Activities to boost team communications
Many problems stem from a lack of communication. It can result in errors, quality issues, conflict, missed deadlines, and missed opportunities. That is why it can often pay to assist employees in improving their communication skills. Using appropriate team-building activities is one way to accomplish this. These can help people not only improve their communication skills but also build trust and develop positive relationships with one another.
Improving your team’s communication skills can boost productivity and prevent conflict from arising. It also allows you to maximize your employees’ talents and place them in the roles they are best suited for. Team-building activities are a fun and educational way to improve your team members’ communication with one another, but choosing the right one takes time and research.
This blog provides a list of ten activities to help your team’s communication skills.
What are team-building activities?
Team-building activities are games used to improve relationships within a team. Many team-building activities are designed to address specific issues, such as understanding how another person thinks, communicates, and solves problems. Team-building activities are intended to be both educational and enjoyable.
Ten communication team-building activities
Here are ten enjoyable team-building activities to try with your team to improve communication:
Back-to-back drawing
You’ll need an even number of people for this team-building activity so that everyone has a partner. Sit or stand back-to-back once everyone has been paired off. You can draw on a whiteboard or with a pen and paper. One person will play the role of the speaker, while the other will play the role of the listener. The speaker will describe a geometric image from a prepared deck of cards for five to ten minutes, and the listener will attempt to draw the image strictly from the speaker’s description.
Following that, discuss the steps taken to ensure that the instructions were clear and how this could be implied in real-life interactions. The person drawing can also discuss what they liked about the instructions and what they would have done differently if they had been able to communicate back to the speaker.
Island survival
Form groups of five to ten people into teams. Then read them a scenario in which they are stranded on an island after a shipwreck and discover items washing up on the shore. Give them a list of 20 items and tell them they can only keep five. They must then collaborate to decide which items to keep. When everyone is finished, each group presents to the other groups which items they kept and why. This activity not only helps team members practice communication skills but also leads to better cooperation and teamwork.
Zen counting
For this exercise, arrange your team in a circle facing each other. Start counting from one to ten in no particular order—or higher if you have more team members—with each member saying only one number. If someone speaks over someone else or repeats a number, the exercise is reset to one. This exercise promotes stillness and encourages team members to pay close attention to one another.
Truth or dare
This activity is best done in groups of five or more. Each participant should come up with three facts and one lie about themselves. The lie should be plausible in nature. The rest of the team is left to guess which statements are true and which are lies after someone reads their list aloud. By getting to know one another better, teams can improve communication. It also allows introverts to share information about themselves that others may not be aware of.
The barter puzzles
This activity requires four or more small groups, each with its own jigsaw puzzle. Divide your participants into equal-sized groups and give each one a jigsaw puzzle of the same difficulty level. The teams will then compete to see who can finish their puzzles the fastest. The twist is that some pieces will be mixed in with other groups’ puzzles. The teams must identify the mismatched pieces and then devise a strategy to reclaim their own. They are free to use any method they want, such as negotiating, trading pieces, or even trading team members.
Human knot
This activity will require eight to twenty people. Make a circle with all of your participants facing each other and close enough to be shoulder-to-shoulder. Everyone should extend their right hand and grab the hand of the person across from them. The group must then figure out how to untangle the arm knot in a certain amount of time without releasing their hands.
The perfect square
A long piece of rope tied together, and a blindfold for each of the five to twenty people required to participate are required for this activity. Participants should form a circle, and each holds a piece of rope. Set the rope down and ask everyone to put on their blindfolds before walking a short distance away from the circle. Return everyone to the rope and have them form a square while still wearing their blindfolds. To be successful in this activity, team members must have strong communication and leadership skills. Make it more difficult by instructing some people to remain silent throughout the exercise.
The minefield
You will need an even number of people for this activity because everyone will need a partner. Place objects like balls and cones on the ground—ideally in a large open space like a park or an empty parking lot—and then blindfold one person in each pair. The other person must use only verbal instructions to guide their partner from one side of the open space to the other. The blindfolded person is not permitted to speak. To make matters more complicated, you can use tape to create specific routes that the speaker is supposed to lead their partner through.
Can you hear me now?
Can you hear what I am saying? It is one of the most straightforward virtual communication games. Participants will need paper and pens to play the game. In each round, one player describes an item for the other players to draw one shape or line at a time. As an example, consider the sun, a tree, a stoplight, or a cat. The goal of the game is for players to guess the object before the drawing is finished.
The game emphasizes the importance of providing clear instructions while also demonstrating how seemingly simple statements can have unexpected interpretations. It’s also entertaining to see how the drawings turn out.
Mirror
The mirror is one of the simplest nonverbal communication games. Players form teams and compete against one another. One player serves as the leader, while the other serves as the follower. The leader starts moving without saying anything, and the follower mimics each movement. Participants must rely solely on their body language. After a few minutes, the players switch roles and the exercise is repeated.
Team communications in the digital world
One of the most difficult soft skills to master is communication. People communicate in a variety of ways, and the possibility of misinterpretation and misunderstanding is high. It can also be difficult to express thoughts in a clear and understandable manner. Communication games and exercises allow teammates to practice interacting and exchanging ideas in fun, challenging, but low-pressure settings. These activities can help teammates improve their conversation and writing skills, as well as their listening skills and make participants more perceptive and mindful of messages. But in today’s remote work environment, employees also need a digital team communication app.
Clariti is a free team communication app with a “Content-rich subject chat” feature. For small and medium-sized businesses wishing to boost teamwork, productivity, and communication, Clariti is the perfect solution. As it is safely hosted on Amazon Web Services, all of your workday data is completely dependable, always available, and secure. Accessible from any computer with an internet connection and a browser, Clariti is a free cloud-based utility.
Just as the team building games demonstrate the power of mixed communications between the team members such as body language, and facial expressions besides of course the spoken words, mixed communications are also important in the digital world. This is a powerful feature of Clariti, where related communications from different communication channels can be discussed in the same conversation. You can mix a chat conversation with an email relating to the subject at hand. You can include a calendar item in a chat, a call in a chat and so on.
Clariti empowers team members to have rich conversations without getting overwhelmed by having to deal with multiple communication silos.
Sign up right away to learn how it can help your business!
