45+ Team Building Activities for Small Groups in 2025

Teamwork makes the dream work!

But it takes a lot of effort to get a team to work in unison towards their shared goals. Teams in most workplaces today comprise diverse employees, each bringing their own beliefs and opinions.

That’s why company leaders and HR professionals are always looking for innovative ideas to help their team members bond better and break the ice.

Team-building activities for work help team members get along with one another and provide opportunities for them to learn more about each other and their individual strengths.

In this post, we’ll explore why team-building activities for small groups are important and share a curated list of engaging and trending team-building activity ideas you can try at your workplace.

What Are Team Building Activities?

Team-building activities involve all members of a team or group participating and contributing towards fulfilling a common goal. Such activities are often informal and unrelated to their job roles, allowing employees to get to know each other beyond their work designations, skill sets, and experience.

Team-building activities aim to help members create new relationships, understand the necessity of teamwork, and analyze each member's strengths and skills. Such activities include fun tasks and initiatives that test the members’ unity and ability to support one another during various exercises.

Why Are Team Building Exercises Important?

An ideal team comprises diverse members from different ethnic backgrounds, speaking various languages, holding diverse opinions and interests, and having preferred work dynamics. It can be challenging to facilitate unity and smooth communication among members on common ground without conflicts.

Here is where team-building activities help team members achieve their team’s growth, bonding, and communication goals. Let's explore some of the tangible benefits of team-building exercises and group activities, both inside and outside the workplace.

1. Better Communication: From planning their game strategy to aiding their members in completing given tasks, improved communication and ice-breaking are key benefits of team-building activities.
2. Enhanced Trust: Members begin to develop a sense of trust while working together, depending on the help and support they receive during various team activities.
3. Improved Collaboration: By bonding with members they have never worked together before, team members start seeking new work opportunities and collaborate with new partners and members.
4. Onboard Faster: Ice-breaking activities among team members help new people get to know their team sooner and better and learn how they can adapt to work better in their new roles.
5. Encourage Creativity and Innovation: Team-building activities often prompt employees to “put their thinking caps on” and come up with new ideas to solve real-life problems, which can inspire them to think similarly to complete workplace challenges.
6. Reduces Stress and Burnout: Small group activities unrelated to work tasks help employees relax and unwind, preventing work stress from carrying over.
7. Strengthen DEI Initiatives: Group activities with team members help employees understand that most share similar thought processes and solutions, regardless of their ethnic backgrounds, languages, genders, and other differences.

45+ Team Building Exercises and Activities for the Workplace

Let's take a look at various categories of team-building activities for small groups that can help employees engage more effectively with one another.

Icebreaker Activities

Icebreakers aim to break the initial, awkward silence in a place full of people, helping them come forward to share their views, answers, or opinions. Here is a list of such activities that can be used to encourage every member of a small group to speak up.

1. Draw and Guess

How to Play: This game involves a group or facilitator suggesting a certain word or object to a volunteer. This volunteer must draw using one or more strokes to let the other members guess the word.

Number of Players: 3 to 10 members

Benefits: Demonstrates the volunteer's ability to perceive a given situation and explain it in a way that the team can understand.

2. Find the Lie

How to Play: Each member will be given a chance to share 2 to 3 true statements and one false statement. The others in the team can discuss and find the false statement. Statements can be related to work or personal lives. Finally, each member will reveal the lie.

Number of Players: 5 or more members, preferably in 2 or more teams.

Benefits: Team members learn about the true-life incidents and behavioral aspects of each member while identifying the lie.

3. Build a Story

How to Play: The facilitator or first member starts with an opening sentence. Every other member must add a relevant sentence to the previous one and make it flow like a story. The team must continue this for as long as possible.

Number of Players: 3 or more members

Benefits: Showcase the creativity and imagination of team members to come up with innovative solutions that are unique and original.

4. Map Your Life

How to Play: Encourage members to doodle or create a timeline or map of their life from their college years to the current day. Also, encourage other members to ask questions regarding path blockers and hurdles.

Number of Players: 3 or more members

Benefits: Team members gain insight into the past experiences of their colleagues in a brief period of time.

