With the virtual world rising, businesses need to arm themselves against the challenges they will face. Even though online mode opens up a lot of doors, there are still some things that it simply can not fulfil like live face-to-face interactions.
However, we can leverage technology to get the best out of the situation. With team building becoming increasingly difficult, a manager needs to focus on helping out the teams to reach the same heights they did before, and then some more. Managers need to ensure that remote teams are cohesive to enable the fluent transfer of information and flexibility in coordination. The best way to do these is through the virtual team building activities due to restrictions on COVID-19 and even otherwise. They don’t only help a team in connecting better but also help them in numerous other ways.
So, here are some virtual team building activities for you to manage your team better. They can ideally be held for 15-20 participants but if there are provisions and enough time, you can have a big enough group!
How to play: This is a scavenger hunt where each participant has to find things that hold initial letters that have been allotted. For instance, if the host assigns the letter ‘T’, everyone has to find things that begin with T and send pictures of the items in together rather than individually. Everyone who has the highest number of items wins.
Benefits: Letter Scatter helps the employees think outside of the box as it stimulates the creativity that one reaches out to when bound by time. It helps the employees in planning and execution as it urges one to think on their feet while managing tasks in a given amount of time. And, of course, there a lot of fun involved where everyone. It also develops prioritizing skills as the person strategically decides which particular style, he or she would like to follow to get a task done.
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How to play: Each member of the team has to share their favourite images from the past. This isn’t much of a game, per se, but it is still one of the best virtual team building activities one can find out there. And we find it to be a great way of communicating.
Benefits: This is the best exercise for bonding with peers as it allows one to share their pictures, but along with those, the memory attached to those pictures. There’s a lot of sharing and the remote team members will know each other’s stories and therefor their peers better. The members find common ground and due to this form a closer relationship. Sharing of memories also transpires trust, something that is of prime when working in a team. It’s also a time for the individuals to reminisce over the past
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How to play: Team members will be given one minute to reflect on 1 unique and 1 weird thing about them. After the minute is up, all of them have to tell those two details. Unique things can include something like achievements or rare traits, while weird things can be something like the ability to fall asleep on a bus while standing!
Benefits: This is a good way to know something different about your colleagues that would not normally come up in general conversations. It will help to discover the different things about each other and also help the people to bond over that. It builds mutual respect as the team members come to know the different role each member plays in the team. Along with that, it also helps overcome communication block and here’s why: After you know the weirdest thing about someone, you feel closer to them and therefore feel free to ask them about anything. This drastic shift in approach will ultimately increase collaboration and help in fluent and direct communications.
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How to Play: Think MTV Cribs. This is an activity which requires each participant to give a short tour of their house (via video), pointing to their favourite things about the house or any objects that they really like.
Benefits: A person can tell a lot about someone after seeing their house because it is a summary of one’s life; there are souvenirs, memories and interests clubbed in one place. This is a great way to find similar tastes. It helps find common ground in a lot of things. This activity is known for enhancing remote team bonds and therefore helping in coordination and collaboration. This activity is also about helping people come out of their shells as sharing the interior of someone’s home can be very personal.
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How to Play: This activity requires a little pre-meeting prep. Before starting a meeting, everyone has to write down a fact about them and mail it to the facilitator. When the meeting starts, the facilitator speaks out the fact and everyone has to guess the person who told this.
Benefits: This is a great getting to know game because here you don’t only learn things about others but you also come to know what other remote team members think of you. This, in turn, helps enormously in team bonding as the members start to know more about each other, as people open up about various things about them. There is also quick thinking involved, where one has to trust their instincts and think on their feet, making them more efficient in projects with a shorter timeline; making them quicker.
View Activity -> Here
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These games are some of the best out there. They are scientifically a great way of team bonding as all of them involve members opening up about their pasts or about their interests. It forces people to willingly get talking, to have conversations and bond over them. This establishes a work culture and determines the dynamics of a team better. As a manager, you get to know their individual skills and quirks better, which will guide you in assigning the right task to the right person. It will also help you to manage the team more efficiently because you would know each person individually and understand their potential and their area of improvements. You would benefit from all of these activities because they encourage engagement, communication, transparency, collaboration and proficient project planning.
If you want to look into more of these activities, please head to our page on virtual team building activities. We assure you, they are completely worth your while.
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