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Short Teamwork Games

Starting a meeting or event with a teamwork activity can be a great way to set a mood and pace for the day, as long as the mood is good and the pace is quick. A teamwork game that drags can disturb the momentum of a group and diminish enthusiasm for the task at hand. A quick, efficient teamwork activity, however, can get people communicating, working together and prepared to tackle the day in a few short minutes.

Get in line
- There are several short teamwork games that involve everyone in the group lining up in a certain order. This order can be determined by different factors such as height, name or birthday (leave out the year). To add another element of challenge to the game you can blindfold the participants, so they'll need to rely on each other even more in order to get in line. When using a blindfold it's best to have the participants line up in a random order before blindfolding them, that way they won't have to move too far or in too many directions.
Share something
- Having everyone in the group share something with the group is a good way to get people talking and to establish a comfortable rapport throughout the room. You can have people share personal things, such as a person they admire or a meaningful experience they've had, or silly things such as what they ate for dinner last night or their favorite exercise. Telling people to include a sentence or two about why they chose to share something and what it means to them helps make everyone feel comfortable talking more than the minimum amount and is a good precedent to set.
Problem solving games
- Problem solving games are good teamwork activities because they get people to think about something else than what they are sharing with the group and the impression they are giving about themselves. Many problem solving games are not as quick as other teamwork games, however, and they can occasionally inspire an overly-competitive element in participants. For specific problem solving game ideas see the resources section of this article.
Talk to your neighbor
- In this quick and simple teamwork game, participants team up with the person they are sitting next to. Each person then asks the other three questions, which can either be chosen by the individual participants or provided by the activity leader. Ideally, the questions will have something to do with the greater meeting, purpose or task at hand. After all the pairs have asked each other the questions, they then share what they learned about each other with the rest of the group. This is a simple and lighthearted teamwork game.

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