Team building and motivational session

Flow of group task

1. Identify all the employees and segregate them according their job profile and
experience. Divide all the employees in various groups, such that each group must
be diversified on the basis of experience and employee capability. Explain the
activity to each group. Involve each group in identifying the goals needed to achieve
in that specific activity. As the designed activity is closely similar to their job profiles,
they can easily visualize things more clearly. An inclusive discussion will be carried
out in each group, so that, each member in the group can actively participate in
defining their roles and responsibility voluntarily. A mentor will be assigned for each
group for giving guidance during the activity.
2. Mentor must have to recognize each and every member in the group. So the
mentor will conduct an activity, where all the group members will introduce
themselves. Then the mentor will guide to encourage participation from everybody in
the group for giving contributions in their respective allocated job. Normally
employee feels happy and is inspired when he gets regular opportunity in giving
ideas, and suggestions toward the solution. It makes them feel important and helps
them in understanding their job better. Give the individual responsibility to each
member to make the job more challenging. The mentor must guide the team in
exploring their imagination, cleverness and creativity.
3. Time to time rewarding people for achievement during group activity is a better
tactic to motivate the member. There are various effective techniques mentor can
use in recognizing hard work. Some of them are: Periodic recognition programs and
events to honor achievements personally and publicly.
4. The mentor must guide the members in such a way that the member in the group
should not fight or talk down to each other. Mentor will not show any favoritism
towards any member, because this thing is bad for morale and destroys motivation.
5. Sometimes a member might feel that he is not getting importance, when he is not
informed about task that has already been performed in the activity. So the mentor
will take care that the members are well-informed about everything those are
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happening in the group and will keep information flowing to each member; so that
they can know about groups task performance direction.
6. Mentor will conduct an activity towards knowing the career goals of each member
for refreshment. During this the mentor can give some guidance regarding their
goals. Also the mentor will give them some time to involve the group in some funny
activity other than the core group task. Mentor will also take care about giving more
responsibility or moving the members into a different task in group as per their
individual need and caliber during activity.
7. The mentor will provide an open talk platform for each member to confess about
themselves regarding, where they actually get problem and what want to improve in
them related to their job profile.
8. The mentor will take care about completion of task and a group presentation will
be asked from each group at the end regarding their task performance experience.
9. The mentor will give constant feedback throughout the activity to each individual
member (Sandwich feedback methodology/+-+).
Apart from it (other techniques which can be given to conduct periodically
throughout the year)
1. Employee team building activities have been proven to increase employee morale
and enhance team cohesion. Many corporates have now included concepts like
TGIF (Thank God Its Friday) and activities involving cross functional units.
2. Monthly review meetings can be concluded by employees sharing ideas which
can benefit the workplace. This enhances work morale and makes employees feel
more involved in the organization.
3. Knowledge sharing session where each employee can explain their role in the
organization and help the team gain better understanding their contribution to the
organization.
4. Improve work culture by having a committee which will send mailers on employee
birthdays and plan team party and team outing.

