In this post, we’ll share a collection of tried and tested ice breaker games you can use to engage and energize groups of any size. Whether you just want to have fun, encourage team building or level-up your meetings, there’s an activity here for you.

An in-depth study from TINYpulse, an employee engagement company, studied more than 40,000 workers’ inputs from more than 300 companies globally. They found a correlation of 0.92 between employee fulfilment and their relationships with colleagues. Since you can end up spending more time with coworkers than with your family or partner, it is a topic that deserves much attention.

But how can you break the ice without also frustrating your team or making them roll their eyes? Using facilitator-tested and proven methods like those below are a surefire way to open your meetings more effectively and engage your team.

You’ll find classic conversation starters like Two truths and One Lie, fun games like The Marshmallow Challenge or even a Virtual Scavenger Hunt! You’ll find our collection of of the best ice breaker games for work separated by category and find some useful tips for running them in your workshop or meeting too!

Ice breaker games to get to know each other

Whenever you bring a group of people together for a meeting, project, or event, it’s helpful to get to know each other at the outset. This can help establish trust and set the stage for further connection and collaborative work.

They can also help the facilitator or leader of the session to get familiar with everyone, get a read on the energy in the room and discover what may need to be adjusted in their workshop agenda.

​Two Truths and One Lie

Two Truths and One Lie is a classic ice breaker game that can still be effective in the hands of a skilled facilitator.

The best way to start is with a demonstration from the person leading the session. The facilitator will share three statements about themselves: two of which are true, and one which is a lie. Next, participants try to guess which is the lie by asking questions and then finally voting on which statement is false.

After the demo, we recommend breaking people into small groups of 3-4 people to play this icebreaker. This allows everyone to have a voice and to actually form connections, rather than simply shouting over one another or falling into a passive role.

Diversity Bingo

Diversity Bingo is a great icebreaker that helps participants to learn about one another and share what differentiates them as people along the way.

First, create a 3×3 bingo card containing a grid of squares with a statement or question in each square. Example statements include: speaks more than one language, has lived in multiple countries or has ran a marathon. Once every player has received a bingo card, they mingle and find other participants who can say yes to one of these statements.

For best results, include statements that likely to resonate with your team or the workshop topic alongside personal statements. When everyone has reached bingo or you’re almost out of time, ask everyone to can share something they’ve learned and which squares were easy or hard to fill.

Unique and Shared

Unique and Shared is a powerful icebreaker to use with breakout groups, especially at the start of a longer project or training program. Start by creating groups of 4-5 people, and ask them to discover what they have in common, along with interesting characteristics that are unique to each person in the group.

The Unique and Shared icebreaker promotes unity as it helps people to realize that they have more common ground with their peers than expected and celebrate those things as a group. It also creates space for folks to share unique qualities in a safe container. This activity also works great with remote teams in breakout rooms – in such cases, have each group report back to help bring the whole team back into coherence.

​Jenga questions

Jenga Questions is a fresh spin on a classic game that can help spark meaningful conversations and encourage a little friendly competition. Start by collecting a set of numbered questions and adding a number or sticker to the blocks in a Jenga set.

When a participant selects a block, they read the question out loud & answer before placing the piece on the top of the tower. This can ignite exciting conversations about everyday topics like favorite downtime activities to more in-depth stuff, like career and self-development goals.

Traditional games with a unique spin can often generate curiosity and engagement in a groups setting. Jenga Questions can also be adapted to training and team building environments with ease, so its useful to have a set in your toolkit.

Quotes

Quotes is a fast-paced icebreaker activity allows participants to get acquainted with while exploring something inspiring.

Prepare a set of inspirational quotes prior to the session equal to the number of participants on individual slips of paper. Put the pile in the center of the room. Each participant picks up one quote, then picks a partner and begins to discuss what the quote says to them, if it is meaningful, and how.

After just minute or so, give a signal for participants to switch partner and continue their discussions. This can continue for 4-5 rounds for around 15 minutes. Choose quotes that relate to your meeting topic or company culture for an icebreaker that sets the stage for the session ahead.

Speed Dating Icebreaker

The goal of the Speed Dating icebreaker is to have a succession of very rapid conversations in an extremely short amount of time with as many people as possible.

Have people sit in pairs, ideally with colleagues that they don’t directly work with on a day-to-day basis. Determine the time limit (say 3 minutes for each conversation) and set a timer. When it starts, each pair has to start speed networking & find out as much professional information about the other as possible.

While it’s natural for group members to want to spend time with people they know, encouraging your team to mix is an important step to improving team cohesion.

Break the ice with the help of your key

Break the ice with the help of your key is an icebreaker that aims to create memorable moments and group connection with the aid of a physical object.

Start by explaining to the group that they will get to know each other through their keys. One by one, each person will present all the keys they have on their keychain and tell a few sentences about the area the key represents. This might include the city or neighbourhood they live in, the activity it represents (bike or locker key) or the person they received it from.

Be sure to start the circle yourself so the participants get the feeling of how it should be done. Bonus points if you can demonstrate openness and vulnerability for your group to follow!

Whose story is it?

Start the Whose Ssory is it ice breaker game by writing your funniest or weirdest story on a small piece of paper. It has to be a true one, no fiction! Then fold the paper up and drop it into a bowl or other container.

The facilitator or the person leading the program randomly reads every story and group members guess who the writer is. This is a great way to get to know each other and find out new things, even if you’ve worked together for a long time.

​Find your pair

Prepare word pairs, like salt and pepper, milk and honey, sail and wind, etc on separate pieces of paper. Tape one to each person’s back. People then have to walk around and ask closed questions (with a yes or no answer) to find out what their phrase is. Once they find out, they have to find their pair & by continuing to ask questions (these can be open or closed) they have to learn 3 new things about the other.

​Show and tell

Group icebreakers are important, even in teams that know each other well. For more established groups, where people are more familiar with each other, it’s always good to dedicate a day, or an afternoon for “show and tell”. Each team member gets the chance (not all at once of course) to showcase something – an object or a topic that they are interested in.

Try making this activity part of a group routine at the start of every team meeting for bonus points. Creating this habit gives less exhibitionist characters a chance to share and it is also a great practice to hone presentation skills and handle the attention & tricky questions.

Quick ice breaker games

When you have a tightly packed agenda, it’s useful to have some quick icebreakers you can use to warm up the group in a pinch. These activities are simple to explain, fast to run, and work great in large or small groups. They also can double as after-lunch energizers to encourage team members to engage in what’s next!

Here are some of our favorite games you can use to break the ice in a group in ten minutes or less! Prefer something that requires even less set-up? Check out our collection of icebreaker questions for a set of effective conversation starters.

One Word at a Time

One Word at a Time (or the One Word Method) is one of my favorite icebreakers – it’s simple, effective and can easily be tailored to any group. In this activity, groups must work together to create a sentence by contributing one word each while going round the circle. Start by giving a general topic or a guiding word to continue the sentence in a way that makes sense and is likely to result in a complete sentence.

For example, if you are running a training session on how to manage time, you might begin with the word “time” or “clocks.” The sentence that emerges will respond to that prompt and will help the group begin to turn their minds to the session at hand.

I’ve found this to be a fun and energizing icebreaker that works well with students and coworkers alike. Try speeding up or challenging the group to tell a story for added fun!

Apple, Orange and Banana!

Apple, Orange and Bannana is a great game that encourages the group to get synchronized and fully arrive in a space. It’s a favourite icebreaker to use when kicking off an after-lunch meeting where participants need a jolt of physical energy.

Start the Apple, Orange and Banana icebreaker by asking your group to stand in a circle with their hands on the shoulders of the person in front. Explain that when you shout either apple, orange or banana they must perform the associated action: moving forward, backward or spinning around. When the group is comfortable, mix it up by saying two or even three words in sequence!

Diversity Welcome

The Diversity Welcome icebreaker is a great way to create and kick off a session while promoting diversity and creating an inclusive environment for your participants. Start by naming a possible trait of someone who may be present and saying they are welcome. For example, “If you love dogs, you are welcome here! If you prefer cats, you are welcome here!”

Slowly move into deeper territory by naming traits and concepts that resonate with your audience. With established groups, invite participants to share their own welcome, focusing on helping everyone in the room feel safe and welcome.

Stress Balls

Stress Balls is a fast-paced icebreaker that helps highlight the importance of communication and teamwork while also encouraging lots of fun.

Begin this icebreaker by simply asking participants to stand in a circle and pass a ball to their left. Debrief and ask how the task went before asking participants to try again while moving the ball faster. Introduce further complexity until the game becomes a mess! While the result of Stress Balls is chaotic fun, it also offers a very teachable lesson about how teams can communicate in order to achieve great results.

Object Meditation

Object Meditation is a calming and mindful way to open a meeting and encourage everyone to be present.

First, have everyone choose an object that is close to them and invite them to close their eyes. Next, ask the group to notice how they feel and to consider any feelings that aren’t serving them right now. Invite them to transfer these feelings into the object they are holding for the duration of the meeting and then come back to the room.

Combined with a quick debrief, Object Meditation is a great way to gently break the ice with your group. Check out the full method below for a script you can follow too!

Name Game

Name Game is an effective icebreaker to use at the start of a course, workshop or meeting where people don’t know each other’s names.

Start the Name Game by having the group sit in a circle where they can see everyone else clearly. Pick someone at random to say their name out loud.. The next person continues, but after saying their own name, they repeat the first person’s name. This continues with each person repeating one more name. Reassure people towards the end that it’s ok if they get stuck & encourage the others to jump in to help if anyone is lost.

​Have you ever? (Stand up if)

Have you ever? (also known as Stand up if) is an effective icebreaker to help the group start to see connections and share something about themselves in a low-pressure way.

Start by asking a “Have you ever…?” question to the group. For example, “Have you ever gone horse riding?” or “Have you ever facilitated a workshop?” Participants will stand up if they can answer yes to the statement. You can then choose to either ask another prepared question as facilitator or invite one of those people who answered yes to come up with another question.

We recommend encouraging movement where possible, even in an online setting, though note that with some groups and environment you may wish them to answer without standing. A simple wave or affirmative “Whoop!” can also work depending on your team!

Line Up

Line-Up is a quick ice breaker game where players have to form an orderly line without any discussion or verbal cues. Start by asking people to form a line based upon a predetermined criteria (like height, length of company tenure or color of each person’s eyes etc.). and ask the group to get themselves in order without speaking.

With a more familiar group, try adding more complication to the Line Up activity to encourage your team to think more deeply. For example, line up according to the distance to where you born. The Line Up icebreaker is an effective way to develop team collaboration and non-verbal communication. I especially enjoy using it when kicking of a training session with lots of talking later!

Icebreakers for meetings

Using an ice breaker at the start of a meeting is a great way to encourage group members to be present and get things started on the right foot. Effective opening activities energize the group, helping them ‘arrive’ mentally and leave behind whatever task or thought they were previously working on.

They can also help clarify the objectives of the meeting and position the group for what’s coming next. While many of the ice breakers in this collection work well for work gatherings, we’ve found these ones especially effective for this purpose.

What are you bringing to the meeting?

What are you bringing to the meeting is a simple framing icebreaker that can work wonders to help participants mentally arrive in a session and share how they’re feeling at the outset.

In this mindful ice breaker, ask people to take a few moments to “check-in” with themselves and write down their worries, energy levels, and whatever else is on their mind on a piece of paper. After everyone is done, ask them to put these worries and feelings to one side for the duration of the meeting. This process will help everyone articulate their feelings, let go of their worries and have better focus in the session.

Weather Check-in

For some meetings, time can be short. Quick but fun icebreaker activities like this one can be an effective way of getting a read of how everyone is doing while still being time efficient.

Begin this ice breaker by asking each member of the group to share how they are feeling & what’s going on for them right now in the language of weather. For example, I’m feeling like it’s mostly sunny skies with a bit of a rain cloud looming or I feel like I’m in the eye of a tornado! I’ve found this game especially useful when working with remote teams, for whom a metaphor can feel like a safe way to share in a group setting.

5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Technique

The 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Technique is a mindful icebreaker that can allow groups to be more present in the session and leave stress behind.

To practice this technique, the facilitator starts by explaining the process of doing a roll call of everything that you’re seeing, touching, smelling, and hearing right at this moment. By asking participants to engage all their senses and take a breath, you can help bring them back to the present moment and rule over anxiety and stress.

Using the 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Technique as an icebreaker presents an opportunity to center, but also to discuss well being and stress with your team in a simple and effective manner.

LEGO Metaphors

LEGO Metaphors is a playful icebreaker that can provide an opportunity for creative thinking and deep sharing in a group. Start by giving each participant a set of LEGO bricks (identical sets to everyone – a few items, around 5-10 bricks per person will suffice). Everyone builds something that relates to the topic of the meeting or to a framing question such as “How would you like to work together today?”

Afterwards, everyone gets 30 seconds to explain what their LEGO metaphor means and how it relates to the framing question. Where possible, encourage folks to tell small stories with their designs and collect the LEGO metaphors together for later discussion or reflection.

Rain icebreaker

The Rain icebreaker is a simple, zero-prep way to ehlp everyone to be present and engaged at the start of your meeting. By getting everyone in the room participating in the same goal, this icebreaker can quickly help everyone “arrive” in the session.

Start the Rain icebreaker by having everyone in the front of the room rub their hands together vigorously. Row by row, get more people to join in until you reach the back of the room. Next, have the first row switch to clicking their fingers and proceed through the room in the same way. Go back and forth between clicking and rubbing in order to replicate the sound of rain and then invite the group to stop and enjoy a break in the shower.

Conversation Questions

This collection of 25 conversation questions is a great starting point for helping a group get to know each other or open a meeting dynamically.

Small groups might wish to mingle and ask these conversation questions one on one, while you might invite larger groups to answer questions by raising their hand to answer. The great thing about these questions is that you can tailor them to your group and use as many as you have time for. Even adding a single question for folks to answer in chat at the start of a virtual meeting can have a profound effect on team cohesion over time.

See more in these full blog post of over 200 icebreaker questions.

Celebrate the wins in your team

Celebrate the wins in your team is a fast, easy icebreaker that will have everyone feeling good at the start of a meeting. Start by asking participants to think of a recent achievement, personal or professional, big or small. Then, go around a circle and ask each person to highlight the achievement that they’d like to celebrate with the team.

Ask everyone to share in the celebration, either with applause, kudos or chat emojis and then move onto the next person in the group. Celebrating wins as a team is a great mood boosting icebreaker. By lifting each other up, the energy in the room tends to build and people in the group tend to feel seen and values as a result.

Ice breaker games to support team building

ce breaker games are not only useful at the beginning of meetings or getting to know new people. They are also a great way to support team building, by creating a positive atmosphere, helping people relax and break down barriers.

Team building icebreakers can also reveal new information about colleagues that otherwise you wouldn’t discover during your everyday routine. Remember that successful teams are often those who’ve gotten to know each other better on a personal level too!

Team icebreakers such as those below are great for enhancing team bonding and empowering everyone in the group to move forward together. Let’s take a look!

See more in this post on the best team building activities.

Coat of Arms

This Coat of Arms icebreaker is a great way for players to introduce themselves to others and share deeply with others in a visual and creative way.

Start by letting participants know they’ll be creating a personal coat of arms with five sections ranging from what you do at work, all the way through to a core personal value. The group then spends 10 minutes drawing their coat of arms before pairing up with the person in the group they know the least. In pairs, participants then present the coat of arms of the other person, helping everyone in the room learn about each other more deeply.

This is a longer, more involved icebreaker, but it’s a great way to open a training program or deeper team building session.

Break the Ice with The Four Quadrants Activity

The Four Quadrants Activity is a creative team icebreaker where participants share four things about themselves in a series of simple drawings. It’s a highly adaptable exercise that can help folks get to know each other as a team.

Begin by asking people draw up a 2×2 grid on a piece of paper (or virtual whiteboard) and ask them four questions. Participants will then draw their answer in each of those four quadrants. Sample questions include things like: what do I bring to the group? What do I need from the group? What is your hobby? What is your vision for this group?

Afterwards, ask participants to present their drawings and discuss their creations and watch the group connections flow!

Team Jigsaw Puzzle Game

The Team Jigsaw Puzzle is a great way to get larger teams working together collaboratively while breaking the ice. Start by separating people into teams. Give each a very different jigsaw puzzle (with equal difficulty & number of pieces). Each group has the same amount of time to complete the puzzle.

The secret twist is to switch up a few pieces with the other jigsaw sets beforehand! things up. This means that each group must figure out how to ask other teams to share the pieces they need and work collaboratively on their goals. When working with groups of people who may typically work in silos, the Team Jigsaw Puzzle is an effective way to shake things up and start conversations that might not happen otherwise.

Back to Back Drawing

Back to Back Drawing is a great game for developing communication skills in a fun and memorable way.

Start by asking pairs to sit back to back. One person receives a picture of an existing image or scene. Next, they describe the image to the other person using only verbal directions. The other person then has to draw the object with the instructions they’ve been given and see how it compares to the original.

Back to Back Drawing can be easily adapted to encourage fun – using complex or well-known images – or you can also choose to focus on a specific topic by sharing images related to your team or product.

Scavenger Hunt

The Scavenger Hunt icebreaker is a great opportunity to mix people into teams who don’t typically work together and bring them together in a shared goal.

Start by creating a list of items that need to be gathered and then split your group into small teams to try and find them all to kick off your scavenger hunt. For best results, create a mix of easy and difficult to find items and use a time limit to encourage the group to think critically and collaboratively

Working with a remote or hybrid team? Try the virtual scavenger hunt below! Be sure to put in items that require a wide range of skills and thinking and diverse personalities to be completed successfully.

Electric Fence Icebreaker

The Electric Fence game is an energizing icebreaker that requires players to collectively build an imaginary electric fence. They have to try and cross it without touching it and getting “electrocuted”. The fence can be represented by a rope or a shoe string tied between two objects. It should be about waist high. Players can’t go under it, this is not limbo dancing!

They must also be touching a teammate with at least one hand at all times. This ice breaker activity requires quick thinking, problem-solving and negotiating with others.

