10 Team Building Activities That Build Trust

Building trust within teams is essential for fostering collaboration, enhancing productivity and creating a positive work environment. In our fast-paced corporate world, where deadlines loom and tasks demand our attention, nurturing trust often takes a backseat. However, investing time and effort in trust-building activities can yield significant long-term benefits for both individuals and organisations.

Our latest blog explores team building activities that build trust and offers insights into effective strategies for nurturing trust within your own team.

How Team Building Can Strengthen Trust

Team building activities challenge your team to work towards a collective goal outside of their normal working activities.

With the stresses of work removed in a more relaxed setting; individuals are more able to build social bonds that will help them trust each other more in the workplace.

Through activities that require teamwork, they will become aware of qualities in each other they may not see during a normal working day and develop trust as they learn what they can achieve together.

Fun and engaging activities are particularly effective as they build camaraderie and shared memories between individuals. Charitable activities can also be very effective as they have the advantage of building bonds through the meaningful outcomes they achieve.

Tips for Building Trust in Your Team

Besides team building activities, there are other ways that you can, in a leadership role build trust within your team. Being open with your team about the company’s plans and performance and sharing information will both show trust in your team and help them to trust you.

On a personal level, taking an interest in those who work for you and making an effort to get to know them will strengthen bonds that will also help trust. Your example as a leader may also help encourage similar behaviours amongst your team.

Holding regular meetings can further help by creating an atmosphere of trust and encouraging openness and information sharing between team members and departments.

Socialising as a team outside of work is another way of building bonds on a personal level and enabling trust to be strengthened.  

10 Trust Team Building Activities

The following activities will all help build trust within your team. Among other reasons, they are all engaging and unforgettable team experiences that will build personal bonds, get them communicating and prove to your team what they can achieve working together. From building prosthetics to firewalking, these are just a few fantastic ways to build trust.

Corporate Cooking

Corporate cooking is a meal out with a difference – all the food is cooked by your team! Guided by professional chefs; your team will be amazed by the delicious food that they will create. With the work in the kitchen complete, everyone takes their seats to enjoy their collective creation, washed down with an optional wine or beer.

Corporate cooking is not only a highly sociable activity to strengthen bonds between team members in a relaxed and informal setting, but will build trust by proving to everyone what they can produce working together.

Corporate cooking can be run with a choice of menu options and with the Cooking for The Homeless option, can also contribute to your company’s CSR, making double portions with the extra food being donated to those in need.

The Bigger Picture

On this creative challenge, the team is broken into small groups to paint a canvas. At the end of the activity, all canvases will then be combined to create a giant work of art.

Only through very close communication and teamwork will they be able to coordinate their creations and ensure that colour and joins are properly aligned and that their smaller canvases fit in with the bigger picture.

All artists will earn their team’s trust by correctly coordinating their work whilst needing to trust their teammates to do the same.

Bright Lights of London Treasure Hunts

This interactive London team treasure hunt is an immersive way to experience our nation’s capital, with a treasure trail that will take your team around some iconic London landmarks.

Your group is split into teams, each following an interactive GPS treasure hunt app, activating riddles, trivia and general knowledge questions as well as incredibly fun photo and video challenges as they reach each the location hotspots on the treasure hunt map and try to earn as many points as possible. The interactive scoreboard keeps all teams updated of their rival’s progress.

Working together to try and outscore the other teams, a Bright Lights of London Treasure Hunt is an excellent way to build trust among small teams through camaraderie, teamwork and a shared day out in an iconic setting.

It’s a Rat Trap

Inspired by the family favourite board game Mouse Trap; It’s a Rat Trap involves constructing an elaborate mechanism to catch an elusive critter.

Unlike in the board game however, where teams race to assemble their individual traps; this activity is all about teamwork with team members working together to figure out the correct assembly and construct the elaborate trap piece by piece. Featuring multiple moving components which trigger each other in a precise chain reaction; close teamwork and trust is required to build a correctly functioning trap to catch the rat, as one piece out of place will scupper the team effort.

Circus Skills Workshop

Guided by circus professionals, this workshop is an exciting opportunity for your team to learn skills such as Juggling, Tight Wire Walking, Diabolo and Stilt Walking.

All these skills will take some effort and focus to learn and will build participants confidence and trust in not only themselves but each other as they support and assist each other in the learning experiences, through encouragement, technical pointers and at times physically with some of the balancing exercises.

Circus Skills Workshops provide a great sense of both individual and team accomplishment.

Dare to Firewalk

This is an incredible opportunity to face fear head on and do something normally unthinkable – walking barefoot across a bed of wood burning at a temperature of 500 degrees Celsius. Dare to Firewalk is an incredible personal experience that will prove to all those taking part what they can achieve with the power of their own mind.

Undertaking such a transformative personal journey together and encouraging one-another can only strengthen the bonds amongst your team and help to build trust between them.

Conference Energisers

Team Tactics offers a range of energiser activities designed to liven a corporate conference, including drumming, clapping and choral workshops as well as learning dances such as The Haka from a genuine Maori tribesmen or the dance from Michael Jackson’s iconic Thriller single.

All these activities, which can also run as stand-alone events; will get delegates acting in sync and whether they are clapping, dancing, singing or drumming they will create a stunning collective performance and a powerful demonstration of what they can achieve working together.

As well as music and dance workshops, creative and team assembly tasks such as ice carving and the car assembly Fast and Furious challenge, will test your team in other ways. What these events all have in common however is that they require close teamwork and trust between team members and will show what they can achieve as a team through their collective contributions.

Game of Zones

This London-based treasure hunt is a real multifaceted team challenge. Your group is split into competing teams and challenged to navigate across four London zones via an interactive iPad treasure hunt app – the Futuristic Zone, Ocean Zone, Medieval Zone and Industrial zone. Each zone will test the teams across a breadth of their capabilities with challenges that will test their knowledge, accuracy and analytical skills, plus all manner of brainteasers, riddles and creative, physical photo and video challenges.

This competitive and immersive experience is an incredible day out for all delegates which will strengthen bonds and require them to trust in their teammates’ skillsets.

Olympic Challenge

Set in the prestigious Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, this competitive team challenge will inspire everyone to go for gold!

Guided by a high-tech interactive treasure hunt app; your group is split into teams and must navigate across five zones of the 102-hectare Olympic Park, unlocking new challenges as they reach each geo-location hot-spot. A wide range of challenges including questions, riddles, photo-challenges and brainteasers, will test your groups teamwork, creativity, problem solving and their own specialist knowledge.

This is a fantastic team experience that will bond everyone involved through shared memories and prove what they can achieve together.

Give a Helping Hand

Our hands are something which we take for granted every hour of every day. The Give a Helping Hand event is an incredible opportunity for your team to construct prosthetic hands for those in the third world with missing limbs.

This event begins with a presentation featuring the personal stories that this charitable activity has helped – real people across the world who struggled with everyday tasks now able to be independent and provide for their families. Team members then work together to assemble the complex prosthetics, each made from over 50 pieces of high-grade metal and plastic. The resulting prosthetic hands are delivered to the developing world and fitted by doctors and volunteers.

This is an amazing chance for your team to make something tangible through their collective efforts that will make a meaningful difference.

Book Your Trust Team Building Activities with Team Tactics

These are just a few of the activities offered by Team Tactics to build trust within your team. Get in touch today to discuss the ideal team building activity for your team, whether you are aiming to build trust, improve teamwork or thank your team for their hard work.

With nearly 30 years of experience in the industry, we’re confident that we can provide the perfect team building activity for your team.