Team building activities are simple ways to help your employees improve their capacity to work together more productively. These activities are fun events but they teach you powerful lessons about problem solving, communication, trust and respect among team members. The participants as well as the management are benefitted from these lessons. Team building activities provide management with the opportunities to witness the dynamics at play among the team members which gives them a better idea of how to lead, manage and communicate with them.

Team building activities can vary from a simple child’s game to complex problem solving challenges. The activities can be indoor or outdoor and can be performed in daytime or during night. The props required in these exercises and not expensive but the one element you need to invest on is a professional and experienced facilitator. Qualified facilitator can correctly organize, monitor and evaluate the exercises. A poorly trained facilitator can turn a productive exercise into sheer waste of time. The role of a facilitator becomes prominent as you go through the following activities.

The mine field is a simple exercise which can be performed either outdoor or indoor. This activity does not require any special props. You need to prepare a mine field by placing any kind of obstacles randomly. Then you have to form pairs from the participants. This can be done by randomly drawing names from a hat. The idea of this team building activity is one member of a pair will be blindfolded and has to cover the field without touching any obstacle. Another member will guide him by communicating and giving direction to him. This activity helps to build trust and improve communication skills within team members.

Group juggle is another popular team building activity which helps to develop the problem solving capability of a team and cooperation of its members to solve the problem. A group can contain about six to eight people or even more and they have to form a circle. A ball is introduced and the problem is that the ball has to be tossed to each and every person in the circle but no one can handle it twice. When the task is completed the time required is calculated and the team is given another chance to perform it faster than the previous attempt. Before the second attempt they are given some time to discuss the problem among themselves.

Improvisation circle acts as an excellent ice breaker for newly formed group. The team members form a circle and the facilitator introduces a subject. Now the team has to form a story on that subject by creating one word at a time. The person selected to make the start will turn towards the person on his right, make eye contact and say the first word and it goes on. At the end of the story the team has not only created something together but the eye contact with the strangers made it a cohesive group.

Catastrophe is an advanced group problem solving activity. This team building activity requires some preparation. The team is given a disaster scenario like you have crashed landed in some Alaskan wilderness where temperature is below zero. The team was able to save twelve items. Now the task is to prioritize the twelve items according to their importance in the team’s survival. They also need to come up with the explanation of the given ranking. This exercise provides an insight into the team’s thought process.

Successful team building activities have a huge impact on the performance of the organization. So it is very beneficial for an organization to indulge in constructive activities.

Stephanie Mills is the author of this article on Birthday Party Packages. Find more information on Kids Birthday Parties In Scottsdale here.