What Collaborative Exercises Are Good for Teams?
What Collaborative Exercises Are Good for Teams?
Collaborative exercises help teams get to know each other so they can work well together. Teams that collaborate well are more productive and successful — not to mention engaged and easier to work with. Whether you're putting together a fun activity for a team party or welcoming new employees, collaborative exercises help break the ice and build team relationships. Below are four of our favorite collaborative exercises to choose from:
1. Marshmallow spaghetti tower
Location: Office
This activity teaches teams to solve problems together rather than individually, developing your team's collaboration skills to create better problem-solving outcomes. The collaborative exercise helps teams think on their toes while building rapport, trust, and teamwork.
What you need for each team
- Sticks of uncooked spaghetti
- One roll of masking tape
- One yard of string
- One marshmallow
How to play
- The goal of the game is to see which team can use the provided materials to build the tallest standing tower within an assigned time.
- You can add a marshmallow to the top of the tower to make this exercise more challenging.
2. Escape
Location: Office (a room with a lock)
The goal of this collaborative exercise is to work together as a team to understand and solve the puzzles, find the room key, and escape the locked room as quickly as possible or within the time allotted.
What you need
- A key
- Puzzles or clues
- A room with a lock
How to play
- Each team must find and solve the puzzles or clues around the room to find the hidden key to get out of the locked room.
- The winning team is the one that escapes the room the fastest or solves the puzzles and finds the key within a specific time.
3. Dumbest idea first
Location: Remote
Coming up with "dumb" ideas is one of the best collaborative brainstorming exercises for generating "out-of-the-box" and innovative ideas. The goal of this exercise is to get rid of intellectual inhibitions and self-consciousness and allow the brain to run free to increase the creativity and quantity of ideas generated.
What you need
- Yourself and your team members
How to play
- Ask everyone involved to think of dumb, possible solutions to the topic.
- When you've compiled a long list, review it as a team and see which ones might actually be feasible.
- Pick the top three best ideas you can put into action.
4. What would X do?
Location: Remote
“What would X do?” is a helpful collaborative exercise that enables participants to develop new and innovative solutions by thinking like other people and trying to see the world from their eyes.
What you need
- Yourself and your team members
How to play
- Each team member or participant pretends they're somebody well-known and approaches the subject or problem at hand as if they were that person. How would they handle the problem? What options would they consider?
- Write down everyone's answers and ideas, and review the list for the best solutions afterward.
