Team Building Ideas

[ToyTalk]

So I oversee a shop full of programmers. Ages range from late 20s to early 50s. I've been trying to come up with good Team/Moral Building things to do. For instance, this month I gave them a goal to meet. Providing they meet that goal I will pay to take the team to an escape room. What I'm looking for are some fresh ideas. I've been doing this every month for 2 years now and my idea tank is running empty.

What do ya'll think? Any ideas on good Team/Moral building events?

[YoungOnce]

I know it sounds like a nerdy thing to do, but a basic game of Dungeons and Dragons forces people to work together to problem solve.

If you can find a seasoned Dungeon Master/Judge who understands that the goal is to get the characters to work together using their different skill sets to over come a problem, it really can work for all of your different age groups.

It even doesn’t matter if some of the participants are a little cranky or embarrassed because since it’s role playing a character, the other players can deal with that person as a character with those traits, and they can role play how to deal with their personality quirks.

I’d play with the most basic rules, with some pre-gen characters so you can get right in to the adventure.

[ToyTalk]

^ That is a very good idea and one that I have not tried yet. Thank you for that.

[drquest]

Paintball or a gun range is pretty fun.

[Myoldtoys]

I had to come up with a team building exercise for a group of IT business analyst, administrators, developers and their managers. Our company is in the mining industry. I got pictures of machines and devices that the production people use. I built using Lego, the items in the pictures. I disassembled them, and put them in bags. Broke the group into teams. They had to pick a bag, identify the item they thought was in the bag. Some of the items were related. So the teams had to communicate between them to make sure they would work together. They built the items their way from the parts I provided. Everyone was engaged and had fun...young people, old people, people from other countries. It took a lot of prep work, but exceeded my expectation. Couple years later and I still get comments about that being the best team exercise people have ever done.

[VintageJoe70]

At my company, we have an actual spirit team who's job it is to come up with fun stuff to do throughout the year....provided budget allows for it....we've done ball games, escape rooms, wine and paint night, golf...it all depends on your employees tastes...

[knight errant00]

Axe throwing. Ranges have started popping up, and people like to throw sharpened objects at wooden targets.

[ToyTalk]

Paintball or a gun range is pretty fun.

It was. We did Paintball and had a blast!!

[ToyTalk]

I had to come up with a team building exercise for a group of IT business analyst, administrators, developers and their managers. Our company is in the mining industry. I got pictures of machines and devices that the production people use. I built using Lego, the items in the pictures. I disassembled them, and put them in bags. Broke the group into teams. They had to pick a bag, identify the item they thought was in the bag. Some of the items were related. So the teams had to communicate between them to make sure they would work together. They built the items their way from the parts I provided. Everyone was engaged and had fun...young people, old people, people from other countries. It took a lot of prep work, but exceeded my expectation. Couple years later and I still get comments about that being the best team exercise people have ever done.

LOVE IT!! Had never even occurred to me. Thank you so much for that idea.

[ToyTalk]

At my company, we have an actual spirit team who's job it is to come up with fun stuff to do throughout the year....provided budget allows for it....we've done ball games, escape rooms, wine and paint night, golf...it all depends on your employees tastes...

Wine and Paint night sounds like a lot of fun. A room full of drunk engineers trying to paint. That is a recipe for success. LOL

[ToyTalk]

Axe throwing. Ranges have started popping up, and people like to throw sharpened objects at wooden targets.

That might keep them from wanting to throw sharp objects at real people . I looked it up and yes, there are a couple of spots here in Columbus that do that. Thank you for the suggestion.

[J.B.]

Naked Twister

[knight errant00]

That might keep them from wanting to throw sharp objects at real people .

At the very least, it'll show them how to do it right.

[ToyTalk]

At the very least, it'll show them how to do it right.

Bwahahahahaha!!

[ToyTalk]

Naked Twister

If you've worked with engineers before you would know what I'm thinking. First of all, HILARIOUS! Second and more importantly, nobody but nobody wants to see these folks naked. Okay, maybe one or two of them but the rest of us would be scary. LOL