a good way of improving team comradery! It's even better when you combine fun into an activity that helps develop and encourages your team to build on their problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. Why not view our range of indoor team games , office party games , and virtual team building activities ?

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Virtual team events ideas for team building.

Whether your team is fully remote or working hybrid-style, spending time together in a non-work context is crucial. It helps members connect to one another better, improves collaboration and productivity, and it’s a good way to get to know one another better.

Virtual team events might seem difficult or challenging to coordinate, but it’s still essential to organize some form of team-building. The key is to first have your core members because there are plenty of examples of team building gone wrong without these core individuals. We’ll explore virtual team events in more detail for this article and provide some inspiration for your next event.

What are Virtual Team Events?

Virtual team events are fun office events that are held over video conferencing software such as Zoom, Skype, Microsoft Teams, or any other video software that your company uses. Like an in-person event, virtual team building exercises or events are all about team-building, learning more about one another, and creating a friendly atmosphere so that everyone can feel more comfortable with other team members.

What Team Activity Can be Done Virtually?

There are many virtual team building activities that you can do online. In addition, many types of events that were generally done in person, such as escape rooms and happy hours, have now migrated over to be virtual. Activities can include virtual team building challenges, a virtual game, activities, casual happy hours, and more.

Why Your Business Should Host Virtual Events for Team Members

For remote employees and remote workers, a virtual team building activity can effectively boost morale, cut down some of the virtual meetings, and help team members connect better with each other. What makes virtual team building important is that it has many benefits for companies and remote employees.

Here are a few reasons why you should consider a team building activity:

• Makes employees happy: Remote team building is a great way to let everyone relax, and it shows you appreciate their hard work
• Improves collaboration: Working together can be difficult for remote employees – especially new team members, but a virtual team event helps them get to know other team members and improve how they work together.
• Understand working styles: Depending on the virtual team building games, employees can also get to know each other’s working styles and thought processes, so it’s a form of virtual team bonding.
• It’s fun! A team-building game or challenge is a fun way to break the monotony of team meetings. It’s a different kind of virtual conference call, so it gives them something to look forward to.
• Boosts company culture: Virtual or hybrid teams that have fun and work well together make for great work, and it also helps with recruiting new employees when it’s a good work environment.

Tools for Virtual Team Building Activities

The main tool you will need for virtual team building activities is a video conferencing software such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts, or any other video conference software. Encourage remote teams to sit in a quiet room with a good internet connection to make the most of the events.

Team members will also need a webcam or camera to ensure they can be seen. Depending on the activity, team members can also dial in to the video call through their phone if they would prefer to not use their computer.

8 Virtual Team Event Ideas

1. virtual team trivia.

Team building games like virtual team trivia are a great way to engage the entire team and are super fun! You can encourage team members to create their own themed trivia based on their interests. Or you can use trivia templates online to make your own version. Plus, you can choose one team member to be the quizmaster and host the event to make the virtual format more engaging.

2. Virtual Dance Party

Another fun virtual team building event is to host an online dance party for remote team members. Blast some fun music over a virtual call, and let everyone get loose. You can host dance-offs on the video call for employees to participate in or let everyone freestyle for a good time.

3. Virtual Happy Hours

Virtual happy hours can be a good way to make a virtual meeting fun and a little more casual. You can have drinks delivered to remote team members if possible. Or you can ask them to bring a drink of choice to the team meeting and host your own happy hour.

4. Virtual Escape Room

Virtual Escape Room – The Escape Game Remote Adventures

An escape room is one of the best virtual team building exercises since it combines fun and critical thinking. You can work with an external vendor to create a virtual escape room or make your own. Split your remote team into smaller teams, and encourage collaboration and innovative thinking to make their escape.

5. ‘Read my Lips’

Fun virtual games like Read My Lips are one of the best ways to engage a team remotely since it’s a stress reliever but also has an element of critical thinking. Ask one person to mute their microphone to play the game, but have their camera on and say something. Other members post their guesses in the Zoom chat or say them out loud within a minute.

6. Virtual Scavenger Hunt

Games like virtual scavenger hunts are virtual team builders since it provides an opportunity for teams to bond. Teams can solve puzzles or riddles to get ahead and/or track down items in their home. It’s a great way for online teams to get moving while still having fun.

7. Virtual Murder Mystery

A virtual murder mystery is one of the best ways to get teams to be creative and think out of the box! You can provide members with their roles and characters before the meeting and then get the team together to start the mystery. Teams must work together to identify the murderer in their midst, making it an interesting game for everyone.

8. Virtual City Tour

Many remote team building activities are gaining popularity, but one of the best ones is a virtual city tour. Whisk your team away to exotic locations and cities, all from the comfort of their home. You can create an itinerary and have a tour guide take the team to famous landmarks and sites with virtual activities to keep everyone excited and engaged.

