Teambuilding (or ‘team building’) is the act of developing a trust between members of the team in order to improve the collective. Interacgive exercises, team assessments and group discussions are all valid team building exercises.

When contemplating a team building day, it is important to think of several factors:
- what sort of people are coming on the team building day? Does anyone have an special needs?
- how many people are coming to the teambuilding session?
- What budget is there for the teambuilding session?
- how many ’supervisors’ will I need for the team building day?
- what sort of team building activities will best suit the candidates?
- how long do I want the team building session to go on for?
- what are the goals of the team building session?
- do I want an external team to come in and do the session, or are we doing it in-house?

Free Team Building Game ideas:
There are useful as warm-ups, quick games, exercises and ice-breakers

The Bin Toss Game
Arrange seats in a large circle around a bin. Everyone (or every team) has a limited amount of paper. The winning team are the team who throw the most pieces of paper in the bin.
Variations on this include:
- One sheet allowed. Teams must tear sheets into tiny pieces to be made into tiny balls
- Only paper aeroplanes are allowed
- Paper balls must be fired with a rubber band

Monetary Exchange
Each team has to create a new and improved design of coinage and banknotes which better reflects society, and people’s needs and wants. They must decide on design, size, shape, material and monetary values. The most innovative or inventive wins!

Role Playing
Role playing is a popular team building exercise. Certain characters are useful for different sorts of skill development. Here are some role playing characters you might like to try out:
- Superman, batman, catwoman, Hercules, Xena (and other superheroes)
- Characters from popular TV series such as Star Trek, Wacky races etc
- George Bush, Tony Blair, Nelson Mandela & other politicians
- Britney Spears, Freddie Mercury, Madonna and other popstars

Using iconic, well known figures is often much more fun than using boring management case studies.

Marbles
That good old fashioned game, marbles! Bring a bag of marbles in as a quick ice-breaker game

The Ultimate Sandwich
Bring bread, butter and various fillings (lots of!) plus some bread knives and tissues. Have a competition to make the best sandwich with group tasting and voting as applicable.
If you have a budget, send the delegates out to buy their own ingredients.

Talk can then evolve around things such as
- could you patent a sandwich? Why?
- What sandwiches on the table would be the most profitable? And the least?
- How would you brand or market your sandwich?
- Are there any noticeable correlations between sandwiches and types of people? (perhaps the delegates could predict what they think each other will make)

Groups
This is an activity which levels people fairly quickly, whilst helping people to find structure where none exists. You give them groups and ask them where they fit it. People go and stand by the marker where they feel they fit in best. Make it harder by stating maximum or minimum sub-group sizes.
Topics to give you some ideas include:
- Favourite role model
- Random words (such as table/nut/leaf/tree or sports/betting/pet/business)
- Holiday destination
- Favourite type of music

This might seem silly but it splits up the normal work or social groupings and help people talk and think differently. You might like to ask questions such as
- Are you surprised at who else has put themselves in your sub-group?
- Are there any correlations between demographics and the sub-group?

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Leading Corporate Team Building