More often than not, we have neglected that an organization is made up of supporting staffs like the cleaners, the lab techs, the supervisors, front desk officers, and many others. As a leader, motivating all your staff is essential to ensure they feel valued and work as a cohesive team.
Any organization can work with Happy Sparrow to design customised programmes to engage all these staffs so as to bring out the best in them! Involve these ‘unsung heroes’ the next time you are organizing team building and professional development sessions.
5 Simple Yet Effective Team Building Activities
To give you a better idea of how you can get everyone involved, here are some team building games that are often used in Singapore.
1. Two Truths and One Tall Tale
A great ice-breaker classroom game for students – use it with your staff to enhance their working relationships. It exercises the imagination and motivates people to learn new things about their colleagues. Each person has to introduce themselves using three “truths” – two are true and one is made up. Participants then try to guess which of the three is a fictional story. The secret to winning the game is to make the truths seem as outlandish as the lie.
2. Who am I?
This activity is a great way for staff to get to know their colleagues on a more personal level. Here’s how it works: everyone arranges their chairs into a circle and each person is directed to write down one interesting fact about themselves. Next, the papers are tossed into a bowl and shuffled up. The object of this activity is for each member to pull out a card and guess whose interesting fact they are reading.
3. Six Degrees of Separation
This activity is an excellent way to strengthen team bond and exercise communication skills. Each person will work with a partner. The objective is to make a list of five things they have in common with one another. Once the list is completed, each person must find a new partner who shares at least one of the things on their list. Then, they make a new list of five things in common. This continues until every person has at least one thing in common with everyone in the room.
4. Please Line-Up
This ridiculously hard, but fun team-building activity is a wonderful way for teachers to quickly learn each other’s names. Tell participants that they have three minutes to line up alphabetically by last name (you can use other factual information like birthday or birthplace). Then tell them they must line up without speaking to one another. Sounds next to impossible, right? Well, there are usually at least one or two familiar faces that know each other to help get the line started. From there, your team members can use hand gestures or whatever else they can think of to quickly get in line.
5. Have You Ever
Have You Ever is an interactive team-building game that gets everyone to move around. To play this game, arrange the chairs into a circle. Then choose one person to start the game by having them stand in the middle of the circle. Their job is to say “Have you ever …?”
For example, “Have you ever participated in a treasure hunt?” All of the teachers that have participated would then stand up and find a new seat to sit in. The others who did not stand up would then take turns being the one asking the question.
There are many more team building activities we can organize to stimulate communication and foster working relationships. So, what are you waiting for? Tell us your requirements. Your staff will definitely enjoy being able to collaborate, problem-solve and laugh together.