How do You Make a Team Event Virtually?

You can plan a virtual activity for teams in many different ways. For example, you can use video conferencing software to get remote teams together and plan out activities beforehand.

You can email your remote team beforehand, letting them know what’s to come, or keep it more of a surprise. Make sure that remote teams have the video conference details ahead of time, and don’t have other meetings or conflicts during the time.

What are the best virtual team building events?

There are many options for team building activities that team members can be excited about. Some of the best virtual team building events for remote teams include:

• Virtual happy hours
• Virtual murder mystery
• Virtual dance party
• Virtual games such as a scavenger hunt or Read My Lips
• A virtual city tour

How do you boost team morale virtually?

You can boost team morale virtually through online team games, or another online team building activity such as online office games. It can make virtual meetings fun, and activities for remote teams are a great opportunity for team bonding.

How do you engage virtual teams?

As a team leader, it can be difficult to keep virtual teams engaged and interested. Some of the best activities to engage virtual teams and remote workers include:

• Virtual team games
• Team happy hours
• Virtual trivia games
• Host casual meetings and virtual hangouts regularly

How do you celebrate team events virtually?

You can celebrate team events virtually, even with distributed teams thanks to video conferencing software. You can play fun online games, or host a casual hangout with a spotlight on the team event. Virtual celebrations can be a great way to recognize a remote team online and show that virtual team building matters to your company.

Are virtual events hosted live or pre-recorded?

Generally, virtual events are hosted live, but it can depend on the activity. Virtual games, such as where team members solve puzzles or a scavenger hunt are live. If the virtual event features speeches and talks, they can be pre-recorded so that team members can watch on their own time.

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25 Totally Not-Lame Virtual Team Building Activities

By marcelina castro September 12, 2023

In today's digital age, remote work has become increasingly common, making it all the more crucial to maintain team unity and foster connections in virtual settings. Team building is a timeless way to boost morale, improve team dynamics, and just have some fun. But let's face it; not all virtual team building activities are created equal. Some can feel forced, awkward, or just plain lame. To keep things fresh and engaging, here are 25 virtual team building activities that your team will genuinely enjoy.

1. Virtual Escape Rooms

Much like their real-world counterparts, virtual escape rooms offer puzzles, clues, and mysteries, all delivered through a digital platform. Teams collaborate to decipher codes, find hidden objects, and unravel the story—all against the clock. It's a fantastic way to hone problem-solving skills and team synergy.

2. Virtual Candle Making Classes

Tap into your team's creative side with virtual candle making classes. These workshops can guide participants through choosing fragrances, understanding the different types of waxes, and mastering the pouring technique—all from the comfort of their homes using kits sent to them. As a bonus, everyone gets a handmade candle as a keepsake! MiGi Cera offers both virtual as well as in-person candle making workshops and classes.

3. Online Trivia Nights

Who doesn't love a good trivia challenge? Platforms like Kahoot or QuizUp allow you to customize your quizzes or use pre-made ones. Categories can range from general knowledge to industry-specific topics. It's a fun, competitive way to test knowledge and learn something new.

4. Virtual Cook-Along Sessions

Pick a recipe, send out the ingredient list in advance, and get everyone cooking together. Whether it's a main dish, a dessert, or a cocktail, seeing your colleagues try their hand at cooking can be both entertaining and bonding.

5. Remote Karaoke Sessions

Unleash the inner divas of your team with a virtual karaoke party. Using apps like Smule or Karafun, team members can belt out their favorite tunes and perhaps discover hidden talents among their colleagues.

6. Online Book Clubs

For teams that love to read, setting up a monthly book club can be a thoughtful way to engage. Discuss plot twists, character developments, and personal interpretations, fostering deeper conversations and insights.

7. Virtual Fitness Challenges

Whether it's a daily step challenge, a yoga session, or a dance-off, keeping fit together can be both fun and beneficial for wellness. Apps like MyFitnessPal or Fitbit can help track and motivate team members.

8. Remote Art and Craft Workshops

From painting to jewelry making, offer a range of craft workshops that cater to different interests. It's a calming way to introduce relaxation and creativity into your team's routine.

9. Virtual Board Games

Platforms like Tabletopia or Board Game Arena offer a plethora of board games that can be played online. From strategy games to classics, there's something for everyone.

10. Virtual Coffee Breaks

Schedule a daily or weekly short break where team members can grab their favorite beverage and just chat—about work, life, or anything under the sun.

11. Virtual Mystery Murder Party

Platforms like Zoom or Microsoft Teams can be used to enact a gripping murder mystery where team members play different characters. Who done it? It's a game of sleuthing and storytelling!

12. Remote DIY Challenge

Give a DIY challenge such as building a desk organizer using household items or creating a pen holder from recyclable materials. It's all about creativity and resourcefulness.

13. Virtual Wine or Coffee Tasting

Send out samplers or encourage team members to get their own, and host a tasting session. Discuss flavor notes, preferences, and learn something new about beverages.

14. Online Pictionary or Charades

Using virtual whiteboards or just the video call platform, teams can play rounds of Pictionary or Charades, ensuring plenty of laughs and fun.

15. Virtual House Tours

A fun, informal way for team members to showcase a bit of their personal space. It can be as elaborate as a house tour or as simple as showing off a favorite corner of their room.

16. Remote Gardening Club

Share updates on houseplants, give tips on nurturing that kitchen garden, or even pot a plant together during a call. It's a green, serene way to connect.

17. Online Meditation and Relaxation Sessions

A mindfulness coach or a guided meditation video can help teams relax, destress, and find their inner calm together.

18. Virtual Costume or Theme Days

From crazy hat days to favorite movie characters, having themed virtual meetings once in a while can add a splash of fun and color to the workday.

19. Remote Language Learning Lunches

Pick a language and learn together. Have lunch sessions where everyone tries basic phrases or even just greetings. ¡Hola! ¿Cómo estás?

20. Virtual Pet Parade

A fun break where team members can introduce their pets, share cute quirks, or even have a mini 'talent' show for the furry (or scaly or feathery) friends.

21. Online Magic Tricks Session

Hire a magician or let team members showcase simple magic tricks. It’s bound to add some magic to the mundane.

22. Remote Cultural Exchange

Let team members from different cultural backgrounds share about their traditions, festivals, or even prepare a local dish. It's a beautiful way to celebrate diversity and learn about the world.

23. Digital Scavenger Hunts

Using apps or just simple lists, create a series of items or tasks that employees need to find or do. It can be as simple as finding an odd item in their house or as challenging as performing a mini task.

24. Personal Talent Show

Let team members showcase their unique talents, whether it's juggling, playing a musical instrument, or reciting poetry. It’s a fun way to get to know the hidden talents within your team.

25. Virtual Vision Board Creation

Using platforms like Pinterest or Canva, teams can collaborate to create vision boards, sharing aspirations, inspirations, and future goals. It’s a visually engaging way to align and understand team motivations.

Building Virtually Strong Foundations: Concluding Thoughts

The shift to remote work presents challenges, but with a little creativity, it also offers numerous opportunities for teams to bond in new and engaging ways. These virtual team building activities not only enhance collaboration and camaraderie but also introduce a sense of fun, breaking the monotony of daily work routines. In the end, it’s about keeping the human connection alive, even when screens separate us. So, go ahead and dive into these activities, and watch your virtual team thrive!

Of course, as we offer remote (and in-person if you’re in the Bay Area or San Jose) candle making workshops , we’re a little biased about which activity you should choose. They’re fun, we promise!

marcelina castro

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20 of the best virtual team-building activities

Remote and hybrid work have forever changed the way teams communicate and work together. Because colleagues aren't always together in the office, it's important to find creative ways to stay connected. One of the easiest ways to do this is with regular virtual or hybrid team-building activities.

What is virtual team-building and why is it important?

Virtual team-building brings teams together by leveraging digital communication channels, like group video calls or messaging platforms, rather than in-person activities. Team-building experiences have always helped boost morale but, in the new hybrid landscape, they are critical to staving off feelings of loneliness and isolation. They also help colleagues get to know each other and build trust, which contributes to business success. Plus, workplace trust leads to a host of other benefits , like less stress and more energy at work, as well as less overall burnout.

Virtual or hybrid team-building can also lead to increased creativity, as many of these activities stretch participants' imagination or have them look at problems from new angles. And although remote or hybrid employees might be spending a lot of time already on video calls, a fun game or experience on that same screen provides a welcome respite from regular meetings.

Virtual or hybrid team-building ideas

1. start with icebreakers.

Icebreakers are a classic for a reason: they help loosen people up and are a quick way for co-workers to learn a little bit about each other. And they don't have to be tacky or forced. Take a look at this list for more inspiration.

2. Set up a happy hour

Colleagues can still catch up even if they aren't physically meeting at a bar. Enjoy some casual conversation or laughs while you virtually toast your colleagues on a job well done.

3. Play some trivia

Trivia brings out the good-natured competitive spirit in everyone. And companies like Bar None Games will host a virtual trivia event for you, so all you have to do is send the invite and get your game face on.

4. Host a virtual cooking or mixology class

Nothing brings people together more than food and drink. In this day and age, it's easy to find unique culinary experiences online. From handmade pasta classes to cocktail workshops, the options are endless.

5. Plan a team dinner

Virtually host a gathering around food to celebrate the end of a quarter or to boost morale after a tough season. Reflect on your successes and goals as you share a meal, and look forward to future times ahead.

