Free team building games can be found in many places, but the best are gathered here for you to easily access. Team building games make for a tighter, more cohesive group and establish trust. Games are a safe, simple way to get people to step out of their comfort zone and work with other people.
3 excellent free team building games
Three excellent games follow that emphasize teamwork and which can be tweaked if necessary to accommodate the space and time constraints.
Human Pretzel: This works well for around ten people – a circle can be up to 15-20, but larger groups than that should split into two groups of people.
All team members should face the center of the circle, standing shoulder to shoulder. Each person should lift their left hand, and take the hand of someone standing across the circle from them. Then each person must use their right hand and join with another person also standing far away. Then they must figure out how to untangle the resulting pretzel without anyone letting go.
This requires excellent thought and communication skills and a healthy dose of teamwork.
Desert Island: Have each person list two things they would take with them if they knew they would be stranded on a desert island.
List all the items on a large dry erase board, and split the team into two groups. One should come up with ways the items will help them survive, and the other team should come up with possible situations that might occur, and demand to know how they could be solved.
This game really translates well to real life situations when all possible aspects of a problem must be looked at and solutions found for all contingencies.
Trading Up: This game is designed to be played in a setting where there are many people. It can often be done in an office, with different teams performing at different times.
Pass out a paper clip to each player. Let them know they must ask people in the office to trade them something for their clip, and it must be ‘better’ than a paper clip. Ask them to keep ‘trading up’ over a predetermined period of time – say 30 minutes. At the end of that time, each team shows off their accumulated loot.
After all teams have had a turn at the game, a winning team is chosen based on best, most valuable items, and MVPs for each team are chosen as well. Give extra points for items gathered that can be used together – such as pen and paper, staples and stapler, etc.
All of the free team building games are only a glimpse into the fun activities you can plan to increase team work within your group and raise morale.
If you set aside a special time monthly or biweekly to work with your group(s), you will see the levels of trust and acceptance between team members increase. Your team will be more responsive to training and better at working together to complete tasks and decipher instructions.