Briefing about group activities

Grab Bag Skits
This acting exercise is a great way to refresh and energize the team. It doesnt
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require much time but does need some props. Depending on the number of groups
you have, each group will need a goodie bag filled with five to six random objects.
Recommended group size can range from 10-50 people.
1. Form groups composed of three to eight people. (The more groups, the more
time this activity requires).
2. Give each group a goodie bag.
3. Each group needs to create a three minute skit using all the objects in their
goodie bag. Creativity is encouraged, example: a pen can be a magic wand, a
stapler can be a microphone, etc.
4. As the manager, you can either allow your groups to make-up their own skits,
or assign them general topics. Topics should be work related, maybe acting
out a meeting, process or event.
5. Give the groups about five minutes to come up with their skits.
Each group performs.
6. Optional step: groups can vote for which group they thought had the best
performance. The winning group can be awarded anything from a casual
dress day to lunch.
Tip: Its important that all group members are present for the other group
performances.
This exercise is a great way to encourage people to step out of their comfort zones.
It encourages teamwork, collaboration, and helps people feel more comfortable with
their colleagues.
Salt and Pepper
This activity is fun, excellent for energizing your team, and also great as a get-toknow-one another exercise. It doesnt take up a lot of time and requires a few simple
materials like a pen, tape, and small sheets of paper. Recommended group size can
range from 6-40 people.
1. A sheet of paper for every person.
2. As manager, come up with pairs of things such as, salt and pepper, yin and
yang, shadow and light, peanut butter and jelly, Mickey and Minnie mouse,
male and female, and so forth.
3. Separate the pairs and write only one of them per piece of paper. (Salt on one
paper, pepper on a completely different paper).
4. Tape one paper on the back of each person, making sure they cant see it.
5. When you say go, everyone must walk around asking yes or no questions in
order to find out what word they have taped to their backs.
6. Once they figure that out, theyll be able to find their other pair. The two will sit
down and learn three to five interesting facts about one another.
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7. Optional step: have the pairs introduce their partners and the interesting facts
they learned about them.
This exercise will encourage communication and creativity among the participants.
Learning how to ask the right questions will be a challenge. It will also encourage
teamwork as interacting with the other team members is necessary.
Take What You Need
This exercise is an excellent get-to-know-you activity that doesnt take up too much
of your teams time. All you need is a toilet paper roll or two depending on the size of
the group (you can use pennies as another option). Recommended group size is 1030 people.
1. Ask everyone to sit around in a circle.
2. Pass around the roll of toilet paper or pennies and tell them to take as much
as they think theyll need, without disclosing what the items will be used for.
3. If your employees ask further questions, simply answer them with, take as
much as you think youll need.
4. Once thats done, ask them to count the number of squares they each have.
5. Going around the circle, each person has to share a fact about themselves for
every square of toilet paper or penny they took. So, if someone takes 10
squares, they need to share 10 facts about themselves.
Tip: In order to avoid someone taking 30 pennies or squares of toilet paper, you
could set a limit for each item. The facts dont have to be long or time consuming.
This activity is particularly beneficial when new employees are hired. It encourages
communication, bonding, and helps the participants learn more about their
colleagues. Youd be surprised what a simple activity can teach you about someone
you thought you knew.
Beach Ball Toss
Whether youre adding on new team members, merging departments or trying to
strengthen the bond between existing employees, the following exercise is great as a
get-to-know-one-another activity and doesnt require much time. Recommended
group size is 5-25 people.
All you need for this activity is a beach ball thats been divided with random
questions written on it. (Only you, as the manager should know what questions are
on the ball). Questions can be simple or more complex, i.e. whats your favorite
dessert? what are your weekly goals? if conflict were to arise within your
department, how would you go about handling that?
Have the participants stand in a circle and begin tossing the ball around. Whoever
catches the ball needs to introduce themselves and answer the question closest to
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their pinky finger. (Another option would be to allow them to choose which question
theyd like to answer).
Tip: When coming up with the questions, you may ask the participants to submit
three questions each and pick which questions youd like to write on the ball.
This exercise will help the participants learn more about their colleagues. Unlike a
regular meeting, this is a more exciting way to give everyone an opportunity to stay
current with each others goals and activities.
Human Knot
This brain teaser is funny and really works on teambuilding, problem solving and
communication. It will take around 15-30 minutes depending on how well everyone
works together. No materials are needed. Recommended group size ranges from 820 people.
1. Instruct the participants to stand in a circle, shoulder to shoulder.
2. Tell everyone to put their right hand in the air and grab the hand of someone
standing across the circle from them.
3. Now tell everyone to put their left hand in the air and grab the hand of a
different person.
4. Someone needs to check that everyone is holding the hands of two different
people and that no one is holding the hand of someone whos standing
directly next to them.
5. The objective of the game is to untangle everyone without breaking the circle.
6. If the chain is broken, participants will have to start over.
TIP: Announce that this game requires casual clothing. Also remind others to be
mindful of colleagues, especially those with certain physical limitations.
This exercise will prove to be extremely challenging and will heavily rely on teamwork
and communication, without which, participants will find it extremely difficult to
successfully complete the task.
Now that youre equipped with a variety of choices, dont be afraid to incorporate
these activities in the office. Not only will you enjoy it and benefit greatly, but so will
your colleagues and employees. Dont forget to post back and let us know which
exercises you used and what you learned from them!
Office Celebrity
The game Celebrity is great for parties, but this play off of this classic is bound to
break any barriers between coworkers and lead to knowing one another better.
When workers know more about each other, they tend to work better together!
1. Break your office into two teams.
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2. Write everyones name on separate pieces of paper and place them in a bowl.
3. Round One: The first team has one member get up and pull a name from the
bowl. He or she tries to get their team to guess which worker it is by giving
characteristics of that person. After the team guesses it, another name is
chosen and so on until a minute has passed. After one minute, the second
team picks one member to try and get their team to guess as many names as
possible during a minute. This goes on, switching teams and rotating players
until all of the names have been guessed. Replace all names back into the
bowl. Keep a tally of how many names each team correctly guessed.
4. Round Two: Same as round one, but each moderator can only use ONE word
to describe each name drawn.
5. Round Three: Same as the previous rounds, but each moderator cant use
words to describe drawn names, but instead must act them out. The team
with the most correct names tallied after three rounds wins!

Two Truths, One Lie

Another great way to see how well everyone knows each other is by playing Two
Truths, One Lie. This is a fun game that will help team members find out more about
one another.
1. Have your team members bring chairs and sit in a circle.
2. Tell each person to think of two truths about themselves and one lie.
3. Have a starting person tell the three stories. Its best to have the truths be
something about them that no one else would know.
4. After the person says the two truths and lie to the group, have the rest of the
team discuss and try and come to a consensus on which story is the lie.
5. Have the person reveal which is the lie, and then have the next person go.
Trivia
Trivia is one of the most simple to set up and most enjoyable. From history to current
events to business questions, engaging in a simple game of trivia will sharpen mind
sand encourage teamwork and office competition.
1. Split your employees into teams of three to six people.
2. Choose three rounds of topics (i.e., World History, Art and Music, Movies,
etc.).
3. Ask five questions involving the first topic. After each question, have a
member of each team silently write down an answer on a piece of paper with
their team name and turn it in to the trivia moderator.
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4. After each round, give the answers to questions so the teams can keep a tally
of how theyre doing.
5. After three rounds, the team with the most right answers wins. (You may need
to have a lightning round for a tie breaker.)
Office Scavenger Hunt
One great way to loosen up a stiff work day is to have an office-wide scavenger hunt!
Although you could just have a simple search-and-find checklist, this is a great
opportunity to engage workers by simple problem solving.
1. Create an in-depth series of clues with each clue leading to a different one.
(This works best in riddles, like The best way to cure a case of Monday
morning tiredness to get you ready for the day. And then hide the next clue by
your office coffee maker.)
2. Break your office into three to five teams, giving each one the first clue.
3. Set a time frame for the office to complete the scavenger hunt.
4. As each team finds the next clue by figuring out where the previous clue was
directing them, encourage teams to involve each person during the problem
solving process.
5. This is a competition after all, so offer a prize for the first team that finishes
the hunt.