Every business owner understands the need to drive high performance at the team level in his or her organization. Team building games play a significant role in fine-tuning a team’s ability to collaborate effectively as a unit to deliver against the team’s performance targets.  The challenge, however, is how to keep those regular corporate team building events in Dubai fresh and engaging for the team immersed in them. Accordingly, the minute a team member disparages a team building exercise, you can pretty much toss the benefits of your team building games out the window.

How Team Building Games Work

Corporate team building events in Dubai are designed to take a disparate group of team members often from a diverse range of cultures and backgrounds and help them mesh into a high-performance team. To achieve this, these games need to not only be educational; they also need to be enjoyable and fun.

Team building games help individual team members learn about each other, understand each other’s complementary skill sets, work habits, approach to problem-solving, as well as communication preferences. 

Furthermore, to encourage your team to discover more about each other without a chorus of moans and groans, here are 7 team building games your team can play in the office:

1. Winner/Loser

Objective: Participants discover how to reframe negative situations into learning experiences together.

Time: 5 to 6 minutes

Participants: Two or more people

Material Required: None

Format: Partner A shares something negative that happened in his/her life with Partner B. This can be a personal or work-related memory as long as it is true. Then Partner A discusses the same experience again but focuses only on the positive aspects. Partner B helps explore the silver lining behind the bad experience. Afterwards, they switch roles.

2. Endless Possibilities

Objective: Inspire individual creativity and innovation

Time: 5 to 6 minutes

Participants: Single team through to multiple small teams

Material Required: A range of random objects

Format: A great five-minute team building game. Give an object to one person in each team. One at a time, someone stands in front of the team and demonstrates a use for that object. The rest of the team must guess what the player is demonstrating. However, the demonstrator cannot speak.  All demonstrations must be original, quirky, ideas.

3. Barter Puzzle

Objective: Focuses on problem-solving and leadership skills. Some team members might stand out and some may stand back.  However, it’s important that the entire team arrives at a consensus before a decision is made.

Time: 1 to 2 hours

Participants: Four or more small groups or teams

Material Required: Different jigsaw puzzles for each group or team

Format: Break off into small, equal-sized groups. Each group receives a different jigsaw puzzle with the same degree of difficulty. The goal is to see which group completes their jigsaw puzzle the fastest. However, some jigsaw pieces will be mixed in other group’s jigsaw puzzles. It’s up to the team to come up with a way to retrieve those missing jigsaw pieces.  This can be done either by negotiating, trading, or exchanging team members. Most importantly, whatever approach the group settles on, they must decide as a group.

4. This Is Way Better Than That

Objective: Inspire team creativity in problem-solving. Do not make each scenario too easy so it becomes obvious which objects are the most useful.

Time: 15 to 20 minutes

Participants: Unlimited

Material Required: Four or more objects

Format: Pick four or more different objects. Split all participants into even numbered teams. Describe a scenario where each team has to solve a problem using only those objects. This can be anything from “You’re stranded on a deserted island” to “You’re saving the world from a zombie horde” Each team ranks the objects based on their usefulness within that specific scenario, together with their reasoning.

5. Purpose Mingle

Objective: Improves meeting productivity and prompts attendees to think about how they contribute, rather than just what they hope to get out of a meeting.

Time: 1 to 2 minutes

Number of Participants: Unlimited

Material Required: None

Format: Before a meeting, have each individual team members walk around the meeting attendees and share what they hope to contribute to the meeting with as many people as possible. Offer a prize for the person who shares with the most people, and another for the person who successfully contributes what they shared.

6. Zombie Escape

Objective: Stimulate creative problem solving and fine-tune team collaboration skills

Time: 30 to 60 minutes

Participants: Unlimited team members

Material Required: 1 rope, 1 key, and 5 to 10 puzzles or clues, depending on how much time you want to spend on the game

Format: Gather the team into a conference room or other empty space and “lock” the door. Beforehand, select one team member to play the zombie.  They should stand arms outstretched, muttering “braaaaiiiinnnnssss” periodically. The volunteer zombie is tied loosely to the rope in a corner of the room, with 1 foot of leeway. Once the team exercise starts, every five minutes the rope restraining the hungry zombie is extended another foot. Soon, the zombie will be able to reach all the living participants. The team members need to solve a series of puzzles and clues to find the hidden key that “unlocks” the door and allows them to escape before the zombie strikes.

7. Truth And Lies

Objective: Great icebreaker game, especially for newly formed teams. Helps eliminate snap judgments of colleagues, and gives introverts an equal chance to share some personal facts about themselves.

Time: 10 to 15 minutes

Participants: Five or more team members

Material Required: None

Format: Sit everyone in a circle facing each other. Have each person come up with three facts about themselves and one lie. However, the lie should be realistic instead of extravagant. Go around the circle and have each person state the three facts and a lie in a random order, without revealing which is the lie. Finally, after someone shares, the others must guess which is the lie.

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Final Word

A team that meshes and collaborates well is more effective, more productive, and more responsive. These teams are also happier and more fun to work in! However, keeping team building games fresh and effective while translating them into the workplace can be a challenge.  This is especially so when familiar team building games tend to induce more eye-rolling among team members. Today, corporate events in Dubai span a range of engaging activities your team will actually enjoy on-site.