10 Fun Communication Team Building Activities

With the current virtual and remotely working world, strong communication is the glue that holds successful teams together. It is the key to build any successful team. But let’s be honest, most communication training sessions are boring and not as engaging as we expect it to be. That’s why we have put together a list of 10 fun activities that help teams communicate better.

Whether you’re managing a remote team spread across time zones or leading an in-person / hybrid work culture, these activities strengthen how your team connects, collaborates and communicates. These exercises break down barriers, create genuine conversations and build lasting communication skills.

Members of a team performing various fun communication team building activities

Ready to transform your team’s communication while having some fun along the way? Let’s look at the 10 fun communication team building activities that help team building actually be fun.

Team Building Activity 1: The Story Chain Challenge

This activity focuses on active listening and develops narrative cohesion skill of the participants. In this activity, the team builds a continuous story. Basically one person has to start a story with just one sentence. Each person has to add one sentence to the previous sentence and create a storyline. Team members must listen carefully and add details that makes sense. The story continues until everybody in the team has contributed two sentences.

Team Building Activity 2: Back to Back Drawing

For this team building activity, you need to split the team into pairs so that everyone has partners. The partners should sit back to back if this event is happening in person. One person will receive a drawing where he/she has to describe it to their partner. And the partner has to draw it with whatever descriptions they receive. The catch here is, the partner should ask yes/no questions only. In the case of virtual teams, you can ask everyone to be on a video call and the drawing can be privately sent to one person in the pair and the partner may try to virtually draw it online with the descriptions he/she receives.

Team Building Activity 3: The Assumption Game

This activity breaks down the communication barriers. This is an eye-opening activity that helps the team to understand how assumptions can lead to misunderstandings and communication breakdowns. This activity is effective for teams that handle cross-team collaboration.

For this activity you need to divide the participants into pairs. Each person should write about 5 assumptions they have about their partner. For example their partner’s role, work style, communication preference and their challenges at work. All the assumptions should be work related and not personal ones. 

Once both partners have completed the assumptions they have about each other, they can interview each other for 7-8 minutes each. They can ask any questions but not the ones that are directly related to their assumptions. Participants are allowed to take notes during the interview.

After interview, each participant can review their assumptions with their interview questions and should mark their assumption as correct, incorrect and partially correct. Then partners can share their assumptions and discuss the reality.

At the end of the activity, teams come back together and share surprising discoveries from the activity. They can discuss how assumptions impact daily work and identify strategies to avoid assumptions based communication problems.

Team Building Activity 4: Active Listening Olympics

Remember having sports day at school? This activity is similar to a sports day but for listening skills. This is like a fun competition that turns active listening skills into olympic style events. There are 4 events in this activity:

  • Memory Relay
  • Paraphrase Challenge
  • Question Master
  • Emotion Detective

The activities can be played as a team or individually. Form teams to make it more fun.

Memory Relay:

This activity is like a memory game but with stories. Someone tells a detailed story to everyone. Listeners must remember the key details. The one who is hosting the game can ask questions on the story. Points will be given to those for each correct detail they remember. 

Paraphrase Challenge:

Ever taken notes in a meeting or shared the minutes of a meeting. This is something like that but slightly different. One person shares a work situation with the participants. Listeners must repeat it back in their own words. Points will be given to the listeners for repeating back the work situation with accuracy and catching the main ideas. This is just like summarizing a meeting.

Question Master:

In this event, one person will share a scenario to the participants. It can be any work related or a common scenario. The task for the listeners is to ask some good follow-up questions. Points will be provided for thoughtful, open-ended questions. This activity will form as a practice for better workplace conversations.

Emotion Detective:

In this activity multiple stories can be shared. The participants must listen to the different stories and identify the speaker’s feelings. Points will be given for catching the tone of the story and identifying hidden meanings. This is a great activity for building empathy at workplace.

At the end of all 4 events, whichever team / individual has scored more points can be concluded as the winner. Remember to celebrate efforts, not just winning.

Team Building Activity 5: Lost in Translation

This is a fun and challenging activity where participants must communicate ideas without speaking but only by gestures and drawing. For this activity, split the participants into pairs or small groups based on the total count of the participants. Provide them a list of words or concepts to communicate. Prepare a drawing board, for remote teams use tools such as whiteboard.

Once the words has been provided to one participant of the group there must be no speaking or writing words. The word must be communicated through gestures and by drawing only. The other participants should figure out the word based on what they get from the gestures and the drawing. Points will be awarded to the teams with successful communication.

This activity shows how challenging and funny communication can be when we have limitations.

Team Building Activity 6: Silent Project Planning

This activity tests team coordination and communication while planning a project without speaking or any kind of interaction. It is a fun activity that shows how much we rely on verbal communication and helps to develop other communication methods.

For this activity, you can split the team into small groups. Distribute or write a project scenario on the board. Share it in teams / chat for remote participants. The individual participants in the team must create a project plan without interacting with anyone in their group. Teams can organize ideas into project phases, timelines, responsibilities and dependencies. After jotting down the initial ideas, they can sit together (still not allowed to talk) and review the project plan together and make adjustments. They can show their agreement and disagreement through gestures and come to a final organization.

After this, the teams are allowed to talk. They can discuss the challenges faced, share their insights and review their final plan. They can compare it to the normal planning process and how different or difficult it was and share it with everyone. 

This activity explains the value of clear written communication, non verbal agreement methods and patience in team coordination. To make it more fun and engaging, the project topic can be given for office party planning. If you want it to be strictly work related, use topics like website redesign or a new product launch.

Team Building Activity 7: Two Truths and a Lie

This activity is a great icebreaker. Split the participants into small groups. One person from each group shares two true stories and a false story. The opponent team has to identify which one is the truth and which one is a lie. 

This is truly a fun and engaging activity that helps teams collaborate well with each other. The total activity can have few rounds based on the available time and points can be allocated based on figuring out the false story.

Team Building Activity 8: The Escape Room Challenge

This activity is all about teamwork, communication and problem solving under pressure. This is a typical mystery room challenge activity. Here, participants are locked in a themed room with a storyline (eg: a detective solving a mystery, an adventurer finding treasure)

The escape room basically contains various clues, puzzles and tasks that need to be solved to progress further. Success depends on how well your team communicates, collaborates and also cooperates with each other. The main goal is to solve the puzzles and escape the room within the given time limit. It is a thrilling way to bond with the team and have some fun

Team Building Activity 9: Role Playing Scenarios

This activity simulates real-life situations that require effective communication and problem solving (eg: dealing with difficult customers or brainstorming new ideas)

Split the participants into pairs or groups for this activity. Assign a scenario to the team which is relevant to your industry. Each participant can take a role based on the scenario (eg:, employee, manager, customer and service executive). Participants can act out the scenario and other team members can observe and take notes.

After the role play, discuss the communication techniques, problem solving strategies, what went well and what can be improved. Highlight strength and areas of improvement to the participants. Points can be given to the team that handled the scenario well with best communication.

Team Building Activity 10: Office Trivia

Office Trivia is a fun and engaging activity that tests the participants knowledge about their workplace, colleagues and their industry and also helps the team bond.

For this activity, divide the participants into small teams. You can give them questions related to your office  such as company history, fun facts about the colleagues and industry related questions. Present the questions in rounds, give the teams time to discuss and write down their answers. After each round collect their answers and announce their scores based on the right answers. 

You can make it interesting by including a bonus round where teams identify their colleagues with their childhood photos 🙂

Tags: No tags

Add a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *