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Team-building Activities
- Birds of a Feather (20 min)
In this activity, participants recognize that people bring different talents, perspectives, and backgrounds to groups and understand the benefits of forming diverse groups. - Building a Tower (2 hrs)
In this activity, participants are encouraged to understand that people have different perceptions of the same thing and that there are different interpretations of and meanings to the same verbal or non-verbal expressions, experience misunderstanding of others and being misunderstood, learn to communicate non-verbally and to cooperate on a specific task across communication barriers. - Building Team Communication (1.5 hrs)
In this activity, participants are encouraged to "understand a range of communication styles, identify each member's individual preferences and how they can create a team communication profile while honoring individual preferences" (Stringer & Cassiday, 2009, p. 93). - Complete the Picture (45 min)
In this activity, participants interact non-verbally with create connections with one another. Learners are encouraged to develop team-building skills and reflect on how nonverbal communication cues can alter interpretation. - diversophy® New Horizons (1 hr)
Note: This game was originally intended for Finnish audiences. English and Arabic translations are available in many instances within the game.
In this activity, participants move from "ethnocentricity" to "diversophy," a state of higher cultural sensitivity and skill, explore factual knowledge about other cultures, practice intercultural decision-making, team-building and communication skills, and cost/benefit assessment for intercultural interactions, and imagine applications of newfound intercultural competencies in their own lives and work. - Ecotonos: A Simulation for Collaborating Across Cultures (2 hrs)
In this activity, participants implement strategies for multicultural collaboration, create their own (fictional) culture, assess cultural attributes and behaviors, and learn about process mapping. - Five Ideas (1 hr)
In this activity, participants articulate clearly the goals and values of their group, listen openly to other groups' goals and values which may diverge from their own, and negotiate solutions that achieve common goals. - Group Images (45 min)
In this activity, participants develop team-building skills and reflect on how others interpret words and concepts through body language and movement. - Hollow Square (1 hr)
In this activity, participants study dynamics involved in planning a task to be carried out by others and in accomplishing a task planned by others and explore both helpful and hindering communication behaviors in assigning and carrying out a task. - Improved Solutions (45 min)
In this activity, participants generate ideas for dealing with briefly-described problems, evaluate strengths and weaknesses of a solution as a team, improve the potential value of a solution, and compare the potential value of two different solutions for handling the same problem through perspective-and frame-shifting. - Let's Draw a House (partner activity) (30 min)
In this activity, participants "experience leader and follower patterns, demonstrate relational and task-oriented perspectives, and discuss personal and cultural influences on behavior" (Stringer & Cassiday, 2003, p. 7). - Leveraging Mindsets to Facilitate Multiracial Collaborations (2 hrs)
This activity can be facilitated in groups to help teams of learners "understand that race is not as biological as we initially thought and recognize emerging scientific evidence in support of a more social constructivist mindset of race/ethnicity" (Li & Kung, 2021). - Me and My Team (15 min)
In this activity, participants compare and contrast times in which they have experienced the clash between self-interest and team-interest and discuss the ways that secrecy can reduce trust in a team. - One Will Get You Ten (40 min)
In this reflection, participants generate and share ideas for solving a specific problem or exploring a topic and process take-aways from a shared experience or a dialogue. - Pair Sculpt and Group Sculpt (45 min)
In this activity, participants reflect on their cultural assumptions about expression and emotion, interpret emotional expressions demonstrated in the body language of others, and compare narratives and narrative assumptions about body language expression and response. - Personal Agendas in Teamwork (40 min)
This activity encourages participants to recognize personal agendas and their role in group projects and teamwork, reflect on their own personal agendas, and explore ways of mitigating tensions that personal agendas can create. - Teamwork Self-Assessment (2 hrs)
In this activity, designed for students studying abroad, participants reflect on their experiences working in teams, examine communication and intercultural issues that can arise when working in teams, practice identifying sources of behaviors using Hofstede's Power Distance Index, practice reflection and application of teamwork strengths to improve teamwork in a hypothetical situation, and draw connections between the practice of these skills in the hypothetical to real-world applications specific to the culture in which they are studying abroad. - The Role of Culture in Team Communication (25 min)
In this activity, participants are challenged to recognize the role of their cultural backgrounds in team communication settings. - What Do They Bring? (1 hr 10 min)
As a result of this activity, participants "identify the forms of diversity in a work group and identify the value of the diversity that individuals bring to the group" (Stringer & Cassiday, 2003, p. 173). - Workthink (20 min)
In this activity, participants apply Hofstede's cultural dimensions to workplace scenarios and team situations.
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