6. Coordinate virtual coffee or lunch dates

What better way to encourage new work friends than with a round of lunch or coffee dates? Team members can use this time to cultivate relationships and open lines of communication company-wide.

7. Plan a virtual escape room

Virtual escape rooms can be just as challenging as their physical counterparts – if not more so. Having teams work together to solve problems and reach a goal outside of work is the perfect way to bolster camaraderie. Many event companies offer themed options , too.

8. Organise a video chat background contest

Challenge people to get creative with their video chat backgrounds for the next team meeting. Have participants vote on their favourites, and come up with fun prizes for the winner.

9. Coordinate a virtual book or podcast club

Discussing books or podcasts is another way to encourage relationships from afar. You could rotate the individuals who host and choose the media. Or try voting on favourites, setting deadlines, then bonding over the latest bestsellers and episodes.

10. Host a virtual gift exchange

You don't have to wait until the holidays to host a Secret Snowflake exchange. You can choose a giving theme or let individuals add their most-wanted items to a wish list. Then pick a date and do some virtual unboxing.

11. Take some personality tests

Help colleagues get to know each other deeper (so they can work together better) with a personality test share. Before the event, have team members take the Myers-Briggs or Enneagram quiz so they're ready to talk through their personality and working style.

12. Do virtual karaoke

You don't have to be in a bar to enjoy some karaoke. Ask participants to choose a song and find the instrumental track. While they belt it out, the audience members stay on mute to let the singers shine.

13. Reward hard work

Set up a team chat where people can offer kudos to each other for tackling difficult projects or being the ultimate team player. A little "feel-good" goes a long way.

14. Let co-workers share their personal passions

Everyone has an identity outside of work. Have individuals prepare five-minute presentations about their favourite thing to do. Then sit back and enjoy learning more about their non-job identities.

15. Play remote games

Not a fan of trivia? There are loads of other virtual games that can bring teams together. Activities like Pictionary, GIF battles and more can be hosted by you or by gaming companies like Weve .

16. Arrange a lunch-and-learn

Since remote and hybrid work limits the traditional water-dispenser chat, set up some informal share sessions so colleagues can talk about the projects they're working on. It's a great way to encourage collaboration and learn more about your company's different areas.

17. Host a virtual watch party

Many streaming apps have got built-in watch party features, so viewers can engage with each other from afar. Use the live chat capability to react in real time – and don't forget the popcorn.

18. Coordinate a fitness or wellness challenge

Accountability buddies work for a reason, so why can't they be colleagues? Try hosting a walkathon using digital step-counter apps or challenging participants to do daily meditation. Create a team chat to track progress and cheer each other on.

19. Do a virtual tasting

Whether it's beer, wine, chocolate or cheese, a virtual tasting event is a delicious way to bring co-workers together. Choose a theme, help everyone get the supplies, and prepare for a tasty exploration together.

20. Celebrate a milestone

Milestones deserve to be recognised even when people aren't physically together. From promotions and baby showers to work anniversaries and birthdays, you can get creative with how you celebrate your people. Try custom video chat backgrounds or sending special treats.

Wherever your teams are, Uber for Business can help you add a little something extra to your virtual team-building activities. With vouchers or gift cards , you can send Uber credit that recipients can redeem on trips or meals.

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The Counseling Palette

Mental health activities to help you and your clients thrive, 1. purchase  2. download  3. print or share with clients.

• Feb 22, 2022
• 15 min read

35 Fun & Effective Therapy Games for Kids, Teens, & Adults

Updated: 1 day ago

Therapeutic games can help build rapport and teach important concepts like coping skills.

Therapy games make therapy less intimidating, more enjoyable, and even more effective. Studies show that kids and adults learn better through play (Yenigen, 2014).

(Ready to play now? Check out this giant therapy activity game bundle.)

Play is often encouraged as a way to treat symptoms in therapies like trauma-focused CBT (Allen et al., 2017). It can be used for many purposes, modalities, and settings. Here are some examples:

Teaching CBT

DBT skills groups

Play therapy

Hospital settings

Community group therapy

Problem solving groups

Anger management groups

Classes and student groups

Individual therapy sessions

Article Contents

Coping Skills Quiz Show (teens and adults) CBT Coping Skills Game Show (all ages)

FEELOPOLY Emotions Game

CBT Island Quest Board Game

Family Feud-Style Therapy Game

CBT Lingo (Bingo)  

The Greatest DBT Board Game  

Couple's Pursuit  

Therapy Shuffle  

Feelings Jenga  

Feel, Act, & Draw  

Therapy Dice  

Emotions Match  

Happy Dragon  

Family Pursuit

Therapy Activity Bundle

As a community therapist, I found games made sessions with new teens less awkward, helped get groups of all ages more involved, and were a life-saver when I had minimal prep time.

Games are also great for getting to know your clients, and for teaching important concepts like coping skills and understanding emotions. They can work with kids, teens, families, groups, and adults–in person and during telehealth.

Some of the most fun and easiest games to play with clients are therapeutic board games . Many include discussion or learning prompts, and cover topics like feelings, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), or dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT).

Since the games are usually structured and straightforward, they may be less intimidating than regular talk sessions. You can use these tools as a way to

teach concepts, to review skills, or just to have fun and get to know each other.

Below are some fun and effective therapy games that may leave a lasting memory for you and your clients. Several options are printable PDF downloads. All are evidence-based and focus on developing and practicing skills.

1. Coping Skills Quiz Show for Teens & Adults

Great for: Teens, adults, schools, adult education, telehealth

Works with: Individual therapy, groups, in-person, telehealth

Goals:  Positive self-care, mindfulness, boundaries, coping skills, goals

This coping skills Jeopardy-type game show is created to be fun and interactive. This version is designed for teens and adults (see a kid-friendly version for all ages below, or get them both in the bundle ). It includes discussion prompts as well as some tips in each category and several hands-on group activities such as creating individual coping strategies.

The quiz show includes six categories including:

Mindfulness

Relationships

Asking for help

Setting goals

The best way to play the game is to project it in presentation mode through PowerPoint. It includes fun music and even applause options so it has a real Jeopardy game type feel. You can click through the links and move around like in a live show. If you don't like PowerPoint there is a simpler PDF option included.

Learn more , or get it as part of the giant store bundle .

2. CBT Coping Skills Game Show for All Ages

Great for: Kids, teens, young adults, adults

Goals:  Coping skills, thoughts, feelings, behaviors, mindfulness

If you're looking for a game for any age, including kids, check out this CBT coping skills Jeopardy-inspired game. I've had feedback that it worked well for third graders as well as adult nursing classes, so you can make it your own!

This edition has all different prompts compared to the teen and adult version, but does overlap in categories. Topics covered include:

Thoughts, feelings, & behaviors

Identifying emotions

Changing thoughts

Facing fears

Coping planning

The mental health game has open-ended prompts so your discussions can adapt based on your group's needs. Having some CBT knowledge is helpful, but you can also slow it down and use it as a way to teach new skills and techniques.

It's an easy low-prep activity for a group or classroom, social emotional learning, group therapy, teletherapy, and more. Learn more.

3. FEELOPOLY Emotions Game

Great for: Kids, tweens, teens, some adults and young adults

Goals:  Naming emotions, expressing feelings, validating emotions

FEELOPOLY is one of the most popular therapy games and mental health downloads available online.

It's a creative and fun emotions game. Rather than working against each other like in a Monopoly game, FEELOPY has the team working together. The goal is to work as a taskforce to "validate" all of the feelings on the board.

It covers concepts of naming feelings, validating emotions, expressing emotions, and communicating experiences. Example prompts include:

Do you have an outlets for your feelings? What's one way you express them?

What might help if you're starting to feel frustrated?

Explain how a trigger might bring up a feeling. Give an example.

The game is a PDF printable which you can start using right away. I recommend assembling it as a group with your clients. You can check out FEELOPOLY and download it here.  

4. CBT Island Quest

Great for: Kids (11+), teens, college students, families, some adults

Works with: Groups, in-person, telehealth

Goals: Learning or reviewing CBT concepts, practicing coping skills, building confidence

CBT Island Quest is a straightforward printable therapy game of discussion and prompts. Players roll or use the card instructions to move around the game.

Prompt cards are divided into mindfulness/relaxation questions and cognitive questions. Example prompts include:

You think your friend is mad at you because they cancelled your plans together. Challenge the thought.

What's a coping skill you can used when you're depressed?

What does it feel like in your body when you're relaxed?

Learn more about CBT Island Quest and download it here.

5. Family Feud Inspired Therapy Game

You might find something soothing about Family Feud, whether you grew up watching it or enjoy the new Steve Harvey version. This fun Family Feud style therapy game reviews overall wellness, mental health, and coping skills.

Each category includes wellness-related questions with six common answers on the board. Teams (or individuals) can also earn partial points for skills or helpful answers not on the board. 

Each board is followed by a more general discussion question for the group, and players can earn bonus points for participation. Categories include mindfulness, anger management, dealing with anxiety, overall wellness, and more. 

The coolest part of the game is that it’s designed in PowerPoint and has fun interactive elements that feel like a real game show. The therapist or leader plays the roll of “host” and reveals the answers when guessed, or at the end of the round. 

Learn more and order your copy of Group Feud: Coping Skills!

