Fun Team Building Activities

Team spirit is great quality that helps people work better in groups. Here are some fun team building activities to help inculcate team spirit.
Fun Team Building Activities
Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success." ~ Henry Ford

Team building is not just a quality that helps kids during school, or sportsmen in their game or employees at their workplace, team building is all about developing a healthy attitude to face life. People who have the ability to work in large groups, who are able to co-ordinate with other people around them and work towards a common goal are obviously more successful who look down upon others, prefer to work alone and frown at other people’s success. Team building is an important quality that should be inculcated in children from a young age so that they grow up to be responsible and sensitive adults of the future.

Fun Team Building Activities for Children
Schools should make it a point to introduce children to tem building activities from the young age. There are many fun team-building activities for children. Some of them are as follows:

Sports:The best and perhaps the simplest way to inculcate team spirit or a team-building tendency in children is to encourage them to play group sports. Soccer, volleyball, cricket or any other games that the children can enjoy together as a team, tend to instill a sense of team building in them.

Tug of War: Yes, a simple game like tug of war can help in developing a team spirit. The children find it as a great source of entertainment as well. To make this simple game more interesting you modify it by making it a multi-way tug-of-war instead of the conventional two-way-tug-of-war.

Team Drawing: Provide the children with a huge sheet of blank canvas and provide them with all sorts of colors and brushes. Ask them to collectively make a picture, which should be painted collaboratively. You can also make multiple groups of students and make it a competition, which would encourage the children to do better.

Cooking Tasks: Give a cooking task to the team of children. For younger kids, keep the task simple enough, like making sandwiches or decorating cookies. For children who are old enough to use the oven, assign difficult tasks. Ask the children to cook up a complete meal starting with the appetizers, followed by the main course, the side dishes and the desserts.

Treasure hunt: Yes, most of us have played this game as kids. It is a fun game where every team gets clues that lead to the next destination where the next clue is hidden. The hunt for the treasure continues till the team finds all the clues and the final treasure as well. Requiring good team co-ordination and collective movement, this is a simple and fun game that instills team-building spirit amongst children.

Fun Team Building Activities For Adults

As responsible adults, we often need to work in groups or at-least co-ordinate with a group of people and function as a team, no matter which profession we are in. Team building activities for adults instill a team spirit as well as act as an icebreaker. Here are some fun team building ideas you could use at office:

Share it All: This is a very simple team building activity which would help develop a team spirit in the corporate atmosphere. Divide all the people in groups of four or more as per the team population. Make sure that the groups formed do not contain people who are always seen together. People who generally do not interact much with each other should be put in one group. Ask every team member to share his three most impressive moments in the company. Ask the team member to try and find common experiences with each other as they share their experiences. After all the small groups have finished sharing the experiences within themselves. Ask the group to interact with all the other groups. This is a great team building activity, which will help bring colleagues closer and result in better work atmosphere as well.

Corporate Olympics: Sports are almost synonymous with team spirit. To allow your office employees to participate in sports is perhaps the best way to inculcate team spirit in them. Also there are inter-company tournaments, which encourage the employees to work cohesively as a team while aiming to succeed. Group games are the best way to inculcate team spirit amongst adults as well.

Team Outings: Having fun together is a great way to strengthen the team building process. Go for an outing as a team. Instead of just having corporate dinners and brunches, try and go out for a hike together. While on a hike, people tend to open up and mix up with each other. Outings are an informal and fun way to help the process of team building.

Drama and Arts: Conduct small drama or dance workshops for the employees. Choreographing a group dance will definitely serve as a great team-building activity and will be fun for sure. In case you are not sure about the dancing activity, you can also conduct a drama workshop and let the employees direct and organize a short play on their own. Indulging in dance and dram will definitely be a stress buster as well as a fun team building activity. In case there is a good movie, which highlights the importance of team spirit, you can organize a special screening of the movie for your team, however make sure you let the team member know the reason for which you will be watching the movie.

Many such fun team-building activities can be conducted to convey the importance of team spirit to one and all.

By Uttara Manohar
Published: 2/20/2008
 
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