5. “What’s on Your Desk?”

How to Play: Encourage each member to share what they have on their work desk. This session can proceed for several rounds, during which members can share a desk item and discuss its significance in each round.

Number of Players: 2 or more members

Benefits: Learning about a person’s workplace environment reveals a great deal about their personality and taste preferences.

Problem-Solving and Strategy-Based Activities

Such activities are useful in bringing team members together to discuss strategies for solving a given problem, and the best team wins.

6. Marshmallow Tower Building

How to Play: Teams will be given spaghetti noodles and marshmallows to build a tower. Teams that design the most intricate and well-balanced towers win.

Number of Members: 2 or 3 members in a team

Benefits: Members can collaborate on robust designs and take turns building different levels, providing equal opportunities for all members.

7. Escape Room/Prison Break

How to Play: Employees remain locked inside a room for an hour or two. They must discover clues within their environment and solve them one by one to come out. This can also happen in a virtual environment.

Number of Members: 4 to 5 members in a team

Benefits: Teaches members how to survive in critical situations and solve problems from a different perspective.

8. Find My Pair

How to Play: Team members will be randomly assigned names in pairs, such as salt and pepper, oil and water, cheese and pizza, and similar. Each member asks “yes” or “no” questions to every other member and selects their pair.

Number of Members: 5 to 6 pairs in a team

Benefits: Boosts members’ ability to deduce a solution by asking relevant questions and improving communication.

9. Silent Line-Up

How to Play: Members must stand in a line in an order decided by the facilitator without talking or discussing it with any other members. The order can be based on terms such as age, distance from the office, years of experience, and any other relevant parameter. Once they are in their positions, the team that gets the order right or gets closest is the winner.

Number of Members: 5 to 8 members in 2 or more teams

Benefits: Silent activities reveal how much team members know about each other and help them arrive at the best possible order, even with minimal knowledge.

10. Real-Time Hackathon

How to Play: Hackathons involve participants designing and developing a working model using the resources provided to them. Such activities need not be directly related to the team’s job role and can include real-time challenges, such as reinventing the wheel with a modern twist.

Number of Members: 3 or 4 members in a team

Benefits: Demonstrates the team's awareness of real-life scenarios and their ability to provide innovative solutions to challenging problems.

Creative Collaboration Activities

Team-building activities must encourage members to explore their collaborative side through effective communication. Creative activities that also foster communication are a must-try for all teams.

11. Blind Fold Maze

How to Play: One member’s eye is blindfolded while the partner guides them through a challenging pathway to reach the destination. Meanwhile, the other members can try confusing the blindfolded member. The maze can be redesigned and reconstructed for every blindfolded member.

Number of Players: 4 or more members

Benefits: The blindfolded member must concentrate on the guiding voice without getting distracted by the others, while the one giving instructions must be clear and precise to guide the member in a way they understand.

12. Office Design Challenge

How to Play: Encourage team members to design the office of their dreams and present it to other members. Then, conduct a meeting to determine which parameters from each design will work and which will not, and suggest a unified design that is approved by your team.

Number of Players: 4 or more members

Benefits: Helps members learn the skill of negotiating and asking questions to decide on final features, mimicking real-time work scenarios.

13. Gutterball

How to Play: Members move the ball from a starting point to the destination on the marked track without letting it go away. This game can have members taking turns at different pit stops to reach the ball at the destination.

Number of Players: 3 or more in a team

Benefits: It helps members discuss the key positions of strategic players and where they must remain to guide the ball to the target.

14. LEGO Challenges

How to Play: Two or more teams are given sets of LEGO blocks or similar building blocks to design a structure presented as a challenge—the first team to complete it wins.

Number of Players: 2 or 3 members per team

Benefits: Helps members plan and execute strategies within a strict deadline.

15. Movie Character Role-Plays

How to Play: Pick a scene from the recent trending movies or personal favorites and select team members to enact the scene. Allow sufficient time to prepare, and consider obtaining costumes if possible.

Number of Players: 3 or more members in each scene

Benefits: Helps members learn each other’s interests in cinema, arts, and music.