​Trading Card Icebreaker

The Trading Card Icebreaker is an effective way to creatively break the ice and let your team share their personalities with the group.

Start by handing out materials and giving each person 5–10 minutes to create a personal “trading card”— including a quick self-portrait, a nickname for their “player,” and one thing about themselves that people in the room aren’t likely to know.

The Trading Card activity lets people self-define and share their personality outside of their day-to-day work. This approach means people get to connect more meaningfully and authentically while also creating cards that serve as mementos of the session.

Low Tech Social Networking

Low-tech Social Network is one of our favourite ice breakers to use when working with large, multi-discipline groups where connections might not be immediately obvious.

The objective of Low-tech Social Network is to introduce event participants to each other by co-creating a large visual network of their connections. Begin by having all participants create an avatar on a piece of card with a self portrait and name.

Once their avatar is ready, each person will “upload” themselves by sticking their card to the wall. Finally, each participants will find the people they know and draw lines to make the connections known, labelling how they know that person too.

Ice breaker games for small groups

While many of the icebreaker games above can be adapted for any group size, these activities are especially effective when working with groups of less than 15 people.

These icebreakers are great for using the smaller group size to create opportunities for team bonding and deeper sharing between team members. You’ll find them particularly useful when creating working groups, or building cohesion between teams who collaborate regularly.

Interview icebreaker

The Interview Icebreaker is a playful way to get team members talking at the start of a session while also introducing the topic of the workshop or meeting.

Start by getting people into pairs. One person begins by being a reporter and then other will be the interviewee. For three minutes, the reporter will interview the other person on a chosen subject and attempt to get as much information as they can before switching roles. Encourage the group to really get into their roles and provide some example questions to guide the group toward the topic of the day.

Magic Box

The Magic Box icebreaker encourages players to think creatively and share with the group in response to an object they pull from a box.

Start Magic Box by assembling a box of interesting and varied objects. Having objects of different sizes and texts is best, though even a collection of photos will do. Next, invite participants to choose an object without overthinking it and then explain who they are, why they chose the object and what they think the connection between the object and the workshop is.

Paper Telephone

Paper Telephone is a fun icebreaker that encourages creativity and laughter by combining two classic games: telephone and pictionary. Start by handing out a stack of small papers and pens, and invite each team member to write a sentence on the first piece of paper. Players then pass their stack to the next person who must read the sentence and then create a visual representation of that sentence on the next piece of paper in the stack.

Play proceeds around the circle, with players needing to transform back and forth between words and images. Often, by the time you get your original stack back, the sentence has gone on a weird and wonderful transformation!

Human Knot

Human Knot is a fun, physical icebreaker that is best played in groups of 7-16 people. It’s a great way to break the ice while also creating energy and a sense of fun.

Start Human Knot getting the group to stand in a circle and ask them to close their eyes. Next, everyone reaches out and links one hand with someone across the circle. Then they link the other hand with another person in the circle. Then, ask everyone to open their eyes and try to untangle the knot they’ve made without breaking the chain!

When running Human Knot with small groups, it can often be interesting to ask folks to reflect on what happened and how it illustrates core group dynamics or how they work together more generally.

Your Amazing Future (Because of that…)

Your Amazing Future is a powerful icebreaker for helping people think about setting goals, connect to the future and get energized.

Start by pairing up members of your group and designating one as the speaker and the other as the listener. Next, each person imagines it’s one week from now and the speaker tells the listener what happened during the current session, saying what they got from it and what made it so great.

After 45 seconds, groups then imagine its 10 years in the future and the speaker shares what they’ve done in that time. Have the listener respond by enthusiastically saying “And because of that” in response to what the speaker says. After a completed round, swap roles and go again so that everyone has the chance to think about future.

Life Map

Life Map is a reflective icebreaker that helps create connections and deepen group understanding in a way that can be both creative and surprising. Begin by inviting team members to draw their life as a map, using common symbols and signs you might find on a map. Stop signs, deer crossings, mountainous areas…the choice of how to illustrate your life story is yours!

After everyone has completed their life map, give them 5-minutes to share with the rest of the group. Using Life Map as a small group icebreaker allows people to be vulnerable in a safe, approachable and creative way.

Large group icebreakers

Breaking the ice in a big group can feel a little awkward at first, but the right activities can turn a room full of strangers into a lively, connected team in no time. Large group icebreakers are a great way to get people talking, boost participation, and create a positive, energetic vibe for your meeting, workshop, or event.

These activities are designed to be inclusive, fast-paced, and interactive—ensuring that everyone feels involved and ready to collaborate. Whether you’re kicking off a corporate gathering or a team retreat, these icebreakers will help build rapport and bring energy to the room.

Group Map

Group Map is fun, active icebreaker that gets people moving while also learning a little about one another. It’s especially effective when working with new groups who come from different regions or locations.

Start by asking the group to imagine the space they’re in as a map of the world. Next, participants place themselves on the map on the spot they best feels represents the country according to where they grew up.

With large groups, you might ask folks to simply shout where they’re from and rearrange as needed. In smaller groups or with more time, it can be gratifying for folks to share a value they learned while in that place, and why that is important for them.

Get to know you better

Get to know you better is an effective large group icebreaker that helps avoid awkward silences and encourages networking in a genuinely helpful way.

At the beginning of your session, give each person a badge with the following three statements:

1. My name is..
2. I can answer a question about…
3. I have a question about…

Next, have people walk around & mingle while discussing what’s on their badges. It’s a great way to enhance engagement & help people set goals and hold themselves accountable during the session.

Passions Tic Tac Toe

The goal of the Passions Tic Tac Toe icebreaker is to help the participants to get to know each other at the beginning of an event or to help identify their values during the later part of a training session.

Create a 3 x 3 grid for each participant and have them fill in each block with a different personal passion randomly. After the individual work, have everyone walk around the room and compare notes. When they find the same passion listed in both grids, ask them to sign for each other in the appropriate square. The winner is the participant who manages to have other people’s signatures on three lines (vertical, horizontal, or diagonal). You can continue the game to have as many winners as you like.

Rock Paper Scissors Tournament

Rock Paper Scissors Tournament is fun a warm-up to help even the largest groups get swiftly energized. This game uses traditional Rock Paper Scissors rules but with a twist: the people who lose become fans who cheer for the players still in the game.

Start a Rock Paper Scissors Tournament by asking everyone in the room to get into pairs and play a round of Rock, Paper, Scissors. (Go best of 3 quick if you’re working with a small group or have extra time.) The loser will became a fan of the winner and cheer them on as you match winners to continue playing. Keep going until you have only two players remaining for a final round with everyone else cheering on!

Lifeboat Debate

Lifeboat Debate is a high-energy icebreaker that challenges participants to think critically, communicate persuasively, and make collective decisions under pressure.

Start by breaking participants into smaller groups and then give them the scenario: a lifeboat is sinking, and only a limited number of people can stay on board. Each participant takes on the role of a different character—such as a doctor, artist, scientist, or athlete—and must argue why they should be saved. The group then debates and decides who stays and who must leave the lifeboat.

Lifeboat Debate often sparks lively discussions while encouraging teamwork, quick thinking, and strategic reasoning. It’s a great way to get a large group engaged right away, prompting both fun and meaningful conversations.

Near and Far

Near and Far is a simple yet meaningful icebreaker that helps teams discover shared experiences and unique backgrounds. Participants take turns sharing something they have in common with the group (“Near”) and something that makes them different (“Far”). For example, one person might say, “Near: I love coffee. Far: I’ve lived in five different countries.”

This activity encourages open conversation, strengthens connections, and highlights the diversity within a team. It’s a great way to break down barriers in large groups while fostering curiosity and mutual understanding.

Count Up

Count Up is a deceptively simple yet engaging icebreaker that challenges teams to count sequentially from 1 to a set number—but with a catch. Participants must say the numbers one at a time, in random order, without speaking over each other or establishing a pattern. If two people speak at the same time, the group starts over.

This activity requires patience, awareness, and teamwork, making it a great way to build focus and connection in a fun, low-pressure way. It’s perfect for energizing a group while subtly reinforcing the importance of active listening and collaboration.

Ice breakers to improve teamwork

In this section, we’ve collected some activities that are expressly collaborative in nature and which encourage puzzle solving and team work in an experiential way. They’re great to throw into an event or workshop when you want to get people interacting and build team bonds by stealth.

If you’re looking for some shorter activities that help improve teamwork and collaboration, check out our post on 5-minute team building activities.

The Marshmallow Challenge

The Marshmallow Challenge, teams must build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string, and one marshmallow. To complete the marshmallow challenge, the marshmallow needs to remain on top without falling off!

The Marshmallow Challenge was first developed by Tom Wujec and had been run thousands of times all over the world. It’s an engaging group activity that gets people working together in a practical and memorable way very quickly.

Egg drop

In Egg drop, teams must work together to build a structure that will support a free-falling egg dropped from a predetermined height (e.g. 7 feet) without the egg breaking.

Start by handing out material, including everything from straws and popsicle sticks to masking tape and cotton balls. Next, give each group 10 minutes to build a structure that will keep the egg safe before it’s fall. Have a round of (safely) dropping the eggs and invite the team to discuss their takeaways from working together on this short group project.

Helium Stick

Helium Stick is a seemingly simple game that requires the team to work together while aiming to lower a stick to the ground while staying synchronized.

First, line up people in two rows facing each other. Introduce the Helium Stick and ask participants to hold their index fingers out. Lay the stick on their fingers & before letting go, have everyone adjust their position so the stick is horizontal and everyone is touching it. The goal is to lower the stick to the ground in a way that no one lets go of it at any time.

Pinching, grabbing, or holding on properly to the Stick is not allowed. If the group makes a mistake, they start from the beginning. Helium Stick is a fun problem solving icebreaker that we’d recommend for any team building workshop!

Blind square – The perfect square

The Blind Square Rope Game is a hands-on activity that challenges teams to rely on strong communication and collaboration. Participants are tasked with forming a perfect square using a looped rope—while blindfolded or with their eyes closed. Since no one can see the shape, the team must depend on verbal instructions, active listening, and strategic coordination to succeed.

This exercise highlights the importance of clear communication, trust, and leadership within a team. It’s especially effective for breaking down communication barriers and encouraging participants to work together under challenging conditions.

Desert Island

The Desert Island activity is a classic team-building exercise that puts problem-solving and negotiation skills to the test. Participants imagine they’re stranded on a desert island and must choose a limited number of items (from a provided list) to survive. The twist? They have to make these decisions as a group, which requires discussion, persuasion, and compromise.

Desert Island can often spark lively debates as team members prioritize needs, defend their choices, and learn to find common ground. It’s a fun way to explore different perspectives, practice critical thinking, and improve group decision-making under pressure.

Strength-Building Exercise

The Strength-Building Exercise is a powerful icebreaker that encourages team members to recognize and celebrate each other’s strengths. Participants take turns sharing positive qualities or skills they’ve observed in their colleagues, highlighting specific examples to make the feedback meaningful.

This activity fosters a culture of appreciation, boosts team morale, and helps individuals feel valued for their contributions. It’s a simple yet powerful way to strengthen team dynamics and build confidence.

Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe

Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe takes the classic game to a whole new level with added complexity and strategy. Instead of one grid, there’s a larger 3×3 grid made up of nine smaller tic-tac-toe boards. Players must win individual boards to claim spots on the larger grid, with each move influencing where the next player can go.

This activity requires strategic planning, adaptability, and teamwork when played in groups. It’s perfect for energizing a team, sharpening problem-solving skills, and encouraging friendly competition.

Fun Ice Breaker Games

The best ice breakers have the power to strengthen coworker bonds, stimulate better brainstorming sessions, and create an atmosphere of inclusivity.

They’re also incredibly fun to play, making them a welcomed break from regular work activities. Fun icebreakers like those listed below can effectively break down barriers that might exist between employees & make it easier for people to communicate with one another.

Portrait Gallery

This ice breaker activity is a fun one that requires some creativity. It enhances a sense of community because people have to draw the others as a group – not just between the drawers, but the recipients of the portraits too. The outcome is very visual and colorful and the result images can be put up in the meeting room afterward! Meeting ice breakers that produce physical results that can be shared can really help ensure the good vibes of the meeting continue afterward!

​What is my name (celebrity party)

What is my name is a well known icebreaker that begins wit everyone receiving the name of a well-known celebrity or public figure which they must attach to their back or forehead without looking.

Have players mingle and ask each other yes/no questions to find out who they are. For best results, have players ask only one question of one person before moving onto the next one, ensuring people mix and spread the good fun around!

Minefield

Set up harmless obstacles in the room you’re meeting in. Use squeaky toys, whoopie cushions, bubble wrap and the like. Everyone takes turns going around the course while blindfolded, guided by their teammates. The goal is: help each to navigate through the minefield.

While this game often results in lots of laughter, it also helps teach the importance of clear communication and trusting your team.

Crazy Handshake

This ice breaker helps people ease into a group and brings out their creativity without a lot of effort. Splitting the group into pairs, each pair develops a creative handshake. Once done, the pair splits and each individual partners with another group member. The newly formed pair then teaches each other the original handshakes and together creates a new one. You can break up and pair off people as many times as you want.

The Movie Pitch Icebreaker

The Movie Pitch Icebreaker is a fun, fast-paced activity where small groups create and pitch an original movie idea based on a random or chosen theme. Teams come up with a title, a brief plot, and even cast imaginary actors, then present their pitch to the group as if selling it to a studio.

The Movie Pitch icebreaker sparks creativity, encourages teamwork, and adds a dose of humor, especially if you ask teams to create a movie based on the topic of the session or even the subject of meetings!

Bang!

For this game, you have to have quick reactions or you’ll be eliminated. Have everyone stand in a circle with one person in the middle as the ‘sheriff’. They must surprise other players by pointing to them. These people must quickly crouch and those on either side of them have to quickly ‘draw’ their weapons. If you are too slow, you switch places & become the sheriff.

This icebreaker is a wonderful way to increase group energy before starting a meeting in earnest, and it also helps people learn names too! If you’re working with an especially large group, note that it’s better to play in parallel before finishing with a final showdown!

Sound Ball

This is a simple icebreaker activity that energizes participants, and it’s also suitable for highlighting spontaneity and teamwork. The activity involves participants standing in a circle and throwing imaginary ball(s) to each other in increasing pace. When throwing the first ball, the person starting should make a special sound that has to be repeated by the catcher upon receiving the ball.

Once the ball is being thrown around at a fairly brisk pace, you can introduce another imaginary ball and start throwing it. When the group gets proficient at it, you can have three or four balls in play!

Hello Kitty

Starting a meeting with smiles and laughter is a great way to set the tone for the session. In this fun icebreaker, separate your group into teams of kittens and puppiess. Puppies try to make the kittens laugh or crack a smile by simply saying, “Hello Kitty” in an amusing manner. Any kittens who smile or laugh join the puppies until their is only one kitten left standing!

Encourage the group to be creative and be sure to give kudos to the funniest participants or those who manage to keep a straight face!

Just the facts

Just the facts is an engaging icebreaker that encourages participants to quickly recall and share factual information on a specific topic. Begin by selecting a relevant subject—such as “Effective Presentation Techniques” for a training session or trivia about your city for a casual gathering. Seated in a circle, participants take turns stating a fact related to the chosen topic, aiming to keep the flow rapid and avoid repetitions.

If someone introduces an opinion, repeats a fact, or states something questionable, others can challenge by saying, “Just the facts!”

Just the facts not only energizes the group but also reinforces knowledge on the subject matter, sharpens quick-thinking abilities, and sets a collaborative tone for the session ahead.

Purpose of ice breaker games

So how do you avoid creating a frustrating, patronizing ice breaker game that won’t make participants feel like they are wasting their time?

The benefits of a good ice breaker far outweigh any negatives. They can take care of introductions in a much more fun way than just simply going around the room and stating what’s on your business card. They can help people remember names, start conversations and create a positive atmosphere in moments.

When done right, ice breakers can quickly build a sense of community, set the tone for the upcoming session & give participants ownership of the learning ahead.

Icebreaker games are also a great way for people to share their expectations and for facilitators to introduce the topic of the day. They help participants to loosen up, understand each other more and enable better collaboration and networking. Last, but not least, it is a surefire way to energize the group and have everyone focused and ready to go.

From icebreaker to completed agenda

Now you’ve discovered the perfect icebreaker, it’s time to create the rest of your meeting!

With SessionLab, you drag, drop and reorder blocks to create your agenda in a snap. Your session timing adjusts automatically as you make changes and when you’re done, you can share a beautiful printout with your colleagues and participants.

Explore how facilitators use SessionLab to build effective workshops and meetings or watch this five minute video to get started!

Now over to you!

Your meetings and workshops don’t have to be boring. We hope you have found some useful tips for practical and fun ice breaker games you can use in your next session!

What are your favorite ice breaker activities? Have you tried any of the methods above? How did you find them? Let us know about your experiences in the comments. Want to see even more great icebreaker ideas? Our collection of icebreaker questions contains heaps of conversation starters you can bring to your next session.

Want to go further? Check out our guide to planning an effective workshop to start building more engaging sessions with better outcomes!

Corporate team building activities like those we’ve collected below are proven methods for creating stronger, high-performing teams while also having fun, memorable experiences.

In this post, you’ll find activities designed to improve communication skills, engage small teams and big ones alike and generally improve team dynamics. Let’s dive in.

Why is team building important in a corporate setting?

Team building isn’t just about breaking the ice or having fun—it’s a strategic investment in your organization’s success. As Harvard Business Review noted in this article on the science of building great teams, “Social time turns out to be deeply critical to team performance.”

