Team Building Game: Slice 'n Dice

Here's another team building activity.

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A dramatic finale type trust activity for a large group.

Seems crazy or impossible, but it works.

Large group (>30) forms two lines, facing one another, creating a corridor or gauntlet.

Participants put out their arms straight in front. Arms should intersect, overlapping by about a hand with arms of people opposite.

The first person peels off and walks down the corridor. In order to let the person pass, people raise and then lower their arms, creating a Mexican wave effect - a ripple through which a person is walking.

The person then joins in again at the end of the line.

Next person, peels off, walks, down, and so on.

As the group gets more confident, invite people to walk fast, run, and then sprint down the gauntlet (people generally take great care to raise their arms in time).

At some point, or for the finale, have people chop their arms up and down, only pausing to allow the gauntlet-runner through. It works!

More team building games at wilderdom.com:

Bridge the Gap: How To Deal a Diverse Workforce of Different Generation

Found this cool video about dealing with a diverse workforce and dealing with people of born of different generation as you do. Check on the youtube site.

Ice Breaker and Team Building Game: One Little Known Fact

Team Building Game/Icebreaker: LITTLE-KNOWN FACTS

Little-Known Facts: Two Icebreakers

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People enjoy learning little-known facts (LKFs) about each other. They also enjoy revealing such facts to total strangers--perhaps because it makes them feel like celebrities.

Here are some typical LKFs that participants share about themselves:

I have a twin brother.
I always need to know which direction North is.
I am addicted to soap operas.
I read one murder mystery each week.
I always check with my son for answers to highly-technical computer questions.
In one of my workshops in Vancouver, two teams developed and conducted icebreakers that involved the use of LKFs. I offer them here for your use:


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Little Known Facts - I
Game Designers: David Scott and his teammates.

Key element: Participants guess LKFs about other people by asking Yes/No questions.

Participants: Any number

Time: 20 minutes

Supplies: Index cards

Flow
Distribute index cards to each participant. Ask the participants to write a little-known fact about themselves and keep it hidden from the others.

Divide the participants into two equal-sized groups. Collect the cards from one group (called the confessors) and give them to the other group (called the inquisitioners), one card per participant, with the written side down. Warn the inquisitioners not to read the statement in the card they received.

Ask all participants to stand up. Ask the inquisitioners to hold the index card against their forehead with the written side showing. Make sure that the inquisitioner holding the card is not able to read it, but everyone else is able to. Ask the inquisitioners to walk around the room, asking different confessors whether the card belongs to them.

If a confessor sees her card, she has to say "Yes". Once an inquisitioner has tracked down the correct confessor, she asks a series of Yes/No questions to discover the exact nature of the LKF. The confessor responds truthfully but limits her responses to "Yes" or "No".

The question and answer session continues until the inquisitioner discovers the LKF. She verifies her guess by reading the statement on the card, places the card on top of her head, and walks around the room in search of someone else holding a card on top of her head. Participants with the cards on tops of their heads swap cards with each other (without reading the LKF on the card) and repeat the search-and-question process all over again.

Conclude the first round of the icebreaker after a suitable period of time. Repeat the activity by collecting the original LKF cards form the inquisitioners and giving them to the confessors. Switch the roles of the participants and replay the icebreaker.


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Little-Known Facts - II
Game Designers: Shane Finlay and his teammates.

Key element: Teams match LKFs with participants.

Participants: Any number

Time: 20 minutes

Supplies: Index cards

Flow
Distribute index cards to each participant. Ask the participant to write a little-known fact about himself in the index card and keep it hidden from the others. Collect all the cards and set them aside.

Ask the participants to stand up, walk around, meeting each other, and share two little known facts about themselves. One of these LKFs should be the one written on the card.

After a few minutes, ask the participants to return to their seats. Organize the participants into teams and distribute equal numbers of LKF cards to each team.

Ask the participants to remove and hide their name tags and then work with their teammates to match each LKF card with the person who wrote it. They should do this by sharing the information they collected earlier during the walkaround session. (Some LKF cards may belong to the members of the team itself, simplifying this task.)

After a suitable pause, randomly select one of the teams to present its report. This team should read the LKF cards, one at a time, and identify the writer. The team earns 1 point for pointing to the correct writer and 1 more point for correctly naming the writer. The team loses 1 point for pointing to an incorrect writer or incorrectly naming the writer. No points are earned or lost if the team confesses its ignorance.

Repeat the procedure with each of the remaining teams. The team with the most scores wins the game.