Energizing Physical Activities

Although most workplaces do not require employees to toil hard through physical labor, team activities that test the members' physical endurance are necessary. Such activities help assess how team members support one another without overloading one member and share the burden equally.

16. Scavenger Hunt/Treasure Hunt

How to Play: Team members must work together to find a hidden treasure by following clues and crossing hurdles in their path without losing one another within a short time. The fastest team wins.

Number of Members: 2 to 3 teams consisting of a minimum of 4 members.

Benefits: Helps members in a group shuffle and form smaller teams to work in a competitive environment.

17. Remove the Human Knot

How to Play: Team members gather in a circle, close their eyes, and randomly hold hands with two other members. Slowly, they must release the knots one at a time by releasing one hand. The members must take turns announcing before they release, without seeing each other.

Number of Members: The team must consist of 5 or more members.

Benefits: It fosters smart communication practices when team members are stuck in a challenging situation, teaching them how to overcome the problem without losing patience.

18. Make the Longest Shadow

How to Play: Each team must devise a variety of poses and postures that cast a long shadow on the ground. The team with the longest shadow holding them for the longest time wins.

Number of Players: The more, the better. Four or more in a team.

Benefits: Members learn to coordinate and stay focused by planning their strategic positions, taking into account each member’s mobility and strengths.

19. Fill the Gallon

How to Play: Team members fill a gallon with water using a cup through a pathway that can be slippery or filled with obstacles.

Number of Players: 2 or more in a team. 2 or more teams can compete to choose the winner.

Benefits: Good for building endurance among team members while deciding on smart strategies.

20. Lean Walking Race

How to Play: Pairs of members lean on each other and walk without losing contact. The first pair to reach the finish line without moving paths wins. This game can be made interesting by tying the pair’s left leg and right leg together or by carrying an object without falling.

Number of Players: 3 or 4 pairs minimum

Benefits: Helps members coordinate better, synchronizing their leg movements and speed.

Remote-Friendly Activities

This set of activities is most suitable for team members who work remotely and cannot assemble in one location. While it is necessary to have at least a few physical meetings during a work year, remote team-building activities help members continue bonding between their busy work lives.

21. Virtual Fitness Sessions

How to Play: Members must agree on a physical fitness activity and perform it simultaneously, such as a push-up challenge, yoga sequences, skipping, and many other activities.

Number of Participants: 2 or more members

Benefits: Helps members bond over a non-work-related task while also promoting overall health.

22. Virtual Desk/Home Tours

How to Play: Each member takes a turn to present and show their work setup at home and gives a tour of their home.

Number of Participants: 2 or more members

Benefits: Helps team members learn more about each other’s tastes and preferences.

23. Remote Pictionary

How to Play: Each member takes turns drawing and showing clues for a word or phrase, while the team guesses for each stroke drawn.

Number of Players: 4 or more members

Benefits: Encourages team members to come up with creative solutions to a given drawing.

24. Coffee Roulette

How to Play: Coffee Roulettes or virtual coffee breaks encourage members to engage in conversation with one another as they would during physical breaks in an office setting.

Number of Participants: 2 or more members

Benefits: Roulettes are very much necessary to help members participate and speak about themselves while also getting to know other members. Roulettes can also have a specific topic of discussion.

25. Online Trivia Games

How to Play: Team members log in to an online gaming platform to play competitive or fun games, such as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Jeopardy-style quizzes, scavenger hunts, and more.

Number of Participants: 5 or more members

Benefits: Helps virtual teams collaborate and plan strategies like teams in a physical setup.

Reflective and Values-Driven Exercises

Team-building activities must also focus on reflecting on a team’s strengths and allow members to share their compliments and gratitude. Such activities aim to strengthen the team members and form a more closely knit team.

26. Values Voting

How to Play: Members must agree on a list of core values that drive the team's success. Then, each person must vote where they are doing great and where they need to improve. Finally, the results may be shared, along with any inferences, while keeping votes anonymous if necessary.

Number of Participants: 5 or more, preferably all the team members.

Benefits: Regular voting sessions help teams realign their priorities and work better.