In a corporate setting, where team performance is essential, team-building activities play a critical role in creating much needed social time in a structured and purposeful way. Here are some of the key benefits you’ll see when running team building activities with your group:

1. Strengthening communication
   Effective communication is the cornerstone of any successful team. Team-building activities create opportunities for colleagues to practice open dialogue, active listening, and constructive feedback in a relaxed environment. This helps improve workplace interactions and reduces misunderstandings, making day-to-day operations smoother.
2. Building trust
   When teams are able to trust one another, great things tend to happen. It’s the foundation of a high-performing team that is able to adapt and back each other up. Team-building exercises encourage vulnerability and collaboration, helping colleagues build rapport and develop confidence in each other’s abilities. A culture of trust leads to better teamwork, faster decision-making, and greater resilience in the face of challenges.
3. Enhancing collaboration
   In today’s workplace, no one works in isolation. Team building helps individuals learn to leverage each other’s strengths, share ideas, and problem-solve collectively. The process folks go through while working through a problem as a group tends to function as a foundation for later action.
   
   Team building activities provide an opportunity to practice within a safe container and then translate those learnings back into day-to-day work. Truth is, when employees feel comfortable collaborating, they’re more likely to come out to bat for one another when things are tough and work together towards shared goals.
4. Boosting morale and engagement
   A connected team is a motivated team. Team-building activities create opportunities for employees to have fun, celebrate wins, and bond outside of their daily routines. Working on employee engagement in this way is especially helpful for reducing burnout and creating variation in the day-to-day of work.
   
   This study noted that teamwork correlates with improved job satisfaction and morale, meaning that employees who participate in well-structured team building events tend to experience higher job satisfaction .
5. Aligning teams with organizational goals
   Team-building activities often emphasize shared purpose and alignment. By clarifying roles, responsibilities, and objectives, these exercises ensure everyone is working toward the same goals.
   
   This alignment improves efficiency and helps teams stay focused on what matters most, even across departments and company functions. In some large companies, team building events are the only time that folks get to hang out with other teams and work on something cross departmentally. As such, they’re a great opportunity for the entire group to refocus on what’s most important.

In a corporate setting, effective team building isn’t just a one-time effort – it’s an ongoing process that nurtures a thriving workplace culture and helps people feel connected and engaged in their work.

You’ll find the activities in this guide an effective way to bring team building to life and make it a regular occurence – no need to wait till the end of year party!

What are the 5 C’s of team building?

The 5 C’s of team building are key principles that help teams thrive and succeed in their collaborative efforts. The 5 c’s of team building are: clarity, communication, collaboration, creativity and celebration.

All high-performing teams tend to exhibit these qualities in abundance and so they’re a great way to start discussing how your team is performing and how you might improve the way you work together.

The principles that your group feels needs strengthening can then form the basis of your next team building activity. You’ll find the activities we’ve collected below grouped into each of these principles so you can find the one you want to work on easily.

Let’s start by breaking these principles down:

• Clarity
  Clear goals, roles, and expectations are the bedrock of a successful team. When everyone understands their responsibilities and how their work contributes to the bigger picture, it reduces the chance for misunderstandings and empowers people to act with autonomy.
  
  In the context of team building, clarity also extends to helping folks get to know other team members better. In my experience, when group members understand each other more deeply and clarify how they’d like to work together, collaboration is smoother as a result and everyone tends to be happier too.
• Communication
  Without open and honest communication, it can become near impossible for teams to work together effectively. Encouraging active listening, constructive feedback, and meaningful dialogue helps teams resolve conflicts, align on objectives, and build trust.
  
  Many team-building exercises are designed to test and strengthen communication skills in fun and engaging ways – these often include games where teams compete in friendly competition and thus need to communicate well in order to win. In this section, you’ll also find some activities are explicitly intended to build team communication skills and help participants navigate difficult topics more easily.

• Collaboration
  Collaboration is about more than simply working together—it’s about enabling every person in your team to leverage their strengths while working to achieve common goals. The best teams know how to divide tasks, share ideas, and support one another through tough challenges.
  
  Team-building activities designed to build collaboration skills often ask the group to solve problems and demonstrate teamwork in a practical manner. You’ll also find exercises that explicitly invite teams to discuss better ways of working or clarify how they’d like to collaborate better.
• Creativity
  Creativity should not just the preserve of designers and writers at your company –everyone can benefit from finding the freedom to approach problems with fresh perspectives and allow their creative side to have a seat at the table.
  
  Activities like brainstorming sessions or hands-on problem-solving challenges can help teams tap into their creative potential. Experiential activities like those in this section can help participants practice creativity in a safe, encouraging container that enables them to be more creative in their day-to-day work too.
• Celebration
  Recognizing and celebrating successes — big or small — is vital for maintaining employee morale and motivation. Often, this doesn’t mean just throwing bonus money at folks (though this can help.) Simply helping your team feel seen and valued in the work they do can help bring a team together.
  
  Take the time to acknowledge individual contributions and team milestones and you can strengthen bonds and reinforces team culture in the same breath.

By incorporating the 5 C’s into your team-building approach, you’ll create a foundation for trust, growth, and long-term success. These principles don’t just make teams more effective—they also make work more enjoyable for everyone involved.

Think of the team building activities below as a way to stretch these muscles and help your teams build their skills in an experiential way. They can form the basis of dedicated team building events or simply provide an opening activity to your regular meetings and workshops.

In my experience, every time you bring your team together is an opportunity to deepen connections and improve the way you work together. A single escape room is unlikely to cut it. Applying consistent effort and checking-in on how your team feels is the true path to improving team dynamics.

If you’re looking for more activities, see our collection of the best team building activities for exercises that can serve small teams and large ones alike.

Corporate team building activities for building clarity

When team members understand their roles, goals, and expectations, they can work with confidence and purpose. Without team clarity, misalignment can lead to confusion, frustration, and inefficiency.

These team-building activities are designed to help teams define roles, goals and expectations and also get to know each other better —leading to better decision-making and stronger team cohesion.

Who are you? The Pirate Ship exercise

Best for: Team roles, self-discovery, group reflection
Time: 30-45 minutes
Materials: Printed or projected image of a pirate ship

Who Are You? The Pirate Ship Exercise is a fun and metaphorical way to explore team roles and dynamics. Participants are shown an image of a pirate ship and asked to reflect on which role they naturally identify with—are they the captain steering the team, the lookout scanning the horizon, or the deckhand keeping things running smoothly?

This lighthearted approach encourages self-awareness and sparks valuable discussions about team contributions, leadership, and collaboration. By using a playful premise, the exercise allows for deeper reflection without pressure, making it an excellent way to build stronger team connections.

Alignment & Autonomy

Best for: Strategic Alignment, Goal Setting, Team Empowerment
Time: 60-90 minutes
Materials: Flip charts, markers, sticky notes

Alignment & Autonomy is a structured activity that helps teams clarify shared goals while identifying individual responsibilities and areas of independence. Together, participants map out objectives, highlight dependencies, and ensure alignment across roles to create a clear path forward.

This activity fosters transparency and promotes ownership by encouraging team members to take responsibility for their contributions while keeping collaboration at the heart of the process. It’s ideal for empowering individuals to balance autonomy with teamwork, creating a sense of accountability and shared purpose. By the end, everyone walks away with a clearer understanding of their role in achieving collective success.

Myers-Briggs Team Reflection

Best for: Personality insights, team collaboration, leadership development
Time: 60-90 minutes
Materials: Myers-Briggs Type Indicator results or summaries

Myers-Briggs Team Reflection dives into the unique personality dynamics within your team, exploring how traits influence communication, work preferences, and collaboration. Participants share their results, reflect on their strengths and challenges, and identify ways to work together more effectively.

By highlighting individual differences and commonalities, this activity fosters mutual understanding and respect. It provides teams with practical insights for leveraging diverse working styles while addressing potential areas of friction. Leaders can also use these learnings to create a more harmonious and productive environment that plays to everyone’s strengths.

Team Canvas Session

Best for: Team alignment, goal setting, defining team culture
Time: 60-90 minutes
Materials: Team Canvas template (printed or digital), markers, sticky notes

Team Canvas Session is a structured workshop designed to help teams align on their shared purpose, values, and ways of working. Using the Team Canvas framework, participants collaboratively explore key aspects of their team dynamics, including goals, roles, personal motivations, and expectations.

This activity encourages open dialogue and creates a shared understanding of what success looks like for the team. By mapping out these elements together, teams strengthen cohesion, clarify responsibilities, and set actionable agreements for better collaboration. It’s an invaluable exercise for new teams forming their identity or existing teams looking to reset and improve alignment. The final canvas serves as a visual reference point, keeping everyone on the same page as they move forward.

Guess the Desk

Best for: Remote teams, icebreaking, personal connections
Time: 20-30 minutes
Materials: Photos of participants’ workspaces

Guess the Desk is a lighthearted activity that brings remote teams closer together. Participants anonymously submit photos of their desks or workspaces, and the group takes turns guessing which one belongs to whom.

Guess the Desk creates a fun and relaxed atmosphere while offering a glimpse into each person’s working environment and personality. It’s a great way to spark conversations, discover shared interests, and break the ice in virtual teams. The added element of guessing keeps everyone engaged and laughing along the way.

What Are You Bringing to the Meeting?

Best for: Meeting check-ins, enhancing focus, building awareness
Time: 5-10 minutes
Materials: None

What Are You Bringing to the Meeting? is a simple yet effective check-in activity that helps participants acknowledge their current state of mind and external factors affecting their focus. At the start of the meeting, each person briefly shares what’s on their mind—be it personal distractions, energy levels, or prior engagements.

This practice promotes empathy and patience among team members, as everyone gains insight into each other’s current situations. It also encourages individuals to mentally set aside distractions, fostering a more present and engaged meeting environment.

Temperature Check

Best for: Team sentiment, emotional awareness, open communication
Time: 10-20 minutes
Materials: whiteboard or virtual collaboration tool (optional)

Temperature Check is a quick and effective way to gauge how team members are feeling at a given moment. Participants are asked to share their current mood or energy level using a simple scale, a metaphor (e.g., weather conditions), or a color-coded system. Responses can be shared verbally, written on a board, or submitted anonymously for more sensitive discussions.

This activity helps create a culture of openness and psychological safety by giving team members a space to express their emotions without judgment. It’s particularly useful for identifying stress points, celebrating positive momentum, and ensuring that leadership is aware of the team’s overall well-being. Regularly integrating this check-in into meetings fosters empathy and strengthens team connections.

Corporate team building activities for improving communication skills

Effective communication is at the heart of every successful team. Whether it’s active listening, giving constructive feedback, or ensuring ideas are clearly understood, strong communication builds trust and prevents misunderstandings.

These activities help teams practice clear, open, and empathetic communication in an engaging way, leading to more productive collaboration and stronger workplace relationships.

Active Listening

Best for: Communication skills, empathy, team connection
Time: 30-45 minutes
Materials: None (optional: prompt cards for discussion topics)

Active Listening is a powerful exercise that helps teams strengthen their ability to truly hear and understand one another. Participants pair up and take turns speaking about a given topic while their partner listens without interrupting. Afterward, the listener paraphrases what they heard, ensuring they captured the essence of the speaker’s message before switching roles.

Active Listening highlights the difference between passive hearing and active engagement, encouraging teams to be more mindful in their daily interactions. It fosters deeper connections, reduces miscommunication, and builds trust by ensuring every voice is genuinely heard. Whether used to enhance teamwork, resolve conflicts, or simply improve workplace communication, Active Listening is an essential skill-building exercise for any team.

Conflict Responses

Best for: Conflict resolution, emotional intelligence, communication skills
Time: 30-60 minutes
Materials: Conflict scenario cards or pre-prepared examples

Conflict Responses is a dynamic and insightful activity designed to help teams explore how they approach and resolve conflict. Using real-life scenarios or creative examples, participants discuss their reactions, analyze outcomes, and brainstorm strategies for handling disagreements in a healthy, constructive way.

Conflict Responses is an activity that deepens emotional intelligence by helping participants recognize their own conflict styles while gaining insight into how their teammates handle challenging situations. It also equips teams with practical tools and frameworks for managing conflicts effectively, fostering a culture where disagreements lead to understanding and growth instead of tension and division.

Telling Our Stories

Best for: Building trust, team bonding, enhancing communication
Time: 60-120 minutes
Materials: Post-it notes in three different colors, pens

Telling Our Stories is a powerful activity designed to foster trust and openness within a team through structured storytelling. Participants reflect on and share personal experiences from different life stages—childhood, young adulthood, and the present—answering prompts such as moments of happiness, influential individuals, and transformative events.

By sharing these personal narratives, team members build deeper connections and understanding, creating a foundation for effective collaboration. This exercise not only enhances empathy but also encourages a culture of openness, making it easier for team members to communicate and work together harmoniously.

Follow the Follower

Best for: Team coordination, trust-building, communication
Time: 20-30 minutes
Materials: None

Follow the Follower is a simple yet impactful exercise that strengthens coordination and trust. Participants take turns leading the group through a series of movements, actions, or instructions while others follow closely, mirroring the leader’s actions.

Follow the Follower reinforces the idea that so much of how we communicate is non-verbal in a fun and low-pressure way. It’s perfect for building camaraderie and injecting some energy into your day, leaving everyone feeling more connected and in sync.

Heard, Seen, Respected (HSR)

Best for: Building trust, inclusivity, emotional awareness
Time: 20-30 minutes
Materials: None

Heard, Seen, Respected creates space for participants to reflect on moments when they felt truly valued in a team setting. In pairs or small groups, team members share these experiences, fostering connection and helping everyone understand the key elements of feeling acknowledged and respected.

Heard, Seen, Respected encourages active listening and builds empathy by allowing participants to step into one another’s perspectives. It’s a simple yet meaningful way to cultivate trust and inclusivity, laying the foundation for a team culture where everyone feels seen and appreciated for their contributions.

Spider Web

Best for: Trust-building, team bonding, physical activity
Time: 30-60 minutes
Materials: Rope or tape to create a web-like structure

Spider Web challenges teams to strategize and physically support each other as they navigate through a web of ropes or tape without touching it. It requires careful planning and a great deal of trust as participants work together to lift, guide, and maneuver teammates through the obstacles.

Spider Web is a fantastic activity highlighting the importance of communication awhile getting everyone moving and energized. The shared sense of achievement when the entire team completes the challenge makes it a memorable bonding experience that strengthens relationships and boosts morale.

Corporate team building activities for better collaboration

Great teams don’t just work together—they leverage each other’s strengths to achieve more than they could alone. Collaboration requires trust, adaptability, and the ability to coordinate efforts seamlessly. These activities encourage teams to problem-solve, strategize, and support one another, helping to break down silos and create a culture of teamwork.

Wise Crowds

Best for: Peer problem-solving, collective intelligence, knowledge sharing
Time: 45-60 minutes
Materials: none (optional: flip chart or digital whiteboard for notes)

Wise Crowds is a collaborative problem-solving exercise that taps into the collective wisdom of a team. One participant volunteers to share a challenge they’re facing while the rest of the group acts as a panel of “wise advisors.” The volunteer listens silently as the group discusses potential solutions, insights, and suggestions. Afterward, they reflect on what resonated most and how they might apply the feedback.

This method fosters an open, supportive environment where team members can seek guidance without feeling pressure to have all the answers themselves. It encourages fresh perspectives, deep listening, and creative problem-solving, making it an excellent tool for tackling complex challenges while strengthening team trust and collaboration.

My Favourite Manager

Best for: Leadership reflection, team culture, empathy
Time: 45-60 minutes
Materials: None

Leaders and managers can be a deciding factor in creating a great company culture and employee happiness. In this game, get started by bringing your team together to discuss their favourite and least favourite managers and the skills they bring to the table.

This corporate team building activity is great at creating a safe space to discuss management styles and create empathy between teams. You’ll often find team members can shift their perspective, learn something about how they relate to their leaders and have fun too!

Team Reflection

Best for: Team growth, continuous improvement, strengthening connections
Time: 30-60 minutes
Materials: None (optional: journal or sticky notes for reflections)

Team Reflection is a structured yet open-ended activity designed to help teams pause, look back on their journey, and discuss key learnings. Participants take turns sharing what has gone well, what challenges they’ve faced, and what improvements they’d like to see moving forward.

By enabling more honest conversations, the Team Refletion exercise builds trust and strengthens team cohesion. It helps teams recognize achievements, acknowledge struggles, and align on actionable steps for improvement. Whether used as a regular practice or after a major project, Team Reflection creates space for meaningful dialogue and continuous growth.

Human Knot

Best for: Problem-solving, team bonding, communication
Time: 15-30 minutes
Materials: None

Human Knot is a classic team-building activity that’s as fun as it is challenging. Participants stand in a circle, reach across to grab the hands of two different people, and then work together to untangle themselves without letting go of each other’s hands. The goal is to untwist the “knot” and form a single, unbroken circle.

This activity encourages teams to think critically, communicate effectively, and collaborate closely to solve a shared challenge. It’s also a great way to highlight the importance of patience and teamwork, as everyone needs to contribute ideas and listen to one another to succeed. Human Knot is ideal for building trust and creating moments of laughter as teams navigate the twists and turns together.

Jigsaw Puzzle

Best for: Collaboration, focus, group problem-solving
Time: 30-60 minutes
Materials: Jigsaw puzzle(s)

Jigsaw Puzzle is a straightforward yet powerful way to strengthen teamwork. Teams work together to complete a puzzle within a set timeframe, which requires communication, organization, and collaboration. For an added twist, teams can compete to see who finishes their puzzle first.

This activity emphasizes the importance of patience and collective effort, creating a calm and focused environment where everyone plays a role in reaching the final goal. It’s a fantastic choice for groups looking to encourage conversation while reinforcing the value of working together.

Leadership Pizza

Best for: Leadership development, self-reflection, team insights
Time: 45-60 minutes
Materials: Leadership Pizza templates and markers

Leadership Pizza offers a creative way for participants to evaluate their leadership skills and how they relate to and work with others. Using a pizza-shaped diagram divided into key areas—like communication, decision-making, and delegation—team members rate their current abilities and discuss their findings in small groups.

This activity promotes self-awareness and constructive feedback, helping leaders identify areas for growth and celebrate their strengths. It’s also an excellent tool for fostering open, supportive conversations about leadership within teams, paving the way for individual and collective growth.

