Team Building is absolutely essential be it a office or a project. To work together in harmony, working as a team is vital. A well functioning team requires every member to give their best for a common goal, anything less than that and it won’t be a good team.
Though a “bad” team may eventually get you to your goal but chances are you’ll be missing out on the whole team experience and team spirit that categorizes us humans. Without further a do, here I present you my list of 25 coolest and absolutely free team building activities for adults.
25 Coolest Team Building Activities for Adults
1. Minefield
Minefield is a great team building activity for adults. The players must navigate their way to safety amid many potential dangerous mines that randomly lay across the battle ground.
Read here for detailed instructions on how to play minefield
2. A4 paper challenge
A4 paper challenge is a fun icebreaker for adult and a great team building activity for kids. This game is extremely simple but requires a certain degree of ingenuity. The players try to get their bodies through an A4 size paper molded into different shapes.
Read Here for detailed instructions on how to play the A4 paper challenge.
3. Shrinking Universe
This game contradicts the general belief that Universe in always expanding. Instead, the Universe is always shrinking in this game. The players now should adjust themselves with the ever shrinking universe. Create your own Universe using ropes and while it constantly shrinks, adjust your body according to Universe.
Read Here for detailed instructions on how to play the Shrinking Universe.
4. Tell Tale Die
Tell Tale Die is a more of a rhetorical game that requires improvisational storytelling. It is a perfect for you if you want to engage in a rather intellectual team activity. It is extremely simple and yet surprisingly fun to play. Amuse your colleagues with your story or be prepared to die.
Read Here for detailed instructions on how to play Tell, Tale, Die
5. Two Truths and a Lie
This game also often referred as Two Truths and One Not is all about deception. In addition to being a great icebreaker, this game is also a fun team building activity for adults. Can you tell lies to best of your friends to win a game?
Among two truths and a lie that has been presented to you, you must separate the lie from truths but do you know when your friend is lying?
Read Here for detailed instructions on how to play Two Truths and a Lie.
6. Toxic Waste
The world has gotten radioactive and you can not be where you shouldn’t be or else you’ll be dead or violently injured. Toxic waste is a fun filled team building activity that requires a practice of geometry and a great deal of team communication to get past the radioactive toxic wastelands.
Read Here for detailed instructions on how to play Toxic Waste
7. Something Old, Something New
Something Old, Something New is a team building activity that recreates the scene of marriage and the joy of being a bride.
A player among the group of five is chosen to be bride. S/he is sent to the next room. While the remaining four think of material they would give to the bride each reminiscent of the theme something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. The bride is then called from the other room and asked to guess each player’s items.
Read Here for detailed instruction on how to play Something Old, Something New
8. Scavenger Hunt
Love Treasure Hunt? If yes is the word then you are definitely going to love Scavenger Hunt. Scavenger hunt is a game played in a social gathering, in which organizer prepares a list of articles which are to be searched or gathered by the participants. The team with highest number of treasures collected takes away the prize.
Read More for detailed instructions on how to play Scavenger Hunt.
9. The human knot
The Human Knot is an extremely simple team building activity for people of all ages. It is also very effective as an icebreaker activity. The main feature of the human knot is its simplicity. The objective of this game is to loosen the seemingly complicated network of human hands.
Read Here for detailed Instructions on how to play the human knot.
10. Frostbite
Frostbite is a team building activity which creates the scenario of people stranded in a snow storm. With the help of their leader, they must build a proper shelter or else they will die of cold. They must keep themselves warm until the rescue team arrives or each of them will die because of cold.
But the catch is the leader has got a frostbite on his leg, so he can not walk and all of his crew have snow in their eyes (blindfolded) so they can not see. The leader now must instruct them to build a proper shelter from the materials available. Or everybody risks death.
Read Here for detailed instructions on how to play Frostbite
11. Big Wind Blows
Big Wind Blows is a fun team building game for adults. It is a rhetorical game about make-believe. The player starts by a random player saying Big Wind Blows for everyone who……. and completing the sentence by adding characteristics that resemble one or more person in the group. The person who resemble the characteristic revolve around the set up in musical chair-esque fashion. The elimination rules are also similar to musical chair.
Read Here for detailed instructions on how to play Big Wind Blows
12. Cards Against Humanity
Cards Against Humanity is, like the makers of the game put it, “A horrible game for horrible people“. DO NOT play this game if you are easily offended but if you have a rather morbid sense of humor, you’re going to love this game. Try and match the highly offensive custom answer cards with the questions and have a blast of humor.
Read Here for detailed instructions on how to play Cards Against Humanity
13. Mafia
Not as offensive as Cards Against Humanity but still it gets heated sometimes. Mafia is a game about accusations and persuasion and more importantly about survival. A group of adults familiar with eachother are going to enjoy this team building activity. Categorize the team into the cops or mafia and take turns accusing and eliminating each other until mafias are caught or cops are eliminated.