Debriefing
Usually, icebreakers of this type do not require any debriefing. However, since there is something intriguing about what facts people choose to reveal about themselves, I conduct a quick debriefing using these questions. Although the questions ask about people in general, they are designed to encourage the participants to reflect on their own individual behaviors:

What facts do people reveal about themselves?
What facts do they hide from others?
Why do people choose to reveal some facts and hide others?
What facts do people reveal to friends, to acquaintances, and to strangers?
Which is easier: to write anonymous statements or to talk about them in a face-to-face situation? Would some people distort or make up facts about themselves?
Why? How would the types of little known facts vary between extroverts and introverts? Between men and women?
Between younger and older people?
Do you think that this icebreaker will produce similar results when used with people from other cultures?
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Copyright © 2000. Workshops by Thiagi, Inc. All rights reserved
URL: http://www.thiagi.com/game-littleknown.html
Revised: May 8, 2006

Miss the Pillow: Icebreaker Game

Icebreaker Game - A New Icebreaker Game

An icebreaker is a facilitation exercise intended to help a group to begin the process of forming themselves into a team. Icebreakers are commonly presented as a game to "warm up" the group by helping the members to get to know each other. They often focus on sharing personal information such as name, hobbies, etc. Examples of these kinds of facilitation exercises include:

The Little Known Fact - Participants are asked to share their name, department or role in the organization, length of service, and one "little known fact" about themselves. This "little known fact" becomes a humanizing element for future interactions.

Two Truths and a Lie - Participants introduce themselves and make three statements about themselves - two true and one untrue. The rest of the group votes to try to identify the falsehood.

Interviews - Participants are paired up and spend 5 minutes interviewing each other. The group reconvenes and the interviewer introduces the interviewee to the group.

They are particularly popular in the university setting, for instance among residents of a dormitory hall or groups of students who will be working closely together, as orientation leaders, perhaps, or peer health educators.

A New Icebreaker Game

Miss the Pillow

Divide the group into small groups of five/six. Ask one volunteer to step out and stand at the head of the room. Ask the small groups to stand in front of the volunteer. The formation will look as below. You will need a small cushion or pillow to play this game.

" x " means participant

The task for the group is to miss the pillow that the volunteer throws at them without leaving the line. (They can duck and dodge the pillow). Whoever the pillow touches has to introduce himself/herself (in an interesting manner) to the group and leave the game. The game goes on until all players are out. You can change the volunteer after every five throws. The game is fun to play and allows the participants to be creative about introducing themselves.

Team Building on Self-Esteem

This is a game that builds self-esteem. This game can be played with a group of people who know each other reasonably well. For this game a chair is kept in the centre of the room. Participants can either sit or stand in front of the chair in a semi circle. Write the names of allparticipants on slips of paper, fold the slips and put them in a bowl. Toss the slips to mix them up. Pick a name randomly. Ask this person to sit in the chair.

The rest of the group has to take turns to give this person a compliment. You can play this game for everybody in the group if the aim of your training is to build: self-esteem/team-spirit/the habit of seeking to see the positive things in a human being/the ability to receive compliments and be thankful for the positive manifestations of your personality on the group etc. You can manage the time by restriciting the compliments to ten. However, if the aim of the game is to just to demonstrate the above concepts you can play this game for about three to five subjects.

Team Building Game taken from experiential-learning-games.com.

Acid River Exercise

Objectives:

• To emphasize the responsibility in teamwork and the connections everyone plays in
  accomplishing the group’s goals.
• To allow for observation of team interaction while exploring problem solving,
  communication skills, cooperation, planning, roles and expectations.

Group Size:
Groups of 12-24

Materials:
Carpet Squares (1 tile for every 2 people)
4 lengths of rope

Instructions:

1. Divide space into 3 sections of river (you can do two sections, and reuse one). Make
   the river wide enough to be a challenge for the group to get from one side to the other
   (look at about 15 – 25 ft.) Mark the river with rope.
2. Distribute the carpet squares – 1 tile for every 2 people.
3. Explain to the group that the river is acid and will eat up everything that touches it,
   except for the magic tiles. However, the magic tiles must be touched at all times
   they are in the river. If the tile is not touched, no matter for how brief of a moment,
   it is lost, swept away in the current.
4. Everyone must get over to the other side of the river. If using two sections of river,
   no one can cross the next branch of the river until everyone is over the previous
   branch. If any one touches the river, or falls (a foot half on the tile and touching
   river, hands in, whatever), everyone must go back and start again.
5. No scooting or sliding on the squares. This can be a safety issue and it emphasizes
   individual work versus teamwork.
6. Once the group has started the process, your role is to take carpet squares that are
   “swept away by the current” and to watch for safety issues.
7. The facilitator can take away (or give) carpet squares arbitrarily.

