Fun virtual team building ideas

As we are settling into the new norm of everyone working from home, I have been scouring the web to find some fun ways to keep the teams motivated. Here is a curated list of my favorite team building ideas that can be done using any of the remote conferencing services like Teams, Zoom, Bluejeans etc.

1. Three/Two truths and a lie: Create a spreadsheet with the columns shown in the table below. Have each of the team members fill out 3 or 4 statements about themselves and one of the statements should be a lie. Schedule a 1 hour meeting to play this game. Works well for teams of ~ 8 to ~ 12. Facilitator picks the name of the first person and the team can ask questions about the statement they think is a lie to uncover if it is a bluff or a true statement. Asking these questions is the fun part. So allocate enough time for this. Each of the team members then picks one of the statements as a lie. After everyone has guessed, the first person then reveals the lie. Facilitator can then copy over the names of the team members that guessed it right in the “Correct guesses” column. First person then picks the next person and so on until you cover everyone in the list. In the end tally the person that guessed the most correct answers and proclaim them the winner. This is a fun and interactive game where you would get to learn about your team mates.

2. Character strengths workshop: Scientists discovered a common language of 24 character strengths make up what’s best about our personality.  Organize a one hour workshop for your team to determine the team members’ and also the team’s character strengths. Have each of the team members fill out this survey during the session. You can register at this site using fake information. Survey takes ~15 minutes. Create a shared spreadsheet with the team members’ names as rows and their top 3 character strengths as columns. As team members complete the survey, have them add their top 3 strengths to the shared spreadsheet. Once everyone is done, have a conversation about the results, if there were any surprises about their own results or any other team members’ results. Study the results to determine the character strength make up of your team. Here is a sample format of the spreadsheet.

3. What’s your brand? “Your brand is what people say about you when you’ve left the room” – Jeff Bezos. This works well for teams that have been working with each other for a while. This exercise helps each of the team members determine if their idea of their professional brand matches with what their teammates think of them. Create an anonymous survey containing each of the team members name and an input field to enter the three adjectives. Here is a sample form. Schedule an hour session for this exercise. Have each of the team members pick three adjectives from this list that would best describe their teammates and submit the anonymous survey. Once everyone submits the survey during the meeting, review the results. Ask each of the team member to evaluate their results and figure out if those are the qualities that they want to be known for and if not what they can do to change their brand.
4. XYZ Team’s got talent (along the lines of America’s got talent) : This works for larger teams and if you have at least 4 or 5 people who have some talent that they can showcase in a remote meeting. Some examples – singing, playing a musical instrument, ventriloquism etc. Identify the team members that have a talent and are willing to participate in a friendly competition. Create a one question poll with the names of all the performers. Schedule an hour session and have all the talented team members perform. Once all the performances are done, open up the poll for everyone on the team to vote for their favorite performance. Needless to say, the performer who gets the most votes is the winner. If your company is able to sponsor any prizes, that would be an added motivation for the performers. Along the same lines, you can have team members share their art or craft work and the team can vote for the best one. This is an awesome way to appreciate and recognize your team members’ talents.
5. Ask me anything professional sessions: Pick a couple of team members of the team and ask questions around their professional journey. This would be a great way for team to learn in depth about the team members journey, challenges they faced and their career lessons learned.
6. Photo competition: Zoom has a cool feature where you can change the background. Have all the participants pick any picture they would like as a background and share the story behind their choice of the background. If you are not using Zoom, you can have each one share a picture instead in the conference call. Have everyone vote for the best background/picture with the best story.
7. Story telling competition:  Have each of the team members pick any object in their home during the meeting and have them share a story around the object. They have an option of making up any story they would like around that object. Vote for the best story.
8. Virtual lunches, happy hours, coffee/tea breaks: Schedule some time on a regular cadence to have a virtual lunch, happy hour or coffee/tea breaks and go over some ice breaker questions. Have the team members bring their lunch, beverage, coffee or tea for these sessions. Here is a great list of ice breaker questions that you can go over. You can ask the team to pick from this list of questions or come up with their own. This is a fun way to get to know more about your team members. Another option is to start some of your regular meetings with one ice breaker question.
9. Lunch and learn / Brown bag sessions: Schedule online brown bag sessions. You can use it to talk about technical topics and or random topics like photography, or productivity hacks etc. Identify the topics ahead of time. Encourage everyone to have lunch during this time. Fun way to start off these sessions is for everyone to share what they are having for lunch.
10. Movie or show watch party: Pick a movie or a show that the team can watch together and have an online chat going during the show where the team can talk about what they like or dislike about the show/movie. You can use Netflix Party but everyone needs to have a Netflix account. This is just one option. You can pick and view a show/movie on any streaming service as long as one of the team members has the membership to the streaming service which has the show you want to watch. “Office Space” movie, “The Office” show, Standup comedies, “Silicon Valley” are some fun ones.
11. Cook lunch together: If there are any chefs (or anyone that can cook) on the team, they can pick an easy to make recipe and send out the list of ingredients to the team ahead of time so that they can all buy the ingredients. The chef can show the team how to make that recipe and everyone on the team can then cook the same meal, show how their meal turned out and enjoy the lunch. You can turn this into a completion as well and pick up the one that looks closest to the chef’s creation.
12. Found at home: Form 3 or 4 teams of at least 2 players each. The moderator can ask the teams to show some things that we find at home (ex: tea bags, figurine, stuffed animals etc.) and assign points to the first team that shows that thing. Tally up the points and the team that scores the highest, wins.
13. Match the fact: Have each of the team members submit 3 lesser known facts about themselves in an anonymous survey. Moderator then goes through each of these facts and has the team members guess the person that the fact is about. Another good way to learn about your teammates.
14. Online games: Here are a few fun team games:
    • Office feud
    • Online taboo
    • Jackbox games – One of the team members can purchase the games, start the game on their screen and project it on remote video sharing app like Bluejeans, Zoom, Teams etc. Other team members can participate. Drawful 2 – Free for a limited time
    • Online version of pictionary
    • Spreadsheet Pixel art – Have each of your team members create a copy of this spreadsheet and create a pixel art. Vote for the best art.
    • Virtual Karaoke
    • Virtual scavenger hunt
    • Virtual bingo

There are my favorite ideas. If you have any fun ideas please add it as a comment. Happy team building 🙂

Museum hack has several other ideas.