Online Teambuilding Activities PDF

Virtual meetings suck. But if you want them to suck less, you’ve come to the right place. Here are 6 simple online teambuilding activities, PDF format, that you can use to bring your next meeting to life!

If you want to treat your team to specially curated program of in-depth online teambuilding activities, drop us a line! Our network of over 100 facilitators can bring any one of 60 interactive and in-depth virtual experiences to your team, to keep you laughing and connected during these distanced times. Find out more here…

Mirror Image

Length: 2 minutes

Challenge: ⭐️

This is a simple and fun game which gets everyone imitating each other, and bouncing increasingly strange gestures back and forth. It’s great for lightening the mood and letting everyone be silly.

Players will need their view on gallery mode, where all meeting participants are visible in a tile layout. Players sit in a similar neutral position in their camera frames – sitting forward, head and shoulders visible. All players should look at whoever appears in the top left tile on their screen. Then, they should imitate, slightly exaggeratedly, any movement, facial expressions, or gestures that person makes.

What you’ll hopefully find is that people’s actions become more and more frantic, as gestures are bounced around each player in turn, looping back in ever-more exaggerated forms!

Three Things

Length: 2 minutes

Challenge: ⭐️

One player names any kind of category: “three brands of beer”, “three famous Italians”, “three ways you could murder someone with a shoe,” etc., before calling on someone to answer. The answering player needs to name three things as fast as possible; it’s more important to just say whatever comes into your head than to be accurate!

After the answering player has come up with three things, they come up with a new category before calling on someone else to answer.

EXAMPLE

ROHAN: “Three…terrible birthday presents. Thea!”

THEA: “Um…Socks. A bag of flour. A polar bear. OK…three places you’ve been this year. Naomi!”

Rose, Thorn, and Bud

Length: 30 seconds per person

Challenge: ⭐️⭐️

This is a simple way to get your team talking about their recent achievements and challenges.

Each person in the group describes a ‘rose’ – something that they’re feeling good about at the moment. Next, they describe a ‘thorn’ – something they’re not feeling so good about. Finally, they describe a ‘bud’ – something they’re looking forward to.

You can request that the roses, thorns, and buds are all work-related, related to a specific project, or non-work-related. Or, just leave it totally open and see what’s top of your team members’ minds!

EXAMPLE

DINA: “My rose today was finally getting the greenlight on my pet project. My thorn was running out of coffee. And my bud is finally being able to visit my parents this weekend.”

Boredom Championships

Length: 30 seconds

Challenge: ⭐️⭐️

You’ve probably used to getting asked, as an icebreaker, to introduce yourself and tell everyone an interesting fact about yourself. Too easy! And in the age of lockdown, who’s still capable of leading an interesting life anyway? In this game, you’ll ask everyone to compete over who’s the most boring instead.

Variant 1: Groups that don’t know each other

Ask everyone to introduce themselves, giving key information (their positions, roles in the current project, etc.), and finishing by announcing the most boring fact about themselves they can think of. You can kick things off with a boring fact about yourself, before passing over to anyone else in the call, challenging them to come up with a more boring fact about themselves.

After each boring fact, ask everyone to gasp and / or applaud. Keep playing until everyone’s introduced themselves. You can crown a winner if you dare!

EXAMPLE

QING: “Hi everyone, my name’s Qing, I’m interning in the development team, and I don’t like toast.”

(Audience gasps)

Variant 2: Groups that know each other

Instead of giving a boring fact about themselves, invite everyone in the meeting to announce the most boring thing they did that day instead. Each player passes to another by calling their name, until everyone’s had a turn.

Hype Man

Length: 5 minutes per person

Challenge: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is the most in-depth of our virtual icebreaker activities. It’s perfect for getting groups that don’t yet know each other to connect properly, though you’ll need to set aside a significant chunk of time to make it work.

Get your group to pair up into private calls. You can use the breakout feature of your video service to do this, or let the pairs jump onto private calls some other way; whatever you do, make sure you’ve planned and tested the method in advance so it doesn’t waste call time!

Tell these pairs to introduce themselves to each other privately; their work, their interests, and any key recent events they want to share. Anything goes!

Bring the group back together, and tell each member to introduce their partner as if they were introducing a celebrity or keynote speaker. Big up those interests and accomplishments with as much hype and enthusiasm as possible!

EXAMPLE

PAUL: “Hello everyone, it’s my absolute pleasure to introduce Rhea today. I’m sure we all know how Rhea single-handedly implemented a new shower in her house last month. But that’s only one of the strings to her bow. Yes, Rhea is nationally renowned for her especially weak tea; so weak that none of the rest of the office dare ask her to make them a cup anymore! A truly remarkable achievement. But that’s not all…”

Zoom Cabaret

Length: 2 minutes per person

Challenge: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is a more challenging icebreaker for creative and confident groups. It’s best for teams that already know each other well, and aren’t afraid to show their personalities.

Tell your team in advance that every member will have one minute to entertain the rest of the group in some way. It could be music, a funny story, or giving the world’s shortest TED talk.

You can run the Zoom Cabaret in a single session, or you may like to invite just 1-3 team members to kick off each new meeting.

Online Corporate Team Building

Length: 30-90 minutes

Challenge: Variable

For more adventurous teams, Hivemind offer online teambuilding activities PDF that will get your group laughing together and connecting meaningfully during these lonely times. Our network of 100 facilitators, from theatrical or qualified practitioner backgrounds, can offer any one of 60 virtual event entertainment ideas to give your team an experience they’ll never forget. Find out more here, or drop us a line straight away!