27. Team Map

How to Play: Members must come up with an illustrative and creative interpretation of the team’s journey, highlighting their achievements and challenging times as milestones.

Number of Members: 4 or more, preferably including past team members.

Benefits: Knowing the team's journey and history can motivate team members to strive for better results and surpass their records.

28. Gratitude Circle

How to Play: Team members gather around and share a feature about the team or a member for which they feel grateful.

Number of Players: 5 or more members

Benefits: Sharing gratitude messages makes team members feel valued for the work they do and the impact they create on each other.

29. Office Trivia Quiz

How to Play: Have a presenter or facilitator ask questions relating to the company’s policies, awareness of company rules and benefits, contact details of HR professionals, department head names, team achievements and goals, and much more.

Number of Players: 6 or more

Benefits: Tests the members’ awareness of various company-wide initiatives and policies.

30. Letter to Future Self

How to Play: Each member must write a letter describing how they want their future self to be and share their feelings on the journey that they have to endure. Then they can read it out to their team members.

Number of Players: 3 to 5 members

Benefits: Helps team members understand each member’s short-term and long-term goals that they wish to achieve in the future.

DEI and Psychological Safety Focused Activities

This set of activities helps team members learn more about each other's culture and background through fun sessions and activities.

31. “Walk in My Shoes”

How to Play: Team members are assigned a role, preferably that of the team leader or any other member, along with their corresponding job tasks. Other members must judge and decide how the performer matches the original role.

Number of Players: 4 or more members

Benefits: It shows how members have observed one another, from their mannerisms to communication style, decision-making skills, and other characteristics.

32. Identity Mapping

How to Play: Facilitators or quiz masters can present questions where they ask team members to guess their identities from clues related to their ethnicity, religious beliefs, hobbies, and similar aspects.

Number of Players: 6 or more members

Benefits: Shows each member's awareness of the others' backgrounds and life histories.

33. Culture Shocks

How to Play: Each team member can discuss an incident in their life that felt like a culture shock for them but was normal in a given region or ethnic group. Such moments are meant to be taken lightly.

Number of Players: 6 or more members

Benefits: Team members learn more about the unique features of different cultures and traditions that must be respected and embraced, rather than being offended.

34. Privilege Reflection Cards

How to Play: Members gather around and share how their ethnic background and upbringing have shaped their current lives. They can also bust any myths and misconceptions that others have about their culture and ethnicity.

Number of Players: 6 or more members

Benefits: Members derive various benefits from specific habits and practices, which they can also apply to their day-to-day lives.

35. Respect and Inclusivity Bingo

How to Play: Play the game of bingo by including questions that highlight an individual’s identity, such as:

• Name someone who belongs to a previous generation on your team.
• Find a member who comes from the same subcontinent as yours.
• Find someone who speaks the same language as you, and much more.

Number of Players: 10 or more members. The more members, the better.

Benefits: Aims to help members quickly understand the vast diversity among members in their team, and also get to know fun facts about them.

Employee Well-Being Activities

Team-building activities for small groups can include initiatives to promote a healthy lifestyle and overall well-being. Here are some fun health activities that help teams unwind while focusing on their health.

36. Group Meditation or Yoga

How to Play: Members gather in a recreational space with a special tutor or guide to participate in group exercises or fitness activities, such as yoga or Zumba.

Number of Members: 10 or more members

Benefits: Teams use their free time to bond through fitness activities and inspire one another to be health-conscious.

37. Unplug Hour Challenge

How to Play: Every week or biweekly, team members can take an hour off and disconnect from all electronic gadgets and work tasks. They can use this time to play a sport, go to a movie, attend a concert, or even go out for coffee without discussing work.

Number of Members: 6 or more members

Benefits: Helps teams gain control over their core work hours and dedicate time towards recreation and relaxation.

38. Mental Health Check-In Game

How to Play: This is a quick game that can be played randomly by any two team members, where one person asks quick questions to ensure the other is not disturbed before or after the workday. Some questions include:

• “How are you feeling today?”
• “What were the goals you met today?”
• “Do you feel overwhelmed about anything that happened today?”

Number of Members: One member can check in with any number of other members.

Benefits: It helps team members connect with each other, supporting those who feel vulnerable due to events at the workplace or in their personal lives.

39. Journaling and Reflection Time

How to Play: Team members and leaders dedicate a few minutes to listing their team members' progress in terms of their learning experiences within the team and reflecting on how they can improve themselves for a better life ahead.

Number of Members: 5 or more, preferably all the team members.

Benefits: Group reflections and journaling of achievements and plans for the future help establish firm team dynamics.

40. Lifestyle Challenges/Make a Habit

How to Play: Team members can collectively take up a common hobby and pursue it for a month. It could be something simple like reading a book, learning an art, playing a sport, and then discussing their progress at the end of the month.

Number of Members: 3 or more members, preferably all members must participate.

Benefits: Taking up a common hobby helps team members unite and share opinions and perspectives, improving communication and collaboration.

Fun and Team Bonding Activities

These activities are designed to be light-hearted and create a happy atmosphere among team members, distracting them from work while keeping them engaged and motivated.

41. Office Potluck/Theme Food Parties

How to Play: One fine day, encourage team members to bring food for the entire team. It could be a potluck or a themed event focusing on a specific cuisine.

Number of Members: Include all the team members

Benefits: Team members learn about each other's culinary preferences and tastes, bonding and relishing new dishes.

42. Karaoke Hour/Dumb Charades

How to Play: The classic games of dumb charades, where one enacts a movie name while others take a guess. Karaoke on popular trending songs and asking members to guess a missing word is yet another fun game.

Number of Members: 6 or more members

Benefits: It tests members’ knowledge of the latest trends in the entertainment industry so that they are not just glued to their work tasks.

43. Team Meme Battle

How to Play: Divide the team into smaller groups and challenge each one to come up with an accurate meme to describe their team’s current situation. The most relevant, fun, and light-hearted meme wins.

Number of Members: 8 or more, with 2 to 3 in a team.

Benefits: Demonstrates how team members can accurately interpret situations using the right images and infographics.

44. Dress-Up Events

How to Play: Select a particular day of the week where all team members dress up in a specific style, follow a celebrity style, or dress in a uniform color code.

Number of Members: All members of the team

Benefits: Enhances unity among team members, showing that they can adhere to codes while maintaining their individual style statements.

45. Pass the Message

How to Play: This classic game involves one person whispering a message to another, who then passes it on to every other member. The last person must announce the message without any mistakes. Distractions, such as background music, can make the process difficult for the message passers.

Number of Members: 5 or more

Benefits: Shows the ability of team members to remain focused and comprehend what their team members are saying.

46. Find the Plot

How to Play: Team members share the plot of a movie, book, web series, or any other piece of fiction. Other members take guesses, and the correct one wins.

Number of Members: 6 or more

Benefits: Enhances reverse engineering, mind mapping, and backtracking among team members.

How Revaluate180 Supports Team Building Success

No two teams are the same. Each team has a unique blend of talent and members coming from diverse backgrounds and cultures. Similarly, there is no one team-building strategy that fits all teams.

Companies worldwide are finding it challenging to crack the code that helps teams stay together, engage better, and drive them toward success. Here at R180, we help companies build strong teams with well-curated team-building programs.

Our data-driven insights on individual team members help you choose from a wide range of flexible team-building activities to improve their engagement.

Furthermore, we also help conduct interactive workshops and assessments to identify blockers within a team and suggest solutions to enhance team communication and collaboration.

Final Thoughts

A team stays productive only if it is given sufficient time to recharge and renew itself. We came across a list of fun and doable team-building activities for small and mid-sized work teams in companies.

The advantage of conducting such activities is that they cost very little or are mostly free. Thus, you don’t have to burn a hole in your pocket to get teams to bond with each other. Additionally, such activities can be facilitated and suggested by anyone on the team, and do not necessarily require the involvement of an HR partner or a higher leader.

Such informal bonding methods help teams enhance their communication, foster trust, identify collective strengths, and move forward in unity.

Connect with us if you'd like to see your team make progress with improved trust and communication.