Team Building Activities for Organizations
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations made the decision to leave in-person work behind and transition to remote or hybrid workplace environments – that’s why team-building activities for organizations are more important now than ever. When day-to-day interactions are largely virtual, team members who used to feel like office friends can start to feel like strangers.
Six in ten people who rarely worked from home before COVID-19 but are working from home now say they feel less connected to their co-workers. That’s a problem. Co-worker connection is an important component of a healthy workplace. It builds trust, strengthens communication, and promotes a sustainable work culture.
Team building activities for organizations can address this issue. We’ve created 15 team building reflection questions that can help you and your colleagues rediscover old bonds and renew your sense of connectedness.
15 team building reflection questions
We call these 15 team building reflection questions our “Connection Questions.” The questions are thoughtfully designed with a range of depth in mind. Some are lighthearted and others are weighty, but all of them will help team members build more meaningful relationships.
To use the Connection Questions as a team building activity for organizations, we recommend participants form pairs and explore the questions one-on-one together for 15 to 20 minutes. Here are the questions to explore:
What is your favorite season and why?
Is there something that calms you?
What’s your favorite song/music artist? Genre? Why?
What are you most grateful for?
If you were stranded on Mars and could only bring three items, what would you bring and why?
What are the three things you appreciate about humanity?
If you could have a magical power, what would it be and why?
What do you value most in relationships?
What species of animal or plant would you like to have a conversation with? What do you think they would say about their perspective on life?
When are you most yourself?
If you had the power to change one thing about the world, what would it be and why?
Do you believe in extraterrestrial life (aka aliens)?
What is meaningful to you in this life?
What do you wish you knew more about?
What is your greatest pet peeve?
How the Connection Questions build trust
When one-on-one pairs explore these questions together, we often see people laughing, smiling, and beginning to build a sense of camaraderie. When we use the Connection Questions as part of our Evolving Minds programming, we often hear from participants that they never knew some of the things they learned about their partner in this team building activity, even though they’ve worked together for many years. The Connection Questions give partners more information about their colleague and that then leads to building trust and more meaningful relationships at work. We find that the questions work well with our partner organizations, but you could also use the Connection Questions to better understand a partner, a friend, or a family member.
Our Connection Experiences
The Connection Questions are a great team building activity for organizations on their own, but they are just one part of our larger Connection Experiences program at Evolving Minds. During the program, we first establish trust with the Connection Questions, and then we build on it by creating empathy with our interactive Resilience skills. We find that once we have created a space for empathy, it transforms into vulnerability during our later small and large group discussions. That vulnerability is key to achieving the Connection Experience goal of building meaningful relationships, social support, and belonging in the workplace.
We offer the Connection Experiences program to organizations on professional development days or during team retreats. Click here to learn more about Connection Experiences.