Activities

Games and exercises to energise meetings, build connections, and spark creativity in your workplace.

Cards Against Insanity

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When you are running a virtual workshop or meeting, there are so many things that can distract the flow – ranging from annoying to pretty much driving you insane.  This is a great activity to run at the start of the session. With a bit of creativity and fun, you can keep your virtual meetings on track. 

Everyone creates their own cards symbolising comments, instructions or distractions, such as ‘there is too much background noise, please mute’. They hold them up in front of the camera when applicable.

Paper Clip Test

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This activity, also called ‘Alternative Uses Test’, can get the creative juices flowing before you need to tackle innovation or problem-solving. Psychologist JP Guilford created this as a test, but it can be used as a simple activity to identify your natural limitations. It’s a great example for illustrating Functional Fixedness – the bias making it difficult for us to come up with novel or left-field ideas. It can also highlight how working as a group increases the number of potential solutions.

In this activity everyone will individually list as many alternative uses for an object as they can think of within a couple of minutes. It works with any sized group.

My Remote Office

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When you are running a virtual workshop or meeting with remote team members, this is a great activity to start off with. Apart from the common benefits of icebreaking activities, it will create a better appreciation of the environments that the other participants are in. It might even explain those distracting, weird background sounds (eg is that a dying cat, a kid or what?).

Ask everyone to share their physical surroundings. Depending on the setup you can use video, photos, or simply describe it if it is a phone meeting.

Circle Creativity Game

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This activity can be used as a warm-up for a session needing creativity, eg an ideation workshop. It was created as a test by psychologists, but rather than using it to judge an individual’s initial creative abilities, you can use it as a way to identify our natural creative weaknesses and highlight how working as a group increases the number of solutions.

In this activity everyone will individually draw as many solutions as they can think of within a minute, and it works with any sized group.

Christmas Tree Retro

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For one of the last meetings of the year, run the Christmas Tree Retro to reflect on the year that has passed.

This activity will not only allow you to review the current year but also set you up with goals/objectives for the next one. And in the process, you will create a colourful paper Christmas tree : )

Agile Manifesto Puzzle

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This is a simple exercise to introduce the agile manifesto. It gives you the opportunity to discuss the statements and agile values in more detail, but it also allows you to observe the group’s current understanding.

The group completes the manifesto statements by connecting the sentences that are split in two. The activity works for any sized group, but it is ideal to keep them small (2-5 people).

Christmas Stockings

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End the year on a positive note — this is a nice way to give kudos for achievements during the year. Give and receive positive feedback or well-wishes by ‘post-it presents’ for the whole the team.

Whose is it?

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This is a quick icebreaker and simple team building activity you can do in both a virtual or in-person setting. It helps the team get to know each other on a personal level without requiring high-pressure performance.

Ask for input before the session in the form of photos, images, or answers. In the session, you all guess who the item belongs to.