Processing Questions or Debriefing Questions:

Instruct participants to speak from their own experience.

1. What happened during the process? What worked? What didn’t or what hindered the
   process?
2. Was leadership demonstrated during the process? How so? What did you observe?
3. What were the individual roles people played? Were members comfortable with their
   roles?
4. Who knew what the process for crossing was? Who didn’t? How did you
   communicate the plans to group members?
5. What might the different aspects of the exercise represent in your organization: the
   carpet squares, the river, the loss of tiles, the facilitator, etc?

Variations:

1. The tiles can only go forward. They cannot move backwards.
2. No one can finish until everyone has left the “bank” of the river.
3. You can choose to add challenges like muting individuals, using only 1 arm, eyes
   closed/blindfolded, no one can talk.
4. You can give them an object that they need to carry with them to safety and discuss
   what that might represent.You can create situations for them to draw from that are connected directly to theirorganization; e.g. their budget has been cut - lose ½ of their tiles, your last three meetings have been unproductive and full of inside jokes - lose 1 person, you’ve just come back from a retreat where you set goals for the year and did teambuilding with the group members - add a tile.

Fun exercise. Visit http://dsa.csupomona.edu for more team building games.

Why Team Buidling?

Team Building is necessary to for fostering camaraderie, collaboration, and a spirit of team work in the workplace. It has a lot of uses and companies invest so much in sending their employees to attend various team building events when they can do it free at the comfort of their office.

This site provides you with valuable information about team building and team bonding activities. You will also see how these two concepts differ and see which strategy is more applicable in your team. I created this site out of my personal need and would like to share with just literally everything I learned about team building for free. I hope you'll be able to visit my site from time to time and use it for your own benefit. Thanks.

Helium Stick

This is one of the most popular team building games that you can use to explore the value of trust and team work in the workplace. The complete instruction is taken from wilderdom.com.

Helium Stick

• Deceptively simple but powerful exercise for learning how to work together and communicate in small to medium sized groups.
• Line up in two rows which face each other.
• Introduce the Helium Stick- a long, thin, lightweight rod.
• Ask participants to point their index fingers and hold their arms out.
• Lay the Helium Stick down on their fingers. Get the group to adjust their finger heights until the Helium Stick is horizontal and everyone's index fingers are touching the stick.
• Explain that the challenge is to lower the Helium Stick to the ground. The catch: Each person's fingers must be in contact with the Helium Stick at all times. Pinching or grabbing the pole in not allowed - it must rest on top of fingers.
• Reiterate to the group that if anyone's finger is caught not touching the Helium Stick, the task will be restarted. Let the task begin....
• Warning: Particularly in the early stages, the Helium Stick has a habit of mysteriously 'floating' up rather than coming down, causing much laughter. A bit of clever humoring can help - e.g., act surprised and ask what are they doing raising the Helium Stick instead of lowering it! For added drama, jump up and pull it down!
• Participants may be confused initially about the paradoxical behavior of the Helium Stick.
• Some groups or individuals (most often larger size groups) after 5 to 10 minutes of trying may be inclined to give up, believing it not to be possible or that it is too hard.
  The facilitator can offer direct suggestions or suggest the group stops the task, discusses their strategy, and then has another go.
• Less often, a group may appear to be succeeding too fast. In response, be particularly vigilant about fingers not touching the pole. Also make sure participants lower the pole all the way onto the ground. You can add further difficulty by adding a large washer to each end of the stick and explain that the washers should not fall off during the exercise, otherwise it's a restart.
• Eventually the group needs to calm down, concentrate, and very slowly, patiently lower the Helium Stick - easier said than done.

How Does it Work?

The stick does not contain helium. The secret (keep it to yourself) is that the collective upwards pressure created by everyone's fingers tends to be greater than the weight of the stick. As a result, the more a group tries, the more the stick tends to 'float' upwards.

Processing Ideas

• What was the initial reaction of the group?
• How well did the group cope with this challenge?
• What skills did it take to be successful as a group?
• What creative solutions were suggested and how were they received?
• What would an outside observer have seen as the strengths and weaknesses of the group?
• What roles did people play?
• What did each group member learn about him/her self as an individual?
• What other situations (e.g., at school, home or work) are like the Helium Stick?
• More information on Facilitation and creative debrief and processing tools