Birds of a Feather

Best for: Diversity & Inclusion, team dynamics, collaboration
Time: 30-45 minutes
Materials: Index cards with letters written on them

Birds of a Feather is an eye-opening activity that demonstrates the benefits of diverse teams in a tangible way. Each participant receives an index card with a single letter on it, then forms groups of five without any further instructions. After forming groups, teams are challenged to create the longest word possible using their letters.

At first, participants tend to cluster with those closest to them, but they quickly realize that a more diverse mix of letters leads to better results. This simple yet effective game sparks conversations about diversity, inclusion, and how embracing different perspectives makes teams stronger. A debrief discussion helps connect the experience to real workplace dynamics, making this a great lead-in for broader conversations about team composition and collaboration.

Virtual Scavenger Hunt

Best for: Remote teams, engagement, creativity
Time: 30-60 minutes
Materials: A virtual meeting platform and a prepared scavenger hunt list

Virtual Scavenger Hunt is a lively and interactive way to engage remote teams. Participants are given a list of items to find in their home or workspace, ranging from practical tools to personal treasures, and they share their finds with the group.

This activity combines a need to collaborate with a chance to showcase personality and creativity. How exactly should the team divide and work on their shared goal? When it comes to recreating an image with household objects, what will participants come up with?

Preparation and setting is key for making the scavenger hunt work. Ensure you create a list that will resonate with your team and have enough time in your session for folks to enjoy hunting for items, rather than feeling pressured.

Corporate team building activities to encourage creativity

Innovation thrives in teams that feel empowered to think outside the box. Creativity isn’t just for artists—it’s essential for problem-solving, adaptability, and continuous improvement.

These activities help teams tap into their creative potential, challenge assumptions, and approach challenges with fresh perspectives, leading to more innovative solutions and dynamic team engagement.

Cover Story

Best for: Vision planning, creative thinking, team identity
Time: 45-60 minutes
Materials: Flip charts, markers, magazines (optional)

Cover Story is a creative exercise that challenges teams to envision their ideal future and articulate their goals in a fun, visual way. Teams imagine they are featured on the cover of a magazine, then design their own cover complete with headlines, images, and taglines that reflect their biggest successes and aspirations.

Cover Story is an activity that encourages teams to think big, align on a shared vision, and reflect on what actions they need to take today to achieve their future success. The final presentations generate inspiration and excitement while creating a tangible artifact that teams can refer back to as a motivational touchstone.

Magic Box

Best for: Creativity, problem-solving, innovation
Time: 30-45 minutes
Materials: A real or imaginary box, slips of paper, markers

Magic Box is a fun and imaginative exercise designed to spark creativity and fresh thinking. The facilitator introduces a mysterious “magic box” that can contain anything—real or fantastical. Participants take turns pulling out imaginary objects from the box and describing their purpose, function, or how they might solve a particular challenge. Alternatively, teams can write down unexpected items on slips of paper and draw them at random to inspire discussion.

This activity encourages teams to break free from conventional thinking and embrace new perspectives. It’s particularly effective for brainstorming sessions, innovation workshops, or energizing a group before tackling complex problems. By stretching the imagination in a playful way, Magic Box helps teams develop creative confidence and discover unexpected solutions together.

Egg Drop

Best for: Creative problem-solving, collaboration, hands-on engagement
Time: 30-45 minutes
Materials: Paper, tape, straws, eggs, and other simple supplies

Egg Drop is a fun and creative challenge that gets teams thinking outside the box. Working with limited supplies, participants design and build a contraption to protect an egg from breaking when dropped from a height.

This activity encourages resourcefulness, teamwork, and innovative thinking under time constraints. It’s an engaging way to promote collaboration and adaptability while reinforcing the idea that solving complex problems often requires experimentation and creativity. The excitement of testing the contraptions adds an element of friendly competition and laughter to the process.

Dinner Challenge

Best for: Creativity, team bonding, fun engagement
Time: 45-90 minutes
Materials: Cooking tools and ingredients for in-person teams; recipe prompts for remote teams

Dinner Challenge brings teams together through the universal love of food. In this activity, teams collaborate to create a meal with a limited selection of ingredients. For remote teams, participants can share photos or videos of their culinary creations, adding a fun twist to the challenge.

This activity combines creativity with teamwork in a relaxed, enjoyable setting. It’s perfect for building relationships and encouraging out-of-the-box thinking. Plus, the shared experience of creating and sharing meals fosters a sense of community that extends beyond the workplace.

Drawing Together

Best for: Collaboration, creativity, visual communication
Time: 30-45 minutes
Materials: large sheets of paper or digital drawing tools, markers or pens

Drawing Together is a fun and engaging exercise that encourages teams to express ideas visually and collaborate in a non-verbal way. Participants start by drawing a simple shape or element on a shared piece of paper, then pass it to the next person, who adds to the drawing. This process continues until the artwork is complete, creating a collective visual representation of the team’s creativity.

This activity highlights the power of co-creation and teamwork, showing how individual contributions come together to form a bigger picture. It also encourages out-of-the-box thinking and can serve as a metaphor for how teams build ideas collaboratively. Whether used as an icebreaker or a reflection tool, Drawing Together helps foster engagement, communication, and shared creativity.

Book Club

Best for: Reflection, shared learning, team connection
Time: 60 minutes (recurring as needed)
Materials: Selected book or reading material

Book Club brings teams together to explore ideas, share perspectives, and bond over thought-provoking reading. Participants agree on a book or short articles to read, then meet to discuss key takeaways, favorite moments, and how the ideas apply to their work or personal growth.

A book insights workshop or club can help your team go beyond surface-level conversations and create deeper connections too. It’s a fantastic way to build a learning culture within your team while encouraging collaboration and curiosity. Whether you choose professional development titles or something lighter, Book Club is a great way to bring fresh inspiration into the workplace.

Corporate team building activities for celebration

Celebration is a crucial (and often overlooked) part of team success. Recognizing achievements, big or small, helps boost morale, reinforce positive behaviors, and strengthen team bonds. These activities encourage teams to take a moment to appreciate each other’s contributions, reflect on their progress, and have fun together—helping to build a more motivated and engaged workplace.

Appreciations Exercise

Best for: Team morale, positive feedback, strengthening bonds
Time: 30-45 minutes
Materials: Paper, pens

Appreciations Exercise is a heartwarming way to bring teams closer by sharing positive feedback and recognizing each other’s strengths. Participants sit in a circle, write their name on a piece of paper, and pass it to the person on their left. Each person then writes a short note about what they appreciate most about the person whose name is on the sheet before passing it along.

By the end, every participant receives a collection of meaningful affirmations from their teammates. The final sharing moment is uplifting and reinforces a culture of appreciation and support. This activity is particularly effective when included in team celebrations, retreats, or even a casual happy hour—making gratitude a core part of your workplace culture.

History Map

Best for: Reflection, team growth, celebrating milestones
Time: 45-60 minutes
Materials: Flip charts or whiteboard, markers, sticky notes

History Map is a powerful reflection exercise that helps teams visualize their collective journey. Participants create a “timeline” of key moments, challenges, and achievements, mapping out their shared experiences over a set period of time.

History Map helps provide groups with a sense of progress, reinforcing lessons learned while celebrating accomplishments. By visually capturing the team’s evolution, it fosters appreciation for past efforts and sets the stage for future growth. Whether used at the end of a project or during a team retreat, History Map is a meaningful way to reflect, realign, and move forward together.

Coat of Arms

Best for: Team bonding, self-expression, creativity
Time: 30-60 minutes
Materials: Paper, markers

Coat of Arms is a storytelling exercise that helps teams deepen their connections by exploring individual and group identities. Each participant begins by drawing a personal coat of arms that represents their values, experiences, or strengths. They then share their creation with a partner, who interprets and presents it to the larger group.

Coat of Arms does double-duty as an activity that encourages self-reflection while tapping into creativity and fun. By sharing personal symbols and meanings, team members develop a deeper appreciation for one another, strengthening trust and camaraderie. It’s especially effective for newly formed teams or as a refreshing way to reconnect in established groups.

Bus Trip

Best for: Vision planning, strategic thinking, team alignment
Time: 30-60 minutes
Materials: Flip chart paper, markers

Bus Trip is a creative and engaging activity that helps teams visualize their journey toward a shared goal. Participants imagine their team as a bus traveling toward a destination, with different elements representing aspects of their work. They discuss who’s driving (leading the team), who’s navigating (providing guidance), what’s fueling the journey (motivations), and potential roadblocks (challenges).

This exercise provides a powerful metaphor for teamwork, helping individuals reflect on roles, collaboration, and strategic priorities. It encourages open discussion about team dynamics while reinforcing alignment on objectives. By the end, teams gain a clearer sense of direction and a collective commitment to the road ahead.

More team building activities and resources

When you spend time improving the cohesiveness of your team and deepening group bonds, your entire company will benefit.

Purposeful team building activities like those above are a great start, but if you need more help these resources will help you put together an effective team building session and deepen your understanding.

• Our collection of 50+ team building activities features even more tried and test techniques you might bring to your next team building session.
• Check out our guide to planning a workshop to explore how to organize and structure your next workshop.
• These 5-minute team building activities will help you find techniques that can fit into any meeting or workshop, even if you’re short of time.
• Explore the team development day workshop template to see a complete agenda and get inspired.

So what’s next? Let us know how you get with these activities in the comments below or drop by in the SessionLab community.

You’ll find a community of expert facilitators, leaders and trainers who may be able to help you build a better team and bring these and other facilitation techniques to your organization.

But how do you choose the right activity, and where do you get started when trying to encourage team bonding or alignement? We’re here to help with this collection of simple and effective team building activities for work!

Building a highly effective team takes effort, consideration, and the deployment of a thoughtful team development process. All teams are composed of relationships between people and all relationships need care and attention. The team-building activities below are a great place to start!

We’ve put together a collection of proven team-building activities, games, and exercises that cover everything from communication and collaboration to alignment and vision. 

Whether you’re working in a small team or as part of a large organization, taking the time to develop your team and enable everyone in your group to do their best work is time well spent. Let’s take a look!

What are team building activities? 

Team building is an activity or process designed to build connections between members of a team, create lasting bonds, and enable better teamwork and working practices.

Team building activities are self-contained group exercises and games that help bring your team together and build the collaborative skillset of your group. They are especially effective in a work environment, where collaboration and cohesion is imperative to a team’s success and overall happiness.

Team building activities can include running team games and activities, holding group discussions, hosting away days, or simply doing things together as a team. Whether it’s an escape room or a deep activity design to help your team get to know each other, the key with any of these activities is to bring your team together with purpose in a fun and engaging way.

What are the main types of team building activities?

Team building activities are games and exercises that help a group collaborate on a shared goal, discuss important issues constructively, share in a fun experience and find better ways of working together.

These activities can take forms: ranging from 5-minute team building activities and fun games you use in your regular meetings, or the may be part of a larger process or team development workshop.

Being purposeful and knowing the objective of your session means you can choose an activity accordingly. Sometimes, your team will come together because they have problems to solve, or you might just want to have fun and celebrate your wins. Pick the right activity for the right time to ensure your team is onboard and ready to engage!

Here are the main categories of team building activity that you might want to run with your team. We’ve made it easy to get started with the right activity for your team by including the length of each game, how many participants can play and how hard it is to run alongside clear instructions.

Team building activities for work

Starting the team building process can be difficult, especially if you’re working with a new team who don’t yet know each other well. The activities in this section are focused on helping teams and employees get to know each other better and start to develop bonds.

Even if your team has been around a while, learning more about one another and building deeper bonds is useful for both team cohesion and group happiness. These are also great activities to use when trying to improve employee engagement and company culture – any organization is only as strong as the bonds between its people!

Try these workplace activities to encourage conversation and break the ice – especially if you’re working with a remote team who might not be in the office together.

Want more? See this collection of corporate team building activities for activities based around the 5 C’s of team building.

3 Question Mingle

In 3 Question Mingle, each team member writes three questions on sticky notes and then has a one-minute meeting with another person. They each ask another one question and then trade those post-its. Invite the group to move around the room asking questions in pairs and swapping questions afterwards. 

3 Question Mingle is a great way to help an entire team get to know each other while also inviting the group to ask the questions they really want to ask. By combining structure with self direction, you can get your team building workshop off to the right start! Bonus points for adding those sticky notes to a memory wall for later reflection!

9 Dimensions Team Building Activity

Building better team relationships and improving group dynamics often means sharing something about ourselves and finding space to discuss and be honest. In this team building exercise, give each team member a set of red, green, yellow and blue dots alongside the 9 dimensions you’ll be looking at. Each participant puts a dot on each dimension based on whether they believe they’re crushing it or need to do more work. 

By sharing some of their 9 dimensions, your team gets to surface things they’re proud of, as well as those that need work. You’ll explore what your group is aligned on in the debriefing section and then move forward together as a team.

Awareness Circle

Getting to know people is easier for some members of a group than it is for others. While extroverts can start chatting to new team members with ease, introverts may find it more difficult to bond with their team and create meaningful team bonds.

In this activity, you’ll encourage a group to get to know each other without speaking and show that everyone in a team has a connection. Another great takeaway from this activity is to take note of the diversity (or lack thereof) in the room and consider this as a point for future team development. 

Break the Ice with The Four Quadrants Activity

Sometimes pictures are better than words when it comes to helping a team get to know one another. Creative games like this one can also be especially effective at helping introverts or distanced teams share with the group.

Start by handing out sheets of paper and inviting each participant to draw a 2×2 grid and pose four questions to the group. Each team member draws their answer in one of the grid squares and once the time limit is up, invite the group to share. If you’re looking for a fun game that encourages creative thinking while being visual and memorable, look no further! 

Just One Lie

Not all team building games need to reinvent the wheel. Particularly with new teams or groups that aren’t used to team building, keeping it simple with a tried and tested method can be your best bet.

Just One Lie is adapted from the well-known icebreaker two truths and a lie, though encourages participants to mingle and share lots of facts about themselves with one another – great for breaking the ice and getting to know one another too!

Life Map

Both groups and individuals go through many twists, turns and changes throughout their life. At its best, team building not only helps create better teams but allows time for reflection and deeper sharing between participants.

With Life Map, encourage your group to draw or create a collage of their life story they can then share with the team. This kind of deeper getting to know your exercise can really help bring a team together and allow for meaningful self-reflection too! 

Personal Presentation

Team building is all about building trust and openness between teammates. Sharing personal experiences and enlarging the social aspects of the group with presentations not only allows everyone to get to know each other but also encourages team development skills too.

For this team building method, ask each participant to prepare a presentation including three things that have shaped who they are as a person. Encourage creative thinking by asking teams to use simple drawings and words to visualize their presentation too.

Passions Tic Tac Toe

Helping employees get to know each other more deeply and connect beyond the scope of their job roles is a great space to explore with a team building exercise. In this activity, your entire team fills in a 3×3 grid with a passion or core value in each of the boxes. Then, ask your group to mingle and compare passions.

When someone finds a match, they each sign for the other person in that square of the grid. Declare your first winner as the person who gets three passions in a row. This team building exercise works well for remote workers and is a great way for your entire team to get to know each other a little better.

Office Trivia Challenge

In Office Trivia, employees are asked to get into small teams and answer questions as a group. You’ll need a set of 15-20+ questions, the majority of which relate to your organization, company culture and little known facts from around the office.

Office Trivia is a fun, low-stakes way of helping your team get to know each other better while also reviewing key company information. Try throwing in some questions about KPIs or company values to bring these things into employee awareness. Mix in some lighthearted questions about your team members and some general knowledge and the result is great for any team building session.

Human Knot

Team meetings can sometimes be heavy going, but they don’t need to be. Human Knot is a fun team building game that encourages your group to loosen up while working together to solve a puzzle that involves their bodies!

Start Human Knot by getting your team members into groups of 7-12 people. Ask each group to stand in a circle, close their eyes and then link hands with two other people in the circle. Next, ask each group to work to untangle the human knot they have created without breaking the chain. This is a really fun game that requires clear communication, collaboration and a little flexibility too!

Quick team building activities for getting to know others

Team building doesn’t have to take all day. While running dedicated team workshops like a team canvas workshop can have a profound effect on team dynamics, you can also run team building exercises in as little as 5-10 minutes.

In this section, we’ll share some effective yet quick team building activities you might use to warm-up your group and kick off the team building process. If you’re looking for quick team building activities to easily slot into your meetings and events, this is a great place to start!

Best and Worst

Teambuilding activities are often at their most effective when you ignite the passions of everyone in a group and bring up talking points that enable people to share something of themselves with the team.

Best and Worst asks each participant to ask one question about the best and worst thing they want to learn from the group. For example, “What’s the best recipe you know?” or “What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had?” After putting all the questions in a hat and choosing a random pair, invite the group to share their answers and related stories.

Group Order

Supporting the get-to-know process at the start of a session or with a new team can be as simple as asking participants to group themselves together based on what they know about each other and inviting them to find out what they don’t.

This activity requires nothing more than getting your group together in a room and asking them to line themselves up in an order based on a criterion such as distance from home to the workplace, birth date in the calendar year or number of different countries visited. You’ll be surprised at how easy it is to get people talking and sharing when in pursuit of a common goal.

Happiness Exercise

Good teams know how to appreciate one another and share joyful, happy experiences. When a new team is getting to know each other, using an exercise that encourages the sharing of positive stories and experiences not only allows people to connect but also builds a positive atmosphere in the room.

You might also use this team building activity at work or with a more established team. If your team has been going through a challenging period, it can be transformational to share things that make everyone happy and defuse stress or tension as a team.

Name Juggling

Working with new teams means having new names to learn. Team building starts with getting to know everyone, but how can we make this more fun and dynamic than simple introductions?

In this get to know you game, start by having everyone stand in a circle and introduce themselves by name. Introduce a ball and have people state someone’s name before throwing the ball to that person. That person thanks the person who passed the ball by name before then passing the ball on to someone else. Once people get comfortable, spice things up by introducing more balls and trying to keep them in the air!

Open Fist

Finding you have things in common with other team members is one of the cornerstones of effective teamwork and communication. While conversation games or other team building activities might ask for an in-depth approach, Open Fist helps teams bond with a simple, effective activity.

Sharing little known facts about ourselves can help teams be more cohesive and by limiting the number of shared facts to the amount of fingers on a hand, this quick team building activity can fit into an agenda with ease.

Cross the Circle

Finding common ground and shared experiences across a diverse group is what team building is all about. In this playful team building activity, participants are encouraged to cross the circle in response to questions posed by a person in the middle.

For example, “Cross through the circle if you have worked here more than 5 years.” or “Cross through the circle if you can play an instrument.” After each stage, a new person gets to pose a question and your team gets to know one another and their commonalities in a simple, effective way.

Sync Claps

This fast-paced exercise is fun but gently challenging game that helps create focus and presence in a group. Get started by getting your team into a circle and ask them to move a clap around the room quickly by having two members clap at the same time.

By asking your group to synchronize and move quickly, sync claps is a fun way to energize the room and help your group feel more connected.

Fun team building activities

In an increasingly stressful environment of deadlines and meetings, it’s worth remembering the value of joy, play and simply have fun as a team.

Injecting fun and laughter into your team building event is effective on many levels. We often recommend starting a session with one of these activities, as they can help set a more relaxed and personable tone in an instant.

We’ve also found that some of the more memorable moments of our sessions have come out of these kinds of activities. It’s lovely to have something funny to reference in future meetings too!

Bringing team members out of their shells and loosening them up with a funny game can also help prevent existing hierarchies or team structures from affecting the team building session. 

You can also use these funny team building activities to kick off your session, or when the energy levels drop and you need to get your team re-engaged for the team workshop ahead. Let’s take a look.

Bang

Having fun and energizing your team is a great way to kick off your team building event. Bang is a simple and effective game that encourages quick reactions and fun – perfect for both new and established teams to play together! 

Start by electing a sheriff and having the rest of the group stand in a circle around them. The sheriff spins around and points at one person in the circle and says “bang!” That person then crouches as quickly as possible. The two people on either side of the person crouching must quickly point at each other and shout the other’s name. Whoever does not react quickly enough is eliminated. Try using this one at the beginning of a team building event to really loosen up the group!

Build-a-Shake

Creating a secret handshake was something many of us did as kids. This team building activity taps into that same sense of creativity and also encourages team members to get to know each other while sharing and building on their handshake in pairs. By moving between pairs and teaching others the steps of your handshake, this also helps create group closeness and cohesion. We love team building activities or office games that encourage people to bring a little of themselves to the table and Build-a-Shake is a great example of that!  

Count Up

Simple tasks that require team focus, cohesion, and awareness are great for any group working on team building. In Count Up, a team has to come together and count up to twenty with their eyes closed and without any other communication. People cannot say more than one number at a time, and if two people speak at the same time, the group must start over. 

Though it seems simple, this team building exercise can really demonstrate the power of effective teamwork and is a great opener for a team building workshop. 

Follow the Leader

When performing online team building, simple activities are often the best strategy in ensuring participation and removing frustration. Follow the Leader is a great team building energiser suitable for online and offline teams.

In virtual settings, put Zoom into gallery view and invite people to perform an action in the frame of their screen that other participants have to follow. Being a little silly is encouraged and this team building exercise often results in laughter and energy as a result! 

Portrait Gallery

Creative team building activities are great for breaking the ice or energising a team via play. In Portrait Gallery, you and your team will collaboratively create portraits of everyone in the group and have a fun, electric set of portraits to display afterward.

Start by splitting your group into two teams. Team B will draw portraits of Team A, though every 10-15 seconds, they’ll pass their current drawing to the next person to continue. By the end of this team building game, you’ll have a set of eclectic portraits for everyone in the group and have broken the ice significantly too! 

Snowball

Fun team building games are a great way to start any group development process, and they’re even better if they energize the team too! Snowball is a great activity for getting people out of their seats and moving around while also breaking the ice. 

Start by asking a question relevant to your group and ask each participant to write an answer on a piece of paper. Once that’s done, invite everyone to crumple their paper and come to the centre of the room to have a snowball fight! After a few minutes, ask everyone to keep a snowball and find the person who wrote the answer. Not only does this team building exercise invite energy into the room, but it encourages people to get to know each other too.

Celebrity Party

You’ve likely played the game where you stick the name of a random celebrity on your head while then asking questions to help you guess who it is. (Or at least seen a film where someone else does it!) It’s simple, but it absolutely works when you want to break the ice or just generate some laughter and conversation.

This classic team building game is a great way to warm up large groups, encouraging mingling and have fun too. Ask participants to be creative, keep it light and not to give hints and you have all the makings of an effective team building exercise.

Non-verbal improv

Whether you’re working with remote teams or co-located groups, having fun when you get together should never be undervalued. We love simple games that are also ways to begin conversations about how we’d like to work together more effectively.

This improv game is easy to touch and is a great way to build team connections while raising some smiles. Start by preparing some actions on post-it notes, such as drinking a glass of water or eating pasta. Next, invite participants to mime the action without speaking. Include more difficult and amusing scenarios to challenge the group and create some funny opportunities for team connection!

Rock, Paper, Scissors (Tournament)

Encouraging team members to play and have fun is an often overlooked aspect of building better teams. Play is an inherently human activity, and by doing this as a team, we can start to see ourselves as more than just a group of people who work together.

In this version of Rock, Paper, Scissors, large groups pair off until only two players remain for a final showdown. We love that losing players become fans of the winners and cheer them on. This is a quick and easy team game that can build excitement and get the group ready for deeper team building activities to come!

The Viking

Fun team building activities often ask the group to let go of their inhibitions and find space to be playful and silly. This game from Hyper Island encourages the group to perform some loud, exuberant moves to emulate our favourite historical raiders – the Vikings.

You might use this activity during a longer workshop or meeting to energize a group and create a memorable moment with your team. For bonus points, have a group photographer capture those moments and put them on a history wall for reflection later!

Wink Murder

We love team building exercises that include space for friendly competition and laughter. Wink murder is a variation on a classic party game that asks every team member to try and catch the wink assassin, whose job it is to eliminate the other players by winking at them without being caught.

We especially like the fact this game makes team members to use creative thinking while playing. Run multiple rounds with extra rules such as adding an accomplice to spice things up and have even more fun!

Team building activities for small groups

Team work doesn’t always come naturally, and effective team collaboration needs attention, reflection and work in order to happen. It’s not enough to just assume your team members will be able to work together efficiently: all teams can benefit from a strategic and well-thought approach to how they communicate and collaborate.

Whether you’re having a team away day or using methods expressly designed to improve collaboration and communication in small groups, you’ll find inspiration in the activities here!

These team building games are helpful whether you’re trying to solve miscommunication or collaboration issues, or just want to strengthen your company culture or communication skills in small groups.

Conflict Responses

It’s important to remember that every team is made up of individuals and sometimes, conflicts or disagreements can arise. While its regular working practice to disagree, our responses to conflict and how we deal with them when they arise are in our control and can be improved.

In this exercise, reflect on previous conflicts as a team and collectively create a set of guidelines to use in the future. Resolving issues effectively is a massive part of team collaboration, and by including all team members in this process you can get more meaningful results too.

Heard, Seen, Respected

Team empathy is a vital ingredient of good team work though whatever the size of your organization, it can sometimes be difficult to walk in the shoes of others and see things from other perspectives.

Heard, Seen, Respected is a team building activity designed to help participants practice deeper empathy for colleagues and build the kinds of bonds and working practices that can improve team collaboration. By inviting participants to notice patterns in the stories shared and find common takeaways, it’s a great way to get everyone involved on the same page and improve communication skills too.

Myers-Briggs Team Reflection

One potential obstacle to effective team collaboration is when members of the group don’t fully understand one another. Team building activities for work that encourage participants to not only try and understand their colleagues but themselves can be especially helpful when helping a team be more cohesive.

In this activity, invite your group to first take a version of the Myers-Briggs personality test. Start by asking each team member to reflect on their own personality type before then moving towards small group discussion. 

When using this activity, it’s important to correctly frame the usage of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) framework: This can be a useful framework to understand different communication preferences between people, but team members should not be labeled or put into boxes based on their self-reported preferences. 

Strength Building exercise

Exercises for team building come in many varieties. In this activity, the emphasis is on the team championing one another and increasing confidence, self esteem and mutual trust.

Start by asking team members to share an event where they accomplished something that made them feel good about themselves. The rest of the team chimes in to suggest two to three strengths they must have exhibited in order to achieve the accomplishment. Team collaboration often means helping others on the team achieve their best, and this activity helps the group uplift one another meaningfully and effectively.

Strength Envelopes

All members of a team have unique strengths, capabilities and working preferences. When working as a group, you can improve engagement and group workflow by having each participant utilize their strengths and do work that interests them the most.

With this team building activity, ask participants to write their name on an envelope and invite other members of their team to spend a few minutes writing down strength statements for that person. Place these in the envelope and pass them along so at the end of the session, each person has a set full of strengths they can use as the basis for reflection. 

Team of Two

Whether you work in a small startup or a multinational organisation, the reality is that a large part of your working day will be spent working in pairs and interacting on a one-to-one basis. Whether in-person, over email or on video chat, finding ways to work together more effectively is vital for effective teams.

Try this team building exercise to help empower your groups toward more effective communication skills and have more meaningful interpersonal relationships at work. As a member of a remote team, I’ve found this method to be personally useful time and time again.

What I Need From You (WINFY)

Some of the best team building activities focus on helping your group improve their teamwork skills and communicate and collaborate better as a team. A sometimes overlooked part of working as a team is clearly articulating what you need from other people and knowing how to ask for it.

What I Need From You is a team building method designed to help team members better articulate their core needs and be transparent with the group. This leads to a more cohesive team that works together with integrity and understanding.

Physical team building activities

Teams often come together to solve big problems as a group. Whether in the form of large projects or daily collaboration, improving this skill is something all teams should do – in or out of a conference room!

Improving team work and problem solving skills with a physical game that asks for communication, collaboration and creative thinking is a wonderful way to bring everyone together.

By engaging team members in this way, they not only have fun, but they learn how to work together more effectively and reflect on how they can take that learning back to their day work.

In this section, we’ll look at team building exercises you can use to encourage creative thinking, build problem solving skills and teamwork in an experiential, physical way!

Blind Square – Rope Game

Nothing energizes a team workshop like a seemingly simple problem that also gets everyone moving and engaged. In this team problem solving game, start by tying a length of rope into a circle and invite the participants to plan how to make the rope into a perfect square while blindfolded.

After planning time, team members is blindfolded and has ten minutes to form a perfect square. By debriefing afterwards, your group will find communication, planning and attention to detail are all important aspects of creative problem solving – all while having fun too!

Crocodile River

We love team building activities that challenge the group to work together in inventive ways and also help energize a workshop setting. Crocodile River is a team problem solving exercise that challenges team members to support one another physically as they look to move across a wide outdoor space and reach the finish line together.

By changing the setting and inviting problem solving and strategic thinking to solve a challenge, your group not only stretches their problem solving muscles but also works on team communication, leadership and cooperation. As with any more abstract team building game, be sure to debrief afterward for best results!

Egg Drop

Classic team building games like Egg Drop offer tried and tested ways to encourage teams to solve problems together while improving the way they communicate. This game often generates a bunch of laughter and creative thinking too – how can we save this poor egg!

In this team problem solving activity, invite small groups to build a freestanding structure that can support the dropping of an egg from seven feet. Include some caveats and challenges to make it more difficult and encourage an even greater degree of team collaboration. Just make sure you bring a mop for afterwards!

Helium Stick

Bringing team members together with problem solving activities that also encourages play can perform multiple functions. Not only do you encourage teamwork and the building of various team skills but you can have fun and promote laughter too.

Helium Stick is an example of a simple team building game that does double duty by encouraging fun, physical activity while introducing and exploring some core team building concepts. Ask the group to lower a long pole to the ground while keeping all of their fingers in contact with the pole at all times – more difficult than it first appears!

Lego Challenge

Creating something is often the purpose of bringing your team members together. Tap into the engaging process of co-creation and collaboration with this team building game using LEGO.

Building on the concept of LEGO Serious Play, this exercise is a great way of encouraging play, out-of-the-box thinking and creative approaches to existing problems. Additionally, each team member has a secret assignment which increases the challenge and encourages finding inventive ways to cooperate effectively and achieve both personal and team goals. 

Marshmallow Challenge with Debriefing 

Real-life challenges are often time-sensitive and need to be considered thoughtfully and pragmatically. Team building activities for work are especially effective when they help create this same sense of urgency while encouraging team work.

In just eighteen minutes, groups must build the tallest free-standing structure out of materials including: spaghetti, tape, string, and one marshmallow, placing this last item on top. In this version of the team building game, there’s a debriefing section which encourages reflection on the roles of everyone in the team. 

Spider Web

Getting outside and doing fun, physical activity can be a great way to bond teams and mix up a normal working routine. In this team problem solving game, participants are asked to work to make holes in a grid of string and rope that can safely and effectively accommodate everyone in the group getting through at once. Team members are not allowed to touch the string or rope and with diverse groups, the difficulty this presents makes for an interesting problem solving challenge for teams to solve. 

Stress Balls

At one point or another, most teams will be asked to perform effectively under pressure, whether that’s generated by internal or external stressors. By using team building games that help participants work together and communicate effectively even under difficult circumstances you can prepare your team members for almost anything!

Stress Balls is a fun game to help start exploring team resilience and problem solving under pressure, and it’s easy to run with large groups too! Start by simply passing a single ball around the room before adding more complex rules to help team members learn a valuable lesson about communication and teamwork!

Scavenger Hunt

Activities that encourage groups to use teamwork and communication to achieve their goals are great ways to build team spirit. A classic scavenger hunt is a wonderful way to bring large groups together and have fun doing something a bit different!

Be sure to use office trivia, inside jokes or aspects of your company culture to inform this fun team building activity. You’ll find it much more effective if it’s tailored to your group. Bonus points if you can mix in activities that speak to the various departments or skillsets in the group during your scavenger hunt!

In the virtual-friendly version below, you’ll also find rules to help you run this activity with a remote team.

Team bonding activities

Mutual trust is a vital ingredient for any group of people working together, though it doesn’t always emerge organically. Taking the opportunity to build team bonds and create trust creates benefits for team connection, happiness and your company culture too!

While many of the fun team building activities above will bring your team together in some way, these methods are designed to expressly create better team bonds and build trust.

When working on improving team trust, we recommend being open about the goals of the exercise and encouraging the group to be honest. Being intentional during these activities can really help bring the group together!

Trust Battery

Great teamwork isn’t just about bringing a group of people together into the same space. Without honesty, openness, and trust, your team can’t collaborate effectively and can lead to frustration or frazzled relationships.

Trust Battery is a team building activity designed to help all members of your group reflect on their trust levels and rebuild those batteries with lower levels. By encouraging all members of a team to meaningfully reflect, you can enable better team collaboration and help your team feel closer and more cohesive too.

Telling Our Stories

Everyone has a story to tell, though without a framework or guiding principles, surfacing those stories in a way that makes everyone feel safe and head can be tricky – especially for new teams. Team building activities that combine self reflection, sharing and structure are great for helping people to get to know each other deeply and build better bonds.

In Telling Our Stories, invite participants to reflect on childhood, young adulthood and today while answering questions on colored post-it notes. By sharing from the full gamut of our experiences, your team can get to know one another meaningfully and create trust too. 

Better Connections

Great teamwork and collaboration is all about building stronger relationships and connections and this often means taking the time to see each other as more than just our job title. Once we get a fuller picture of who we are outside the office, everyone can feel more seen and understood. This is one of the cornerstones of team bonding and trust!

Encourage people who know each other the least to pair up and create space for meaningful reflection too – your team culture will thank you for it! It’s also a great way to improve communication skills and break down silos.

Feedback: Current Strongest Impression

Giving and receiving feedback is a great team building activity that sees benefits long after your session. When we find ways to be more open with one another and say what we really think, the results can be transformative for any group.

This activity is a great one to bring to any event where you want to improve team bonding, as it creates a safe and simple way to start practicing more honest feedback. The next time you think about how to improve the way your team works together, think about whether you have a good feedback culture. The trust that good, open feedback can create is a fundamental part of any high performing team!

Trust

When a team doesn’t trust one another, the atmosphere and culture of a team suffers. Creating space to align and create a shared understanding of what trust means to your team is a great way to build team bonds and improve the way you all work together.

Start this activity by bringing together a set of trust cards containing characteristics, behaviours, attitudes, habits, values, and beliefs associated with trust in the workplace. Next, ask participants to create their own trust cards and move towards creating three core trust cards for your team.

By co-creating the output together, this team building activity is great for ensuring buy-in and creating long-lasting trust.

Translated Rant

Team building workshops are a great place to give your team room to have fun, vent and be honest with one another. Creating space for honesty while also building communication skills is the goal of this fun team building activity!

Split your group into pairs and have one person rant about a pet peeve for 60 seconds. Next, have the other person translate this rant while focusing on what the person really cares about. This kind of deep listening activity is fundamental to creating team trust, and sharing some of our annoyances in the group is great for building bonds too!

Team building activities for purpose and alignment

Even the best teams can have differences of opinion and approach. While different viewpoints and perspectives are useful in many situations, it’s also vital that everyone is aligned on team purpose and vision.

Aligning on how the team will work together is an important part of helping the team be happy, productive and pulling in the same direction.

In this section, we’ll look at team work activities to help improve team alignment and get everyone working towards the same purpose. Let’s get started!

Alignment & Autonomy

Activities that help improve each member of your team work more effectively and feel empowered to operate autonomously can be great for improving employee happiness and productivity. If we feel aligned on the core purpose and goals of our team while also being given the space to work in the way that is right for us, we can boost employee engagement and job satisfaction too! 

In Alignment & Autonomy, invite participants to reflect on times when they felt aligned and autonomous versus non-aligned and non-autonomous. By sharing, reflecting, and then ideating on solutions, your whole group can move forward together.