6. CBT Lingo (CBT Bingo)

Great for: Kids (11+), teens, college students, families, adults (adaptable for skill level/age)

Goals: Learning or reviewing CBT concepts, psychoeducation, practicing coping skills, test review

This printable game is focused on teaching CBT theory and coping skills. It includes rule variations based on your goals, the group’s experience level, and age group. It’s based on, and playable, with a real Bingo set.

Rather than just a novelty game like many therapy bingo pages, it actually includes 10 unique playing cards and 75 prompts relating to CBT. It’s great for groups, telehealth, and individual clients in-person or online.

Some of the prompts include:

What is an automatic thought?

Draw a feelings thermometer

Name a common cognitive distortion

What are the three parts of the CBT triangle?

Download the CBT Lingo game here .

7. DBT Board Game

Great for: Teens, young adults, college students, anyone familiar with DBT skills

Goals: Learning or reviewing DBT concepts, practicing the four areas of DBT skills

The Greatest DBT Board Game uses a fun carnival theme to make reviewing DBT fun and entertaining. It covers the four areas of DBT skills, including mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, distress tolerance, and emotional regulation.

Files are printable and come as PDFs.

Example prompts include:

Give an example of using opposite action to change an emotion

Think of a time you've used radical acceptance. Did it help you? Why or why not?

Describe a rude way to ask for help, versus a more effective way.

The game throws in fun elements, such as the "Emotional Roller Coaster," and the "Ferris Wheel of Distress."

Visit here to check it out and download it today.

8. Couple's Pursuit

Great for: Adults, couples

Works for: Couples homework, possibly couples sessions

Goals: Building relationships, practicing communication, expressing affection

Do you work with couples, or are you looking for a fun way to improve or build on your relationship ? Couple's Pursuit is an activity-based relationship game that includes fun categories like drawing and guessing, along with discussion topics, prompts to express appreciation, and more.

It's inspired by Trivial Pursuit, however rather than trivia questions the categories cover important relationships skills. It includes categories that focus on skills used in popular therapies like the Gottman Method. Examples include:

Showing affection

Friendship and bonding

Shared goals

Fun and recreation

Download the printable game here.

9. Therapy Shuffle

Great for: Older Older kids, teens, adults, families, groups

Works with: Groups, in-person

Goals: Learning or practicing coping skills, problem-solving, teaching concepts, building rapport

Therapy Shuffle is a therapeutic card game inspired by Fluxx, although it's slower-moving and based on coping skills. The game is complex enough to keep many teens and adults engaged.

Players choose "goals" and collect "skills" to match the goal cards. Players have to answer coping-skills related prompts to be able to play their cards and win.

The game can be played competitively or cooperatively, depending on your group. If you like you can also scrap the prompts, and play the cards as is. Learn more and download the therapy card game here.

10. Feelings Jenga

Great for: Kids, teens, adults, families, groups

Goals: Learning or practicing coping skills, understanding emotions, teaching concepts, building rapport

Jenga is a popular game among therapists–especially those who work with kids. It’s a particularly easy one to set up. You can write a prompt on each Jenga block, or add a color using markers or stickers.

You can also print out prompts on sticky paper and stick or tape them to the blocks.

Check out the pre-printed prompts from Jenga Feelings Game. They include feelings words along with prompts that encourage clients or groups to consider situations relating to emotions.

When someone successfully pulls a Jenga block out, they must also answer a question or follow a prompt to earn the point.

Sometimes the blocks are also color-coded. For example, a blue block might correspond to happy feelings. A player might then discuss a time recently that made them feel happy, or what it was like to feel that way. Or, blocks can be numbered and correspond to discussion prompts.

Some of the generic Jenga-style blocks actually come in various colors, making it easy to set up color-based categories for the game. This also works with other colorful games like pick-up sticks.

Here are some example prompts from the Feelings Jenga game stickers:

Imagine you go so angry that you felt like throwing something. Do you think it would help? Is it safe to do?

Describe what a feeling (ie sadness) feels like in your body.

What should you do if your feelings are overwhelming you.

Learn more about the prompts here.

11. Feel, Act, & Draw

Great for: Teens, young adults, college students, families

Goals: Discussing feelings, interaction, ice-breaker

Feel, Act & Draw is a mental-health version of games like charades and Pictionary.

Players round a game board while they either answer discussion prompts or draw or act out feelings scenarios. For example, if a player lands on a charades space, they might act out the feeling "sad" or the scenario "mad at my friend."

If they land on a drawing space they sketch it out, Pictionary style. And if they land on a discussion space they talk through the questions in a more traditional style. Download and print it here.

12. Cube or Dice Prompts

Goals: Learning or practicing coping skills, responding to prompts, building rapport

You can play this game with dry erase blocks, real dice, or any empty square box. Or, print these paper dice with prompts and tape them together.