Read Here for detailed instructions on how to play Mafia.
14. 4-way tug of war
Gone are the days of two way tug of war with two teams rope-wrestling each other. Though tug of war is a fun team building activity, making it 4-way adds even more spice to the originally fun filled tug of war. Instead of two teams trying to pull their way out, make it four team with a four way rope and see the fun.
Read Here for detailed Instructions on how to play 4-way tug of war.
15. Are We any Different?
Are we any different is a cool team building activity for adults themed around spotting the difference. The teams try to disguise themselves while the next team tries to fin out what is actually different from the usual. With the help of props, a team tries to disguise themselves in most subtle ways possible: Like who cares what color of socks you’re wearing? but that is exactly what the other team does. The other team tries to spot out out the tiniest of details in the other team.
Read Here for detailed Instructions on how to play Are We any Different?
16. Newspaper Tower Game
An extremely fun team building activity, Newspaper Tower Game is all about exploring the inner architect within you. With the help of old newspapers your team should prepare the largest tower (or the most artistic for that matter) to oust the other team from the competition.
Read Here for detailed instructions on how to play Newspaper Tower Game
17. Homemade Pictionary
Homemade Pictionary can be played without fancy commercial pictionary cards. Pictionary is played with team members trying to guess specific words from each other’s drawings. Pictionary is extremely fun team building activity especially if words are chosen properly. How would you describe a turtle’s toe in a picture?
Read Here for detailed instructions on how to play Homemade Pictionary.
18. Triangle of Life
Remember Cast Away? How Tom Hanks is left stranded on a remote island and Wilson (A volleyball) is his only friend? Not to worry, you’ll have three friends to communicate with in triangle of life despite being stranded on three separate islands. But you can not jump or walk across your fake islands and you should only use ropes to transfer foods and equipment. Better luck surviving.
Read Here for detailed instructions on how to play Triangle of Life.
19. Sardines Game
Sardines game is a derivative to traditional hide and seek game. Instead of a player trying to find other hidden player, in sardines, a player hides and everybody else tries to find the player. When the searching players have found the hidden player, they join the hider and cramp the hiding place much like Sardines (small oily fishes in the sea) cramping the jar. The trick is not to come last. It is very simple and yet extremely effective team building activity for adults.
Read Here for detailed instructions on how to play Sardines.
20. People Bingo
People Bingo is a great icebreaker and a fun team building activity for people of all ages. This game is mostly effective for adults. The beauty of People Bingo is that it never ceases to disappoint and will give your group healthy giggles for days to come. It is played in the format of classical bingo except instead of filling the boxes with numbers or alphabets, you’ll have to fill the boxes with sentences describing people.
Read Here for detailed instructions on how to play People Bingo
22. Marooned
Marooned is similar to the game Triangle of Life or even Frostbite. Imagine the situation of a total ship wreck and your group are the sole survivor but unfortunately your team have been left stranded on a remote island. Now every member of the group to think of one item they would have brought with them if they knew they were going to suffer this fate. Combining these items, you must improvise a strategy to survive until the rescue team arrives.
Read Here for detailed Instructions on how to play marooned.
23. The Egg Drop
Physics, Geometry, Engineering you name it. The egg drop is a mixture of these three disciplines. The egg drop is a team building game that’s all about engineering a cushion for your falling egg. This game is about crafting a spring-like mechanism for your egg that reduces the impact of the dropping egg, thus by decreasing the chances of it being crushed.
Read More about the detailed instructions on how to play The Egg Drop.
24. Knife, Baby, Wolf
Knife, Baby, Wolf is perhaps the silliest game on this list, regardless, it’s extremely simple and fun team building activity for adults. Knife, Baby, Wolf is all about pantomiming, i.e representing some action by exaggerated gesture. First a random person starts by pantomiming throwing a knife in Ninja-esque fashion. The person should have the eye contact with the person he is throwing the knife to and the receiver should be fully aware he is receiving a knife. The receiver then catches the knife and throws it to a random person.
Another random person now pantomimes tossing a baby to other player and the other player must catch the baby. After the baby and knife are up and running, it’s high time to introduce a wolf in the game. There are certain rules to the game and bear in mind it requires optimal focus and concentration on full tilt.
Read Here for detailed instructions and rules of Knife, Baby, Wolf
25. Blind Drawing
Blind Drawing is much similar to Homemade Pictionary except the drawer is blindfolded. It is an extremely fun team building activity with your friends and colleagues. From several funny words belonging to different category, select a few and try drawing blindfolded. Good luck drawing hypnotizing chicken blindfolded.
Read Here for detailed instructions on how to play Blind Drawing.
Additional Resources: http://www.teambuilding.co.uk/team-building-activities.html
Have you tried any of these team building Activities? Please let us know about your experience. Would you like to add a game to our list? Please leave us comments below.