Engineering Your Team OS

When seeking to improve teamwork, it can be useful to think of your team as a system with complex, interlocking parts which may need a gradual refresh and redesign. This kind of abstraction can help prevent discussions from becoming too personal or difficult and ensure that your team alignment efforts are a success.

In this activity, your team designs an ideal working system by making aspirational statements and then methodically chooses a single statement to work towards ahead of the next meeting. By making positive changes incrementally, your team can achieve alignment and better working practices in a meaningful and sustainable manner. 

Generative Relationships STAR

Better working relationships start with shared reflection and the discovery and discussion of existing working patterns. This team alignment activity invites participants to assess their team along four vertices: Separateness, Tuning, Action and Reason and jointly shape next steps and future actions.

By including the whole team in the alignment process from start to finish, you can get meaningful buy-in and see real results! We love using this on an online whiteboard too. It can be a great way to help remote workers consider their inter-personal relationships!

Team Canvas Session

Team alignment isn’t always straightforward. The more large, complex or multi-discipline your team is, the trickier it can be to help the group mesh and understand their roles and responsibilities to the team and each other.

In Team Canvas Session, you and your team create a shared visual resource for understanding and articulating your goals, values and roles of your team. It can be used for general alignment, for onboarding new team members and even for defining the structure and purpose of a brand new team – simply recreate or download the team canvas and get started today!

Team Self Assessment

All groups need to go through a period of reflection and self-assessment in order to grow. But without structure or a guiding framework, these discussions can become bogged down or unproductive. With this reflective team building activity, you can enable a thoughtful and thorough team self-assessment along six guiding dimensions.

Start with individual reflection before bringing everyone back together to debrief and see what you’re aligned on and what needs more work. By then narrowing these down to the most important elements, you can align and enable better co-working practices quickly and efficiently!

Letter from the Future

Without a cohesive shared vision, teams can become unproductive or harbor frustration on team direction. By spending time with visioning activities, you can help everyone push in the same direction while still utilizing their unique talents.

In Letter from the Future, invite your team to imagine all the changes that might impact them in the next 5 years and write a letter back from that point. Ask your team to cover what’s been accomplished in those five years, and what kind of challenges and obstacles were overcome to make this happen. Remember to remind teams that good letters have a beginning, middle, and end and that they should read clearly – this will help during the sharing and debriefing section of this method!

Team Purpose & Culture

Defining your team’s purpose and culture is an integral part of team building. By clearly articulating why your team exists and how you will all work together to fulfill that purpose, you can align and bring focus to all the work you do. This team values and vision activity aims to create a shared visual resource that your team can refer to in the future.

It also uses wisdom from other successful organizations to help enable meaningful conversation and move from individual purpose statements to a single one for the whole team. If you’re looking for a complete process that can guide your team values and vision efforts, this method from Hyper Island is worth a try!

Checkout and recap activities for your team building workshop

The process of team building and enabling a group to work together more effectively can be involved and exhaustive.

As with any group process or workshop, taking the time to reflect, recap and check out can ensure the lasting impact of what was covered in the session.

You’ll often find that finding time to close team building activities creates space for further employee engagement and reflection. Getting team members involved in choosing the next activity or coming up with a theme for the next round of office trivia!

In this section, we’ll take a look at some great team building activities for closing a session and for recapping the main learning points. Let’s dive in!

Check-in / Check-out

Ensuring everyone in a group is present, focused and committed to the work of a session is a vital ingredient in making a team building session a success. With this workshop method from Hyper Island, you can not only start and end your session the right way, but you can help everyone in your group be seen, heard and understood by the rest of the team.

This is especially useful with a remote team, where ensuring clear connection between team members who don’t share a physical office is especially important.

This activity also helps encourage reflection and brings the workshop to an effective close – be sure to give it a try!

Bus Trip

The trip back from a team building event is a great place to share feedback and appreciate one another. Don’t have a bus? No worries! Create a few rows of chairs and simulate the experience for this reflective closing activity.

Once you’ve gotten the chairs of the bus set-up, ask participants to speak the person next to them and share: what they like about the other person, what they appreciate and what about the other person makes them happy. Speak for just 45 seconds each and then ask the group to switch seats.

One Breath Feedback

In particularly large teams, it can be tempting to forgo the closing activity or individual feedback steps just because it will take so long and it can be hard to maintain energy and interest. One Breath Feedback solves this problem by giving each participant the space of a single breath to check out and reflect on the session. By ensuring that everyone has room to speak and be heard while also placing a time limit on the reflection, you can cap off a team building workshop effectively and intelligently.

What is the main purpose of a team building activity? 

The main purpose of any team-building activity is on improving some aspects of how a team works together while bringing everyone together in a shared experience.

This might include working on communication, collaboration, alignment, team values, motivation, and anything else that can enable a group to work together more effectively. It might also include resolving conflicts, sharing skills, or simply bringing your group together in a shared experience.

Broadly speaking, any team building effort should be designed to help bring team members closer or find ways to first define and then move towards your shared goals as a group.

As Forbes notes, team building is “most important investment you can make for your people.” On this point, it’s worth noting that team building doesn’t just happen during the activity and so being purposeful your choice of exercise is important.

The best team building activities hold space for building connections in a way that spills over into day-to-day work and creates lasting bonds. It’s not enough to throw your team into an escape room or scavenger hunt without first thinking about why or how this will benefit your team!

After you’ve chosen some engaging team building activities, it’s time to design a complete process that will engage your team while achieving your desired outcomes.

SessionLab makes it easy to build a complete team building agenda in minutes. Start by dragging and dropping blocks, add activity timings and adjust your session flow to create an effective session.

Team building workshop templates

Building better teams often starts with designing an effective group process. Whether this takes the form of a workshop or meeting, you’ll want a balance of activities, ice breakers and reflective methods in order to help your group align and grow together.    

In this next section, we’ll take a look at some example processes with a complete workshop template you can use to get started. Let’s take a look.

Team development day for a new team

Helping new teams to bond and find a shared purpose and value system is often best achieved with a well designed group process. Try the team development day template when working with a brand new team or one which has seen large growth and is in need of development.

Here, you’ll find a complete one-day group process full of team building activities that can take a group from getting to know each other all the way through to defining their needs and making commitments. 

Emotional Culture Workshop

Good teams are empathetic and in touch with their emotions. Using the emotional culture deck, this workshop can be run in under 3 hours and helps your team define and improve working relationships and the emotional culture of your team.

Taking the time to articulate and define these items ensures that everyone in your group is seen, understood and valued, and that you have a shared language for moving forward.

Team Dynamics Workshop

Cohesive teams that work well together are those with an understanding about what makes a team and how it functions.

Support your team building activities with this half-day workshop template and guide your group through a process of understanding and building on the dynamics of working together. 

Team building sessions made easy

Designing an effective team building workshop means creating a balanced agenda of activities and group discussions while also keeping everything on time.

With SessionLab, you drag, drop and reorder blocks to build your agenda in minutes.

Your session timing adjusts automatically as you make changes and when you’re done, you can share a beautiful printout with your colleagues and participants.

Explore how teams use SessionLab to collaboratively design effective workshops and meetings or watch this five minute video to see the planner in action!

Over to you

Enabling better teamwork and building stronger, more cohesive teams isn’t easy. Whether you’re running a team building day, team workshop, or simply adding some team building activities to your meetings, we hope that some of the methods above can help you and your group come together and do better work. 

Looking for a quick team building activity you can add to any session? Explore our collection of 5-minute team building activities for a set of quick and simple activities you can bring to any meeting.

Got a team workshop to plan? Check out our complete guide to workshop planning to make the process a breeze. Want to start creating your agenda quickly? Use a meeting or workshop template to save time designing or get inspiration.

Which of these team building activities is your favourite? Is there anything missing from the list above? Let us know in the comments! We’d love to hear about how we can all improve our team building efforts.

In this post, we’ll share some of the best team building activities you can run with zero-prep and with in-person and remote teams alike.

You’ll find tried and tested activities used by experienced facilitators and team leaders alongside instructions for using them. Let’s take a look.

Why run 5-minute team building activities?

As Forbes notes, team building is one of the best investments you can make in your team. Five minutes isn’t a long time. So is it worth running a team building activity that short at all? Absolutely!

With the right activity, you’ll be surprised at how much you can accomplish and the kind of connections and moments you can create. Here’s why you should run quick team building activities during your team meetings and workshops.

• Team building activities create a foundation for further conversation and connection. Whether you’re working with new team members or established groups, the conversations you begin in your chosen activity encourage open communication in the session ahead.

• 5-minute team building activities are great ways to improve collaboration and team cohesion in short order. Starting a workshop with a quick problem solving game can help shift the group into the collaborative, productive mindset, rather than being hung-up on what came before or is scheduled to happen after the meeting.

• Quick team building activities can create a jolt of energy that refreshes the group and keeps them engaged. If you’re running a long session, team building games are a great way to create balance and variation in your workshop agenda, keeping things fresh while still allowing you to finish on time.

• Even short activities can help remote teams feel more connected and embodied. Often, we can zone out during virtual meetings and when working alone. A quick activity that encourages us to get out of our chairs or switch perspectives can help us land back in our bodies and reconnect to the other people in the session.

In a world of virtual or hybrid work and shortened attention spans, facilitators have an opportunity – and the responsibility – to bring the body back into the workspace.

Myriam Hadnes, host of Workshops Work

• Ultimately, people are not robots who just exist to work. Working hard as a team and something you all care about is connective, but so is taking a moment to remember why you appreciate each other as people, not just as colleagues.
  
  5-minute team building activities are an easy way to take a breath together as a team and remember that you’re all people who deserve empathy and kindness.

The best 5-minute team building activities

Below, you’ll find our list of tried and tested activities that can be run in just five minutes. Most of these activities require zero prep; many can be run equally well with in-person or remote teams.

You’ll find a brief explanation of each team building activity and a link to full instructions in the SessionLab library, an open source collection of 1000+ activities you can bring to your meetings, training sessions and workshops.

You might also find our full collection of team building activities helpful if you want to go into more depth or find an exercise for a specific purpose such as building collaboration skills, getting aligned or just having fun as a team.

Appreciations Exercise 

The Appreciations Exercise is a simple but effective way to create good vibes, improve team morale and create positive momentum at any point of a session.  

Team members sit in a circle and each write their name on the bottom of a piece of paper. Next, each person hands their paper to the person on their left, who writes some words of appreciation and thanks for that person. They fold the paper over so those words are hidden and continue passing the paper around the group. The activity ends once the paper returns to the starting player.

Here at SessionLab, we run this activity online at our end-of-year team meetup online. To run it online, create spaces on a Miro or Mural whiteboard for each team member, then ask everyone to write notes there. Special tip: to help keep notes anonymous, we write them yellow-on-yellow so text stays invisible until you click on it!

Giving appreciation to colleagues can help cement bonds, build team spirit and give the entire group a boost. Whenever we run this activity, people feel good and more connected to others in just a few minutes!

Two truths and one lie

Two Truths and One Lie is a tried and tested team building game, probably one of the best-known out there! As such, it has acquired a bit of a reputation as something meaningless and stale, but we beg to differ: if done well, it can be fun and bring people together.

In this game, each person will present three statements about themselves: two statements must be true while one will be a lie. For example:

• I have been teaching for 10 years.
• I have a pet cat called, “Mini”
• I lived in Rome for a year.

Don’t put people on the spot: give them a few moments to work out what they want to share about themselves, and to make their lie a smart one.

Our favorite use of this game is actually with teams who know one another well: it’s when we think we have nothing new to learn about our teammates that we can really be surprised!

Icebreaker Questions

Icebreaker questions are a fast and effective way to help in-person and remote teams form connections and get to know each other better.

Needing almost no set-up whatsoever, icebreaker questions and conversation starters are a simple but powerful way to kick-off a team meeting or group session. You can separate team members into small groups or pairs and simply ask them to respond to a single question you share with the group. If you have more time to prep, you can create a set of questions people can choose to ask.

For best results, have one or more of these questions relate to the topic of the session to help prime the group for what come’s next. For example, if you’re running a training session on conflict resolution, why not encourage team members to talk about what makes them angry or what helps them stay calm.

Sometimes people interpret this type of activity as putting pressure on them to talk about very personal matters, and it should never be this way. A pro tip is to always remind everyone to keep their contributions as light or as deep as they are comfortable with.

Who are you? The Pirate Ship Exercise

The Pirate Ship exercise is a simple but powerful activity for helping teams reflect on their feelings and align on roles within the group.

Start by showing participants the image of the below pirate ship and ask them to silently choose which of the 20 characters they most align with in relation to the team or the project you’re working on. Some team members might pick the lookout or the captain while others may pick the person firing a cannon or pretending to be a shark!

You can easily run The Pirate Ship exercise in five minutes, though extending it with a debrief about the roles everyone chose can be a great way to create alignment and shared understanding.

Group Order

Group Order is a simple exercise that supports the getting-to-know-you process at the start of a session and gets people moving. Helping engage and integrate a new team can be as simple as asking participants to group themselves together based on what they know about each other and inviting them to find out what they don’t.

Group Order requires nothing more than getting your group together in a room and asking them to line themselves up in an order based on a criterion such as distance from home to the workplace, birth date in the calendar year or number of different countries visited. You’ll be surprised at how easy it is to get people talking and sharing when in pursuit of a common goal.

Pro tip: after running this activity with a couple of “obvious” criteria such as the ones above, ask participants to come up with questions they are curious about themselves.

Name Juggling

Working with new teams means having new names to learn. Team building starts with getting to know everyone, but how can we make this more fun and dynamic than simple introductions?

Name Juggling is a get to know you game that also serves to energize the group and get them moving. Start by having everyone stand in a circle and introduce themselves by name. Introduce a ball and have people state someone’s name before throwing the ball to that person. That person thanks the person who passed the ball by name before then passing the ball on to someone else. Once people get comfortable with Name Juggling, spice things up by introducing more balls and trying to keep them in the air!

With this and any other game that is based on movement and/or dexterity, always be aware of any people with disabilities in the room, and apply your common sense to whether it’s adequate to the group and situation.

Open Fist

Open First is a fast, fun activity where team members work to find things they have common with one another in order to build cohesion and improve group communication.

Start by asking team members to sit in a circle. The first player calls out an interesting and little known fact about themselves. (Examples might include: I have traveled to Japan, I like science fiction novels, or I play the piano.) Ask the other team members to open one finger from their fist if this statement is also true for them.

Sharing little known facts about ourselves can help teams be more cohesive and by limiting the number of shared facts to the amount of fingers on a hand, this quick team building activity can fit into any agenda and facilitate team bonding with ease. It’s always surprising to find out how many more things unite us than divide us!

Quotes

The Quotes team building activity is a simple way to help team members start meaningful discussions and get to know each other more deeply.

Start by assembling a number of meaningful quotes relating to the topic of your workshop or teamwork in general. (Google or BrainyQuote can help here!) Next, distribute one quote to each person and ask folks to pair up and discuss what the quotes mean to them.

Though this activity can go for much longer, even a single five-minute conversation between pairs or small groups can help set the stage for the session ahead and improve team cohesion.

I’ve found the Quotes exercise particularly useful when discussing company culture or engaging critical thinking skills at the start of a team building session. Choose your quotes accordingly and there’s little you cannot cover with this activity!

Cross the Circle

Cross the Circle is a playful team building activity where participants are encouraged to cross a circle of people in response to questions posed by a person in the middle. It’s a simple variation on many get-to-know-you games, though it’s especially effective when you might want to create more energy in a team or create breakout groups as a result of your opening activity.

Start by getting everyone in a circle and having one person make a statement based on a personal fact. For example, “Cross through the circle if you have worked here more than 5 years.” or “Cross through the circle if you can play an instrument.” After each stage, a new person gets to pose a statement and you continue until everyone has moved at least once.

I’ve found Cross the Circle is especially useful when introducing new team members to the group but it also has a bit of a secret power. In my experience, it’s so easy for team members to fall into familiar pattens, cliques and even places where they stand in a meeting room. Literally changing where we stand can help bring a fresh energy to a session, so give it a go if this is what you need!

Sync Claps

Sync claps is a fast-paced exercise that helps create focus and presence in a group. Get started by getting your team into a circle and ask them to move a clap around the room quickly by having two members clap at the same time.

By asking your group to synchronise and move quickly, Sync Claps is a fun way to energize the room and help your group feel more connected. By introducing complexity and multiple claps, you can easily up the ante and give your group a sense of satisfaction when they finally get it right! Sync claps is a great way to build team spirit in just a few minutes!

Stand up if

Stand up if is a great example of a simple team building activity that can help create connection points in minutes. Begin with a small set of yes/no questions that will allow folks to share and learn a little about each other. As facilitator, ask the first question and invite people to stand-up if the statement is true for them.

Some example questions might be:

1. Have you ever climbed a mountain?
2. Have you ever been horse riding?
3. Have you ever done bungee jumping.

I recommend starting with some fairly simple, universal questions and then move towards questions which relate to the session you’re running or the group. For example, if you’re running a leadership training workshop you might ask “Have you ever been in a conflict you could not solve?” or “Have you ever managed a team of more than 5 people?” 

These questions can provide talking points for participants during the session while also allowing you as a facilitator to figure out competency levels or have points to follow-up on.  

A classic way to run this activity online is to invite people to switch cameras on and off in response to the questions.

Draw your mood

A supportive team culture is one which creates space for everyone to contribute and people feel safe to share how they are feeling.

Draw your mood is a simple team building game that encourages team members to share their current mood by drawing it and adding it to a shared canvas or whiteboard. Simply hand out materials to the group, ask the question and give them five minutes – easy!

It’s a great way to start a team meeting and ensure that people are able to share where how they are doing without feeling pressured to go into more detail with the group. It can also help the team stretch their creative muscles, think visually, and kick-off proceedings in an engaging, fun way. Makes for great pictures and screenshots too!

Catch all

Catch all is a fast paced team building activity that helps build communication skills, encourages knowledge sharing and keeps a team engaged too!