Assign your own prompts to each side of the cube, or assign a corresponding question to each number on the dice. You can even use a dice app on your phone if you prefer, especially for telehealth.

This game is highly customizable, but here’s an example:

Let’s say you want to review DBT skills. Each side of the box would include a prompt such as “Name a skill to try when you feel angry.”

Someone throws the block across the ground, and then must respond to the prompt that lands face-up in order to get a point.

If you’re using real dice, then each number would represent a corresponding prompt you have written down. So if someone rolls a “2” they would answer the question you have prepared for #2 .

This is great for clients who need to move around a lot, or for a group that’s getting bored. You can also use the paper dice as an activity, or send it as homework or an assignment for telehealth. Check out the pre-printed blocks here.

13. Emotions Match

Great for: Kids

Works with: Individuals, groups

Goals: Identifying and naming emotions

Emotions Match , inspired by the traditional Match Game, helps kids match up expressions and body language with the names of feelings. For example, one card has an image of a character who looks happy. The matching card has the word "Happy" on it.

Check out this printable match game which comes in a set with several variations. If you like, you can use just the emotions, or use two copies of the traditional feelings cards.

Download and print the feelings cards here.

14. Happy Dragon

Works with: Groups, classes

The Happy Dragon emotions game is inspired by the unfortunately-named "Old Maid" game. However, players are trying to end up with the Happy Dragon to win, versus lose (as in the other game). The game uses feeling-words cards, so players are exposed to emotions vocabulary. You can also add emotion prompts to encourage discussions about feelings.

Visit here to learn more about the Happy Dragon.

15. Go Feel!

Great for: Kids, families

Works with: Individuals, groups, family therapy

Goals: Identifying and naming emotions, discussing feelings

Go Feel is based on the beloved game Go Fish, so the mechanics are easy to catch on to. Players aim to collect and match emotion cards . This helps provide them with exposure to feelings words and images. Discussion prompts can also be added to deepen the game.

To play Go Feel you need multiple matching emotion cards. Check out this download to get started.

16. Family Pursuit

Great for: Families of all kinds

Works with: Family sessions, family homework

Goals:  Communication, coping skills, showing appreciation, decreasing conflict

If you're looking for a fun family therapy game, check out Family Pursuit. It's similar to Couples Pursuit, but with new categories that are focused on bringing families together. Question categories include:

Learning about each other

Discussing positive memories

Showing appreciation for each other

Famous families trivia

Family coping skills

It's a great way to practice communication and feel closer without feeling as much pressure. It can be special for young kids and a way to coach teens into sharing more. Learn more.

17. Stop, Relax & Think Game

You can purchase Stop, Relax and Think on Amazon. It's a popular game often used in therapies like trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) to help teach emotional regulation.

The game is appropriate for kids working on anger outbursts, but may be able to help with other impulsive behaviors as well. It covers multiple coping skills, including of course the "stop, relax, and think" steps. Find it on Amazon.

18. The Talking, Feeling, & Doing Game

The Talking, Feeling, & Doing game has been around for years. It was created to help break down barriers in therapy, so children can feel more comfortable to open. Prompts vary from more basic questions to deeper ones about life history. You can get the game here on Amazon .

19. The Skittles Game

Candy sure makes it easier to talk about feelings! This game uses candy of various colors, like Skittles or M&Ms, to prompt discussion. You can use any number of prompts and activities. For example, you can divide the colors by feelings, coping skills, or mindfulness activities.

When a child chooses a color, they must answer the prompt. Then they get to eat the candy! You can imagine why this game would be popular.

20. Therapy Uno

Did you think I would skip Uno? (Actually I did and added it later.) Uno is played similarly to the Skittles game. When a player changes the color being played, they describe a type of feeling, or answer an assigned prompt.

You can play many games that involve color this way as well, such as pick-up-sticks, or color-coded therapy Jenga .

21. DIY Therapy Cards

Using a set of blank cards, or standard playing cards, add your own prompts or activities to the cards. For example, each “set” earned in traditional Go-Fish would require the player (or all players) to name a feeling word.

You can combine the prompts with a traditional game, or simply take turns drawing a card and following the prompt.

If your client is up for it, they could also create their own cards for therapy. They might list feeling words or coping skills, and act them out each time the card comes up. This version may work better for telehealth–your client can be in charge of the cards on their end.

In family therapy, you might play where each person who wins a game or scores a point gets to ask a question of another player that wouldn’t normally be well received.

For example, a parent might ask a teen why they always shut their bedroom door when they get home, or a child might ask why they never get to stay up late on weekends. The other player can earn their own point if they answer, or they can pass.

Your clients can help make up the rules of the game, as long as it involves responding to prompts at least part of the time.

Family board games can be therapeutic all on their own. Or, you can add prompts to add more depth. For example, replace Taboo cards with your own feelings or skill-based prompts. Perhaps you have to describe the feeling of anger only using physical sensations, while the other person guesses the emotion.

