In today’s fast-paced work environment, time is often challenging to find, and teams are constantly on the go. However, team building is still as crucial as it ever was, and it’s essential to find the time to improve working relationships among colleagues.
That’s where quick and effective 5-minute team building activities come to the rescue. These bite-sized exercises pack a powerful punch in a short amount of time, making them the perfect solution for busy teams looking to strengthen their connections and boost collaboration, without taking too much out of their schedules.
In this article, we’ll be exploring our favourite list of creative and efficient 5-minute building activities that can be easily incorporated into your working day. Whether you are with your team in the office, or working remotely, these quick team building activities are designed to bring your team closer together, improve communication skills, and inject some fun into your routine.
Why are short team building activities sometimes more effective?
Short 5-minute team building activities are sometimes more effective because of how they make team building more accessible to busy teams. Whilst team leaders and managers acknowledge the importance of team building activities, businesses nowadays can sometimes struggle to allocate extended periods for team-building exercises.
Shorter activities can be seamlessly integrated into the workday without causing significant disruptions to productivity, making them a practical choice for teams looking to improve cohesion without sacrificing their responsibilities at work. Their versatility and flexibility also ensure that team building can be applied in a wide range of situations, meeting the unique needs of all groups.
Keep your team motivated and your minds refreshed with these quick 5-minute team building activities from Team Tactics! Let’s dive straight in:
1. Team Trivia Quiz
Team trivia is always a popular and effective short team building activity. Create a team trivia quiz based on fun facts about your colleagues!
You can ask your teammates questions each week about someone new on your team. Provide that person with some space to share an interesting fact about themselves or a cool story to share with the team. This is a great way of getting to know your colleagues and building working relationships.
Alternatively, if you want to test your team’s trivia knowledge, why not check out an online quiz maker like Kahoot or Sporcle? Choose a theme, divide your team into smaller groups, and compete to see who’s the biggest brain box at the office! Offering a small prize for the winner would also help to create excitement and competitiveness.
It is possible to run the team trivia either as a standalone quiz or as a team-building event.
2. Team Stretching
Starting your day with stretches has physical and mental benefits. Stretching enables muscles to contract and relax and causes your body to release built-up tension. This relief eases lower back pain, enhances body flexibility, and calms the mind. Not only can stretching be beneficial for your health, especially if you are sitting at your desk all day, it can also be a fun ice-breaking activity for new teams!
Note: stretches may be uncomfortable but should not be painful. You must immediately stop if stretching feels like a sharp pain.
Examples of these stretches include the cobra stretch and upper back stretch. We would recommend bringing in mats for on-the-floor exercises. Standing stretches are easier to undertake as they do not need extra preparation or materials. Some best standing stretches include side and quad stretches. Why not give this a go to help you de-stress and calm the mind. Switch off from your workload and take part in one of our Office Wellbeing workshops. These include self-massage, desk yoga and bite-size breathing.
3. Would You Rather?
Do you want to start your meeting with a heated discussion? Consider asking a ‘would you rather’ question. Trust us, the harder the question, the better the discussion. “Would You Rather?” questions are a fantastic tool for team building due to their ability to engage team members in a lighthearted and thought-provoking manner.
To do this, create a poll question with two options and let people choose from them. During your meeting, ask people to vote by writing the answers down on paper and then display the results. Ask that individual why they voted the way they did after you reveal the winning option. It’s a great way to interact and have fun with your colleagues, break the ice, and facilitate discussions! Give “Would You Rather?” a go at your next team huddle.
4. Quiz Question Of The Week
Brain teasers are a fantastic way to energise your colleagues at the start of a meeting! If you hold weekly meetings with your team, a quiz question of the week can be great for starting discussions. You could choose to tie this question to the content of your presentation, to your industry or to the subject of your meeting.
Create a multiple-choice poll for your audience to take. After adding the options, you can hide the correct answer and reveal it once the audience has voted. Also, you could include a short introduction about the subject, and relevant background information for it, or state why the participants are taking the quiz.
So, give this a go and have fun interacting with your team.
5. Two Truths, One Lie
We’re bringing back a classic with this quick team building exercise! Two Truths and a Lie is a fun game to play with your colleagues and can help team members learn more about each other.
Each participant takes a turn sharing three statements about themselves – two true and one false. The objective is for the rest of the team to guess which statement is the lie. After the individual shares their statements, team members can ask clarifying questions to gather more information and make an educated guess.
The game continues with each team member taking their turn, promoting engagement, active listening, and the gradual revelation of personal details that foster team bonding and communication.
6. Caption This
Caption this involves showing your colleagues a picture, cartoon, or photograph. The teams then have to come up with a phrase to describe what they would name the image. After showing the image, submit your caption ideas within 1 minute and then present this and explain why you have chosen this caption.
At the end when all the colleagues have presented their caption ideas there would be a vote on which one is the best caption to use for that image. This is a great way to get your creative mind going, and can often result in some very funny responses!
Faced with a jumble of model components teams must switch into overdrive to assemble a range of ‘snap together’ concept cars in record time. This is an exhilarating tabletop game sent to test your team’s planning and communication skills. This fast-paced and competitive activity is a great quick energiser for teams to bring people together and encourage communication, team working and collaboration.
Contact Team Tactics to bring this quick but effective team building activity to your team.
8. Paper Plane Parade
Why not try out this fun team building activity and create paper planes with your team? Paper Plane Parade is a great way to express your team’s creativity and technical skills.
To get started you first need to divide your team up into small groups in equal numbers. You then supply them with three pieces of paper, tape, coloured pens and two paper clips. They then have five minutes to complete three aeroplanes. Once these have been created it is time to compete in the paper plane parade!
Different categories could include competitions such as who’s plane can fly the furthest, which plane can fly for the longest time and which is the best looking. It is down to the rest of the team to vote and decide who is the champion of the paper plane competition.
Have a go, get creative and make paper planes with your team!
9. What Changed?
What changed is a game where participants have to be aware of colleagues’ surroundings before something is removed to then guess what disappeared.
To play this game you allow a colleague to come forward and take charge. This person will change something within the room. For example, locating a book on a table or a mug. That colleague will then ask for example, “What has changed?” and then the rest of the colleagues will guess and report until someone comes up with the answer.
They would have up to 5 minutes to guess what has been removed and why. This is a great game to refresh and exercise your mind!
10. Dancing
Dancing stimulates the body to produce a ‘happy chemical’ called serotonin. This chemical regulates mood and makes dancers feel happy.
After heavy work sessions, dancing is a welcome relief to help reduce stress. A colleague would lead this and would let the team choose a theme song. The song should be about five minutes long and may vary in pace. For example, you can use slow-paced dance to enhance memory and discipline. On the other hand, fast dance would be a better option for burning energy and reducing stress.
Dancing is the best approach to break the stress levels and beat drowsiness. You promote creativity and expression by encouraging colleagues to embrace original dance moves and responses. This is a fun way to interact and motivate the team so give this a go and see for yourself! Or how about trying our fantastic Haka Experience to express yourself more through movement!
Unlock the Power of Teamwork with Team Tactics!
If 5 minutes is not enough to motivate your team, then we’ve got you covered. We offer an extensive portfolio of exciting team building events, with both indoor and outdoor events to ignite collaboration and boost morale within your organisation! At Team Tactics we have been motivating teams with award-winning activities for almost three decades. Contact us today to get started on your team building journey!