Start by grabbing a ball and asking team members to sit or stand in a circle. Next, let them know the topic for the session. This might be on a particular skill, product or the material of your training session. Throw the ball to someone in the group who needs to share something relevant to the topic of the session. They throw the ball to the next person and play continues. Stop after five minutes or once the entire team has had chance to speak.

But vs And

But vs And is an improv-inspired, fast, effective exercise where team members split into small groups and practice their collaboration and communication skills.

Start by asking groups to plan a company party. Each person must add one idea. Anyone can start, though each successive idea must begin with the words, “Yes, but…” After a few minutes, ask groups to start over but by following each idea with “Yes, and...”

Debrief the activity with the entire team and ask members to reflect on how it felt to have their ideas blocked or encouraged. Generally, team members feel valued when they’re listened to and accepted – But Vs And helps the whole team talk about this subject in a safe and fun way.

This team building activity works great with both in-person and remote teams. The creative, collaborative nature of But Vs And is also a simple way to build team morale and get ideas flowing quickly!

Desert Island

Desert island is a classic team building activity that helps encourage team bonding, share understanding while also having a little fun.

Begin Desert Island by telling participants that they are stranded on a desert island and must choose 3 items to bring with them. With small groups, you can have team members pair up or work solo. If you’re working with groups of more than 10 people, you might wish to split people up into breakout groups and ask them to come to a (quick) decision as a team.

Desert Island is a fun game that gives groups a great chance to get to know each other better. When used with small groups, it’s also an effective way to explore team dynamics – who put themselves in charge of your island, how did it feel to collaborate on something quite so important?

Helium Stick

Helium Stick is a great team building activity for building group connections, encouraging team work and engaging the team’s problem solving skills.

Start by getting the group to line up on either side of a long thin rod (a broom handle works fine) which we call the helium stick. Balance the stick on everyone’s index fingers and instruct participants that they must lower the rod to the ground while ensuring everyone’s fingers touch the rod at all times.

Helium Stick is a fun game that is not as simple as it first appears and which gets your team thinking carefully about how to succeed as a group.

Snapshot of my life

Snapshot of my life is a simple but effective team building exercise that can enhance team dynamics and create instant connections and talking points.

Before your next team meeting, ask participants to take a photograph of something important in their life and share it to a shared whiteboard or online document. During your session, each person will share their photo with other members of the virtual team and tell the group a little more about it.

By sharing a story and something outside the ordinary with the group, you can encourage team bonding and help remote teams feel more connected too.

Follow the Follower

Follow the follower is an active, physical team building activity that helps create joy, connection and energy in any group.

Start by designating one member of the group as the leader. This person will begin moving and everyone else needs to copy their moves as best they can. After 15 seconds or so, they’ll name another person and pass the leadership role to them. Continue until each person has lead or when things devolve into chaos!

Follow the follower is great for getting teams moving and can be especially fun for remote teams on a Zoom call. Encourage team members to explore the frame of their camera when leading their movements and incorporate stretches and dynamic movement to build even more energy.

One Word Method

One Word Method is one of my favourite 5-minute team building activities because its fun, flexible and gets everyone involved.

Start by setting a topic for the activity and explain that each person in the group will contribute a single word to a sentence that you’ll build together. Have the team leader or facilitator start the sentence and go round the group.

While this can be a fun activity in itself, it can be great to challenge the team members to make a sentence that makes sense or speaks to the topic of the session. One Word Method is a simple but fun word association game that can relax a group and serve as a great warm-up for any team meeting.

Rock Paper Scissors Tournament

Running a Rock Paper Scissors Tournament at your next team building session is a great way to encourage friendly competition and energize the group.

Start by simply asking team members to pair up and play a round of rock, paper, scissors. The winner goes to find a new opponent while the loser becomes their cheerleader. Continue play until there are just two players remaining, each with a massive fanbase! While this game works especially well with in person teams, you can adapt it to work with remote teams too!

5-minute team building activities work best when they are simple to learn, get the group moving and create moments of instant connection: Rock Paper Scissors Tournament ticks all these boxes with ease!

Team Charades

Charades is a simple game that has stood the test of time for good reason: it’s easy to teach, creates memorable moments and helps bring people together.

Begin by having team members write down words or phrases on pieces of paper and putting them in a hat. One by one, team members stand and act out a phrase they pull from the hat while the rest of the group tries to guess what it is. Working with a virtual team? This online charades game in the SessionLab library is a simple way to play by using an online whiteboard and Zoom.

The way we communicate and collaborate as a team sets the tone for how we feel as members of that group. By spending a few minutes having fun while exercising some problem solving skills, you can easily improve connection and boost team morale too!

What’s next?

We hope this collection of 5-minute team building activities has given you a bunch of ideas for adding an opportunity to create team connection to any session.

Want to go deeper by exploring a full team building workshop or get tips for running a virtual session? You’ll find some more resources and heaps of team building ideas below.

• Want to dive deeper into team dynamics or give your team something more to chew on while working on collaboration or problem solving skills? Our collection of the best team building activities is a comprehensive list of tried and tested methods you can use with teams of any size.
  
  You’ll find activities grouped by purpose, time limit and participant size to help you easily find the right exercise for you.
• Working in a virtual team can make connection and team cohesion a challenge. Check out this post on icebreakers for virtual meetings if you want some effective ways to bring energy and conversation to the start of your sessions. You’ll also find this post on virtual team building activities a great source of inspiration for any online session.
• Running a dedicated team building workshop is a great way to supercharge collaboration, bring a team together and work on team development as a group. The team development day workshop is a great example of a session to introduce and develop a new team.
  
  If your group needs some help working on alignment and wants to improve collaboration, this team alignment workshop is a great way to rally everyone towards creating the best possible team.

In conclusion

So there you have it! A collection of fast, effective methods with near-zero prep and which take just a few minutes to run.

While these are a natural fit as openers and energizers during a team building session, they’re also great activities to bring to your regular meetings and collaborative workshops.

Working little and often on team cohesion can go a long way to helping everyone in the group feel connected, and we hope these activities can get you started.

Need some advice on planning the rest of your team building workshop? Check out our guide on how to plan a workshop for more guidance there.

If you want more bespoke advice and to discuss team building in greater depth, our facilitation community is a great place to ask questions and talk shop with facilitators and leaders!

We will look at real, practical use cases for preparing sessions, improving outcomes while running workshops, and documenting the outcomes of a discussion.

Using AI is not just about saving time: it can actually enhance how you run your training practice. Let’s see how!

In this article, you will find practical, real-world use cases. My purpose is not to exhaust the possibilities of AI for facilitators and trainers, but rather to kick-start a learning process, expose you to new ideas and inspire you to try out new solutions. We will be not just be looking at prompts (although there are a couple of those as well), but going beyond that to describe actual examples of how facilitators and trainers can put AI to work, step by step. 

The examples you will find below are grounded in real-world experience and practice, both mine and that of members of the AI Tinkerer’s Club. In other words, there are not shiny, imaginary demos. They are practical tools and techniques we are piloting in the real world, to solve our real problems. 

Do note that I will not be discussing the technology or the models in and of themselves, but looking specifically at uses of AI for training. How can AI make your job easier and, ultimately, your workshops and live training sessions better? 

Here is what we’ll cover in the next pages:

Think about everything you do as a facilitator or a trainer. You create and market training courses, you prepare workshops, you facilitate experiences, you document outcomes, and so on. For each of those steps, there are hundreds of possible use-cases AI can help you with.

What is a use case? 

A use case is a scenario, a situation in which you can use a certain tool to achieve a desired result. It is not limited to a single step, such as giving instructions to an AI to have it deliver an output, but might include various different steps, combining human and large language model work. 

Consider your own workflow: which tasks are repetitive, which are a bit of a pain, and where do you have a sense you might achieve more or better? Each of those individual actions can be turned into small, practical ways to use AI; put together they can add up to make a huge difference in your work

Once you see some examples, it should become clear that you can, and should, be creating your own use cases about how to work with AI in the best possible way for you. To develop such a use case, you should think about everything you do to prepare, run and report on a session, and divide it into a number of smaller tasks. 

Here are some examples. Choosing a question to use as icebreaker. Coming up with categories to cluster ideas. Creating course content and materials. Providing clear instructions for a breakout room conversation. It is not feasible to tell a generative AI tool to create a whole workshop for you (and it certainly can not run it.. yet!), but you can, and should, train it to perform some of those microtasks. 

Facilitators, trainers, coaches and experts can benefit vastly from including artificial intelligence models in their work, but in order to understand how, we need to experiment, play, practice and, in a word, tinker. This is why I founded the AI Tinkerers’ Club: a community of over 600 practitioners sharing the good, the bad and the ugly of this new world. Follow this link to learn more and join us!

3 things to keep in mind when using GenAI for training

Before we look at 7 use cases you can take inspiration from, it is important to introduce a few key principles that should run through everything you do when working alongside artificial intelligence models: the sandwich, the springboard, and the principle of self-disclosure. 

Sandwich: start with human, end with human.

The sandwich principle is the most important concept to keep in mind whenever you use AI, no matter the task. 

The principle consists of three key layers:

1. Start with the best possible human input. This is the first layer of the sandwich. Provide clear, detailed instructions or data to set AI up for success.
2. Let AI do the job with the best possible prompt. This is the second layer. Use a well-crafted prompt to guide the AI in performing the task effectively.
3. End with human refinement. This is the final layer of the sandwich. Always review and refine the AI’s output. Don’t just copy and paste the results. Apply quality control, adjust for your tone of voice, add humor, personality, or any specific touch. Whatever makes it truly yours.

For example, I often use AI to simplify and clarify my language when delivering instructions. I start with an instruction draft that might be messy in form but contains all the necessary details. Then, I craft a prompt and let the AI do its job. Finally, I refine the output by adding personal touches and ensuring the final result aligns with my style and needs.

Whenever you open an AI tool, always remember the sandwich principle: human input > AI processing > human refinement. 

Springboard: use output from AI tools to generate something new.

Using AI is not an excuse for sloppy or lazy work. In fact, co-working alongside GenAI can help you be more original, and challenge yourself to new heights. This can only work if you remember that you should use AI as a springboard for better ideas and a better performance, not as a substitute for putting in the work.

Self-Disclosure: bots should never pretend to be human.

As you’ve figured out by now, this approach to working with AI implies a lot of back and forth between humans and machines. We start with human input, feed it back into the machine, refine it as humans, and so on.

For this to work well, AI output must always clearly be identified as such. In Use Case No. 5 below, which is all about brainstorming with AI as your sparring partner, you will see some tips on how to clearly differentiate AI-generated ideas from human-generated ones. 

Facilitators may just be learning to appreciate AI, but there is another tool they have always loved: card decks! Cards are a wonderful way to arrange and re-arrange ideas and show thinking in action. The images above come from a card deck I’ve created as a resource to lead learning experiences in which we explore the many aspects and possible uses of AI in organizations and companies. Intrigued? You can print or order a deck from this link. 

Using GenAI to prepare and design training courses and workshops 

Now that we are clear about what to keep in mind when using AI in training courses and as a partner in your facilitation work, let’s start digging into some practical use cases and examples. 

To begin with, we’ll be taking a look at what GenAI can do to help in developing and designing workshops. This is the phase where it feels safest to play around with new tools, since there is no fear that they will fail you in front of participants, nor much client supervision to worry about. In fact, design and preparation work can be a bit lonely, repetitive and tedious in parts. In other words, it’s the perfect place to start checking out what AI can do to improve your life and work! 

We will explore four key use cases: how to assess your design, turn a rough draft into a smooth session, create evaluation criteria, and prepare a scope document for your clients. Remember, the idea here is to get inspiration and a sense of the potential of generative AI tools for your practice. 

You’ll notice that I do not mention or endorse any specific, individual tool here. These use cases are tool agnostic, by which I mean that they can work with different tools, from ChatGPT to Gemini and beyond.

For practical purposes, I am often using a specific tool in these examples, but that does not mean it is the only possible way to do it. The landscape of artificial intelligence applications is evolving and changing all the time: to stay abreast and play with all the latest solutions, consider joining the AI Tinkerer’s Club! 

A very important point to make is that these use cases are not merely about making your work faster, but also about making your work deeper and better. I believe this is something very important to keep in mind: AI in training is not only about speeding processes up, but also about enabling trainers to do things we could not do on our own.

This first case is a great example: did you know that you can leverage AI capabilities to help you find your own blind spots? 

Use Case No.1 – Assessing your preparation work with the Blind Spot Detector

Our first use case starts from the very early stages of preparation. This is when you have a budding idea for a workshop; perhaps you have just been contacted by a client, but everything is still up in the air and muddled.

So many facilitators and trainers are solopreneurs: a workshop’s initial preparation phase can feel lonely, and might benefit from having an always-available sparring partner to ideate with. How can AI help you put thoughts in order and inject new knowledge into your work? 

This use case, the Blind Spot Detector, comes from a member of the AI Tinkerers’ Club who shared a clever workflow that combines several AI-powered steps. 

Step 1 – Explore

Start by recording a voice note, just thinking out loud about the topic you want to explore. If you prefer to ramble in writing, you can also do that, but it’s good to be aware that AI models now have the power to analyze voice notes, which can certainly be faster. 

Step 2 – Summarize

Ask AI to summarize the transcript into a concise set of clean notes. This is a classic use of AI skills—simple yet effective, using voice-to-text transcription—and something we absolutely couldn’t have done a few years ago. 

Step 3 – Assess

Ask AI to detect blind spots in your reasoning. What you are doing here is using AI to help you assess your own work. 

Assessment use cases are some of my favorite ways to leverage the power of artificial intelligence. This isn’t about using AI to do work in your stead; it’s about using AI to push you to raise the bar. For example, AI can highlight the pros and cons of your ideas, point out potential gaps or weaknesses, and draw your attention to logical fallacies and biases.

Use Case No 2 – Conjuring up detailed training programs using SessionLab AI

Our second use case is about integrating AI in the workflow of preparing training programs: specifically, how to go from a high-level workshop design to a detailed, polished plan.

When I prepare a workshop, I start by creating a general overview on a whiteboard. In my case, I use an online whiteboard, but it’s the same process if you prefer to use pen and paper and sticky notes. Once I’ve drafted my design, I move it to SessionLab’s planner where I create blocks for each section and fine-tune the details.

Moving from the macro design to the detailed step-by-step plan used to be very time-consuming. No shortcuts were available: I had to write out each step clearly because this document would be shared with my client.

With the help of AI, however, this process is much faster and easier. Here’s what I do: I take a screenshot of my whiteboard, then I prompt ChatGPT to transcribe it. As individual learners, you may not have already realized that AI has the ability to turn a simple picture or screenshot into text. A lot of interesting use cases are unlocked once you figure out the potential of voice-to-text and image-to-text translation. 

Furthermore, this isn’t just a basic transcription: I have prepared a standard set of instructions through which the AI refines everything. It organizes titles, adds descriptions and key points, identifies main sections like “Opening,” and breaks down substeps with consistent formatting. Group titles are written as nouns, step titles use action verbs, and descriptions are clear, one-sentence summaries. The result is a beautifully crafted document in just seconds. It even works with different languages (I work in both French and English, so this is a very useful feature for me). 

Once I have my session outline, I copy all the text ChatGPT has generated and paste it directly into SessionLab’s AI assistant. In seconds, it imports all the titles and descriptions, turning them into a polished session plan. From there, I just need to fine-tune the timing. So, within 15 minutes, I’m ready to refine and finalize my workshop design. All from just a screenshot of a whiteboard! 

These workflows leverage multimodal inputs and outputs.

• When using a screenshot of my macro design, I input an image, and the output is text.
• In the earlier example with the voice recorder, the input was audio, and the output was also text.

Once you start to track all the possibilities with multimodal inputs, outputs, and external integrations, you’ll discover countless new ways to use generative AI in your work.

Use Case No. 3 – Coworking with AI to create evaluation criteria

This is an example of co-working with AI; it might be very specific and tailored to the kinds of workshop I run, but it will give you a sense of how you can use these tools to accelerate the preparation of training materials and other prep work you might need to do for a complex training course. 

As part of my corporate training work, I often lead decision-making, strategic decision and/or risk analysis workshops. The core of these activities often lies in organizing different ideas or proposals in a matrix, as an aid to decision-making. In particular, I often use an evaluation tool called multiple criteria evaluation. 

When preparing for a multiple criteria evaluation session, there are several steps. 

• First, the facilitator needs to identify the criteria. This isn’t always straightforward, due to the many possibilities. 
• Once criteria are selected, each must be defined, with a clear title and description to ensure participants understand them. 
• Next, facilitators need to create an evaluation scale. For each point on the scale, there should be a label. If, for example, we have three criteria with a 10-point scale, that means writing out 30 labels, which is very time-consuming.

Using an AI tool saves time and produces better-defined criteria than I could on my own. I co-work with AI by explaining the workshop’s context and decision goals. The AI generates 20-30 potential criteria, and together, we refine the list to two, three, or four. AI also provides descriptions for the selected criteria. Additionally, I ask it to create titles, short descriptions, and labels for each scale point. This saves so much time while maintaining quality. Although the output is 80-90% accurate, I still apply the final “sandwich layer” of refinement. 

Remember the sandwich principle: automatically generated lists are just part of the workflow. Start with human input, end with human revision. 

Use Case No. 4 – Transform a meeting into a scope document

Going back and forth between our personal workflows and our clients’ is a typical pain point for freelance facilitators. Different people have different ways of working and if we don’t know one another yet very well, explaining each detail or bit of jargon can be quite tedious. 

In this use case, I use AI technologies to make this part of my work easier, by transforming the recording of a scope meeting into a formal document. 

The scope meeting is probably the most important preparation meeting with clients. During a scope meeting, it is important to discuss the objective of the future session, what benefits participants will have, and any constraints (such as, for example, duration of the course). 

There are a few key questions and bits of information the facilitator will always be looking for, and they are likely to often be the same. Who will participants be? What are the knowledge gaps the client wishes to bridge with this learning opportunity? What are the desired outcomes? The more standardized your process and questions are, the greater the opportunity to leverage AI for training. Here is how it works:

Step 1 – Record and transcribe your scope meeting. 