23. Connect-4

You may not imagine it, but when I worked with kids Connect-4 was probably the most valuable game in my office. We didn't add therapy to it at all. But the easy physical actions of the game (and simple rules) made it easy to chat while we played.

I learned all kinds of things about a child or teen's day, family, and relationships. Just keep it near your desk or in sight, and ask your client if they'd like to play. I don't think I was ever turned down.

24. Candyland

For younger kids, Candyland can be a great teaching game. You can simply play the game as is to build rapport. Or, you could talk about feelings depending on where the child lands. Having to return to the beginning is a perfect chance to talk about feelings.

25. Trivial Pursuit

The traditional Trivial Pursuit can be conveniently adapted to therapy. Simply replace the categories and make them about concepts you're learning, such as CBT skills. Or, make each space a prompt, such as discussing a feeling.

Ungame is a popular card game used in therapy. It has board game and card game versions. You can choose card prompts that are appropriate for your client. There are different levels depending on the type of topics you want to discuss. You can get the game here on Amazon .

27. Relationship Skills Card Game

This versatile game focuses on issues like social skills, conflict, and empathy building. It includes conversational prompts, icebreakers, and more. It's great for adult groups or even work settings. Check out the Relationship Skills Card Gamecards on Amazon.

28. Mindfulness Game

The Mindfulness Game is a detailed card deck with multiple activities for individuals and groups to follow. It's designed by teachers with specific activities and clear instructions. It's one of the older and most popular prompt decks. Check it out here.

29. Minecraft

Do you even know a kid who doesn't like Minecraft, even if they don't get to play it? Older kids and teens often find this game captivating. The good thing is that parents can play the game with kids, providing a modern bonding activity. During session, kids can show you what they've built and discuss what they like about the game. If you have trouble getting a tween to talk, it might be the ticket in.

30. TF-CBT Triangle App

The good folks who developed and teach TF-CBT therapy partnered to offer a fun app that helps teach basic CBT skills. While it's created as a part of the trauma therapy, it doesn't get into any trauma prompts or exposure techniques. It may be appropriate to teach the CBT triangle to younger kids. You can learn more here.

31. Creative VR Games

If you've never been inside a VR world, I encourage you to try it at least once. There are some pretty cool creative games, such as Tilt Brush by Google. If a client wanted a world where there was endless creativity and literally no physical limits, this would be it. It may be a very helpful art therapy or creative expression tool in the future.

32. Escape Rooms

Escape rooms are a great way to learn to work together in tight spots, so to speak. You don’t have to go to a literal escape room – there are kits online where you can set up your own scene and mystery. You can use them with kids, teens, adults, and even for workplace team building.

33. Scattergories

You might vaguely remember Scattegories from your childhood – it’s that game where you get a list of prompts and you try to come up with unique words that start with the same letter. You can create the same game but use therapy prompts, such as coping skills that start with T, or self-care techniques that begin with S.

If your client or group loves sports, try incorporating it in therapy. For example, you and your client could play HORSE with a basketball while you discuss the week. Even nerf games in your office can be a great icebreaker.

35. Roleplaying Games

Games like Dungeons and Dragons, and various other role playing games you can find online, provide a safe outlet for expression. Create your own scenario, or let your client take the lead if they’re familiar with the idea.

Play Around!

There really is no limit to using games in therapy. The flexibility of games can work great with telehealth. Ask the client what games they have at home.

Then they can run the game from their side, and you can provide the prompts. You may not even need a copy of the game to play from your side, depending on how complex it is.

Don't be afraid to experiment with new ideas and activities, whether you're in person or connecting via Zoom therapy. At the very least, any game used in therapy can help promote rapport with clients. They can also be a great way for groups and family members to bond.

Games might not seem like serious business, but with many clients they’re likely to get you further than traditional sitting and talking therapy sessions.

Want some easy games and activities to download use with your clients? Check out this great therapy game kit to get started, or fill your toolbox to the bring with our Entire Store Bundle .

-Jennie Lannette, MSW, LCSW, is a licensed therapist specializing in anxiety and PTSD. She has experience running therapy groups in schools, hospitals, and community settings.

-Games listed from Amazon include a small affiliate income if you make a purchase through this site.

Allen, B., & Hoskowitz, N. A. (2017). Structured Trauma-Focused CBT and Unstructured Play/Experiential Techniques in the Treatment of Sexually Abused Children: A Field Study With Practicing Clinicians. Child maltreatment , 22 (2), 112–120. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077559516681866

Yenigen, S. Play Doesn’t End in Childhood: Why Adults Need Recess too. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2014/08/06/336360521/play-doesnt-end-with-childhood-why-adults-need-recess-too

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