First, the meeting voice recording is transformed into a raw text transcript. 

Step 2 –  Run the transcription through your own, customized, prompt.

By uploading your old scope documents and adding a list of present requirements, you can train the AI tool to look for the information you need. I have prepared a detailed specification questions that lists questions I should ask and things to be on the lookout for.

I have two outputs in the end:

• The first one is a scope meeting document that is 80 to 90% good. This is a huge time saver. All I need to do is re-read and edit it to have something ready to present to my client, very quickly after our meeting.
• The second, as we saw in Use Case No. 1, is an assessment document. It detects if I forgot to ask some questions. It gives me recommendations on what to ask to gain a better understanding of the context. If I have forgotten to ask about something during the meeting, my AI assistant is going to detect it, and formulate the questions for me. All I need to do is then copy and paste these questions, refine them, and send an email to the client for a follow-up.

In this use case, I was using an advanced capability, called a data retriever, which means uploading documents to your AI system and feeding it external data. 

The key learning here is that if you do something repeatedly—and I do this scope meeting every time I have a new workshop—it makes sense to invest some time in building such a complex workflow, because you’re going to have a return on investment. I can now send clients a follow-up email with a scope document and some follow-up questions the very next day from our meetings, freeing my time for something else and improving results. 

AI for training and facilitating a workshop

If you’ve gotten this far, hopefully I have convinced you of the importance of learning how to leverage AI’s natural language processing abilities to speed up, and improve, the preparation phase of your work.

Next, we are going to look at two cases of how to use AI during a learning experience or facilitated session. This is something most trainers and facilitators are more reluctant to do, as it might lead to unforeseen outcomes in front of participants.

From my point of view, any unexpected results should be leveraged as starting points for great conversations. That said, if you’d like to practice and try things out, this could be a good reason to join us at the AI Tinkerers’ Club!

Use Case No. 5 – Using AI for brainstorming

Another way we could refer to AI is as a “probability machine”. When using AI for brainstorming, it won’t really produce “ideas” as such, but put together strings of sentences that are more or less likely to occur to us humans. 

It’s a bit like that creativity practice of putting together unlikely elements to create a new product, story or sentence. Precisely because of how generative AI works, it’s an amazing tool for brainstorming. So, let’s see what facilitators and trainers need to know to use generative AI as an aide to brainstorming. 

Whenever you are working with a group of people in the divergent phase of a workshop, trying to come up with as many ideas as possible, no matter how strange, AI tools can help you challenge and stretch participants’ thinking. 

Essentially, all you need to do is ask AI the same questions you are asking participants, and see what it comes up with. Having said that, there are a few things you should always keep in mind when using AI for brainstorming and idea generation.

1. Be transparent about how and when you are using AI

This is just a reiteration of the self-disclosure principle. Participants should always be able to clearly distinguish AI-generated from human-generated ideas. There is a downside to this, in that participants will be biased as to what they think of AI-generated ideas (whether they think too highly of them, or with disdain, that depends on the participant!), but I prefer this bias to the idea of not knowing who is human and who is a bot. 

How can a facilitator alert participants that certain ideas were created with AI? In Stormz, an online facilitation tool I created, AI-generated ideas are automatically labeled with a little robot emoji.

 If you are using Miro or Mural, you can add a bot emoji or a dedicated label and reserve a certain color of notes for AI ideas. 

2. Use AI to improve human ideation, not distract from it

Always start by asking participants to generate their own ideas. Then, and only then, should you bring in AI to generate a second set of ideas. Provide the AI with access to the participants’ ideas for context, so that the ideas generated are different from the first ones but are also relevant. The AI is going to learn from the first ideas of the participants.

Conversely, you should never end with the AI ideas but always end with your human input. Ask the participants to build both on their ideas—the first layer—but also on the AI-generated ones—the second layer. This can push them to think of new possibilities and insights.

3. Ration AI-generated ideas and don’t flood participants with too many.

Here is a major pitfall to watch out for! It’s super easy to generate tons of ideas in seconds with an AI. Don’t do that: it’s going to overwhelm and scare your participants. Instead, create an AI backlog in your whiteboard: it’s a reserved area for AI, and as a facilitator, I only drop one or two or three ideas at a time in the main collaborative space so that the participants can digest them and “springboard” on them. In Stormz, by the way, this feature is built in automatically.

With these three tips, you are well equipped to use AI, during your sessions, when brainstorming. But there are other, better ways to leverage AI to improve the ideation phase of a workshop. Let’s go to the next use case: using AI to critique ideas. 

Use Case No. 6 – Getting AI to roast participants’ ideas

Let’s explore another use case for AI during live sessions: roasting participants’ ideas. 

Having ideas critiqued by colleagues, managers, employees or even strangers, can be a sensitive matter. If criticism comes from an AI chatbot, in my experience, nobody’s feelings are hurt.

Before your session, you can prepare a prompt that asks AI to critique ideas based on a clear structure, such as:

• What is good about this idea?
• What could be the issue with this idea and why?
• Step it up: what could be improved?

You can use this type of assessment-by-AI in many different ways during workshops. For example, you might want to ask participants to access their own AI tools and suggest effective prompts they can pick among to privately work on improving their ideas, or to do it in pairs in breakout spaces.

Once they have received their AI-powered critique, they should step back, re-read everything, reflect, and edit their idea, turning it into a stronger concept. Repeat this a couple of times, perhaps with slight variations to the prompt, and you can quickly go from a seed of an idea to a robust concept. 

Getting help from GenAI to document the outcome of sessions

The last part of the workshop process where GenAI can lend a hand is, of course, session documentation and reporting. While reporting itself might fall more into the category of using AI for generic written content, and is not specific to facilitation or training, there are a few use cases quite specific to our topic. 

The one I’ll present here is, once more, a solution to a typical pain point in training and development: quickly summarizing large amounts of information. How can AI help with that? 

Use Case No. 7 – Summarizing information and contributions

When facilitating a workshop, it can be very rewarding to surprise participants, exceeding their expectations with tasks that feel unlikely, even impossible. Let’s say a group is taking a break, for example, leaving behind a whiteboard full of messy notes, and returns to find a neat output document organized and ready for discussion. Feels like magic! 

AI definitively has the capabilities to analyze and summarize vast amounts of written text on the spot, obtaining results that, while imperfect, could simply not happen without the help of this technology. You can export long lists of answers and virtual sticky notes into a document, then run them all through a prompt. You might, for example, ask the AI to categorize and summarize idea groups, keywords, and emotions evoked. 

One very important thing to remember here is that AI cannot be fully trusted with this sort of task, because of the “hallucinations” it can produce. You never can trust an AI 100%. It can be biased, and it can include hallucinated details, for example by making up some contributions. This does not mean you cannot use it as a springboard!

In fact, you can use imperfect summaries as a way to enhance follow-up conversations. Turn this into a learning experience. Display the AI-generated summary–enjoy the wow factor–then ask questions to the audience: Does this summary capture your main points? Do you agree? Do you disagree? Is there any key element that is missing? Should we adjust or remove anything?

So think of it this way: the AI isn’t replacing the discussion. It is handling all the initial heavy lifting, thereby creating more time for meaningful dialogue and freeing your attention to focus on human interactions.

A note on privacy concerns

I hope these use cases have inspired you to go try something new. But before ending the article, let us give some consideration to the important challenges related to privacy concerns. Here are three quick tips on how to handle privacy concerns when using AI for facilitation and training.

Check privacy settings

Looking at Open AI’s ChatGPT, for example, make sure you have privacy settings on. In Data Controls, “Improve the model for everyone”, which means you are authorizing OpenAI to train the model on what you are doing, should be switched off, especially when you are using the model to analyze and summarize client data.

Consult with your clients

You really don’t want to be feeding your client’s data to AI if they have a clear policy against it! Always tell clients what tools you intend to use, and discuss which technology is acceptable or unacceptable to them. In the future, I think we will see more and more companies having their own, proprietary AI you might be able to leverage. 

Use a local open-source Large Language Model

More and more local, open-source options are becoming available. They are now (in early 2025) good enough for a lot of tasks, including repurposing content or translating (but be even more on the look out for hallucination issues).

In closing

How are you feeling about experimenting with AI systems in your next training course or workshop? Have you already identified micro use-cases that can speed up and, even better, improve your workflow?

Here are a few things you might want to try out if I have managed to awaken your curiosity about how these tools can interact with group processes and learning:

Try out Stormz. Stormz is a brainstorming and decision-making platform designed with facilitation in mind, now augmented with AI tools.

Have you already tested SessionLab’s AI tool? It can speed up ideation and, as we saw in the use-case above, help you go quickly from a high-level plan to a fully designed session flow.

To keep tinkering and learning together, sign up for my newsletter, where I share musings, ideas and resources on AI skills and more. You can also join us at the AI Tinkerers’ Club. Practicing AI skills is a learning journey for all of us and it can be very helpful to explore that knowledge together.

Read about other, not AI-based, tech tools that can improve your work as a facilitator in this article.

A great workshop can create innovation, connection and transformation for both companies and individuals. In this article, we’ll explore what workshops are, what benefits you can expect, and also show you some workshop examples that you can use for inspiration when working with your team.

What is a workshop?

A workshop is a structured and interactive session designed to create an environment for meaningful work and to guide a group through a process that will lead to great outcomes.

Workshops are designed to engage participants and foster their active involvement in the process. They are not training sessions where one person teaches everyone else in the room. Nor are they meetings where people give one another updates but rarely collaborate on a task with a structured approach.

Workshops typically involve hands-on activities, facilitation techniques, group discussions, simulations, and collaborative exercises, which allow participants to explore, ideate, and participate in achieving their desired outcomes. Whether that’s aligning on a perfect solution to a tricky problem or improving their skills experientially.

Workshops can cover almost any topic you can think of – whether it be a creative word workshop for school kids or a strategic planning session for company executives.

The key elements of these workshops are the same: they seek to create a dynamic environment that encourages participants to learn from each other, consider their own solutions, and apply the gained knowledge both inside the workshop and in the wider world.

What is the purpose of a workshop?

While the objectives or goal of a workshop can vary based on the setting or specific topic – a design sprint and a retrospective workshop have very different goals – but the purpose is roughly the same.

The purpose of a workshop is to create a space where participants can think together in a place of safety and mutual trust, engage in collaborative work and arrive at your outcomes in an organized and structured manner.

Whether it’s defining how to achieve a complex project, building skills or working on personal development, the purpose of the workshop is to create an interactive, participatory environment for people to engage fully, collaboratively and creatively and arrive at your chosen outcomes.

The purpose behind that purpose is what makes workshops a special and effective tool. When you create a safe space that empowers your team to find their own solutions, creativity is unleashed.

Your team finds solutions they wouldn’t have discovered otherwise, they build meaningful and lasting connections with other participants and they’re especially engaged and able to focus on making those things happen.

What happens in a workshop?

All workshops follow a structured agenda designed to achieve the goals of the session. To give you an idea, here is a high level overview of what to expect in a workshop.

1. Welcome and introductions.
2. Presenting the agenda, goals of the session and setting intentions for how the session should proceed. This is often a great place to set workshop ground rules and discuss logistics too.
3. Icebreakers and opening activities to engage participants in the process and create the ideal space for collaboration.
4. Presentation of key materials to support the goals of the workshop.
5. Divergence: discussions and group activities centred on exploration, learning and ideation – the output being insights and collaborative work that speaks to the goal of the session.
6. Breaks. If you’re working for more than an hour, take breaks to allow the group to replenish energy and let ideas sit and develop independently.
7. Convergence: discussions and group activities centred on reinforcing learnings from previous work and making decisions and refining solutions as a result.
8. Reflections and feedback on the work done and the facilitation of the workshop itself.
9. Closing and setting next steps.

Specific workshops will contain variations and deeper versions of this flow though broadly speaking, you can expect all of these things to happen during a workshop, whatever your goal.

Check out this guide to dive deeper into how to plan and structure your workshop.

If you want to see a workshop example that includes key timings and deeper information, the essential workshop template below is an effective skeleton you can use to create your session.

When should you run a workshop?

As we’ve explored, running a workshop can be one of the most effective ways to bring a group together to innovate, solve problems and connect.

This isn’t to say that every session you do should be a workshop. Far from it! There are times when a meeting is the right way to come together, such as doing a daily update or company all hands where people on your team have information to share.

You want to consider running a workshop whenever you want a group of people to do collaborative work effectively, often in a time-boxed or outcome focused manner.

Workshops are great at delivering results in a way that creates space for many voices and perspectives and if you know your group would benefit from this approach, that’s a fine time to consider planning a workshop.

Some of the common triggers for running a workshop include:

• having a complex problem without a clear solution
• a need for genuine innovation and new ideas
• team building or team development
• teaching new skills in an experiential manner
• community building
• working on a project in a deeply collaborative and emergent way
• opening or closing a project

Another great tip for running a workshop is to use a relatively small group (often 8-15 people) in order to create space for discussion, divergent thinking and ideation. When running workshops with larger numbers, you’ll want to add additional facilitators and perhaps run sessions in parallel.

Wanting to simply teach your group how to use new technology or share information from the executive team with the rest of the company? That’s probably not a workshop, and that’s fine! Use the right format for the results you want to achieve and the objectives of your session.

Workshop best practices

The art of designing and leading a workshop is something facilitators and leaders need to practice. While the best way to improve is often a combination of facilitation training and hands-on experience, here are some simple best practices to help you start getting the most out of your workshops.

Plan carefully and create an agenda

The agenda is the foundation of everything you do in your workshop. It is designed to expressly meet the goals of the session, whether that’s coming up with innovative solutions, building team culture or developing skills.

Typically, a facilitator or team lead will create the agenda by planning a sequence of activities to reach a goal and which fit in the time available. They’ll balance those activities to create engagement and support collaboration.

Good agendas are combination of art and science, though good tools and best practices also go a long way.

With SessionLab, it’s easy to create a structured agenda and optimize your workflow. You can drag, drop and reorder blocks to quickly design your session and export professional agendas in the format of your choice when done.

Need help understanding how to create an effective agenda? Check out this post on agenda design for specific advice on this topic.

Bring a facilitator

The best workshops are those in which collaboration is smooth and the group is able move effectively towards their goals. But this so often doesn’t happen. Conversations can break down, time can be used poorly or groups simply find themselves unsure of how to proceed.

A dedicated workshop facilitator will not only design an effective agenda, but they’ll help guide the group through the process and unleash collective intelligence.

Working internally and leading the session yourself? Bringing a facilitative mindset and deploying key facilitation skills will help you embody this role and improve the outcomes of your session with ease.

Keen to learn more? Check out our facilitator guide to explore what to expect from facilitators and what they can bring to your session or team.

Design for interactivity

Remember that workshops are not just long meetings or seminars in small rooms. They are interactive and collaborative by nature. Soliciting input from the group and using directly interactive games is a hallmark of an effective workshop.

Start early in the session with icebreaker activities that help set things off on an interactive note before moving towards more involving activities.

These kinds of interactive activities can include everything from brainstorming games where participants come up with ideas together or team building games designed to get folks collaborating and building bonds.

Whatever the goal or subject of your session, you’ll find effective workshop activities in the SessionLab library.

Get the right people in the room

Workshops tend to work best with small groups of people (8-15) who are invested in the topic of the session and have insights that can help with the collaborative work needed to reach your goals.

During a design sprint, for example, you may want to bring a cross-functional team together to solve an issue that effects your users. That doesn’t mean you need everyone in the affected teams to attend. Bring together major stakeholders and those people who will likely be responsible for the outcomes of the session for best results.

Workshop examples

Workshops come in all shapes and sizes, but you might be wondering what they look like in practice and how they are put together. Especially if you’re new to facilitation, seeing an agenda example can help show the value of a workshop before you try running one yourself!

Below, we’ll explore a few example workshops and detail when and why you might run them with your team. You’ll also find an agenda template for each, so you can see the workshop process in more detail.

Ideation Workshop

Workshops are a perfect space for creating innovation and coming up with ideas that you can actually move towards implementing. When you have a complex problem without an obvious solution or many stakeholders and perspectives, gathering your best minds and bringing them to a workshop is an ideal way to move forward.

In this ideation workshop template, a team first generates a heap of new ideas around a particular topic and then works through a process of analysing and selecting the best ideas by pitching them to one another. By the end of the workshop, you and your group will have discussed ideas thoroughly and used tools to develop the best ones into something you could implement quickly.

Companies that encourage this kind of creative ideation and invest time in enabling their employees are often more resilient and innovative. Try bringing such a workshop to your company the next time you need a new perspective or looking for your next great idea.

You may also find this post on how to run an engaging ideation workshop helpful when it comes to designing and facilitating your session.

Decision Making Workshop

Whatever your particular field, there comes a time when you need to make a decision as a team. A decision making workshop is a method of exploring various options, aligning on objectives and moving forward as a team. It’s a space for employees to discuss their thoughts, share how they feel and then converge on a final decision that is the best one for the company.

In this template, you’ll use consent based decision making to move from discussion to action and allow everyone from management to front-line employees to contribute. It’s an effective session for building a sense of community and making progress effectively.

If you’ve found that you’ve tried to include more people in your decision making processes and found it ineffective or messy, this workshop is a perfect antidote that creates space for all voices while also arriving at your intended outcome.

Retrospective

For complex projects that require innovative problem solving, workshops can be an essential part of both opening and closing the process. I’ve even found that groups working in university or training settings with an intensive educational program can benefit from using a workshop approach to closing the program.

In this retrospective template, you and your team will find space to reflect together and discuss what went well and what went better before choosing some actions everyone will take in the future to develop their skills and improve the next project.

After a week long event or a longer project, coming together in a retrospective workshop can both help you symbolically close and celebrate proceedings while also creating space for reflection and growth.

Looking for more workshop ideas? Check out our collection of the best workshop ideas to see examples of the different types of workshop you might run. You’ll find templates, advice and more.

In conclusion

Understanding how a workshop differs from a meeting or training courses is often the first step towards bringing them into your organization.

For next steps, you can explore our step-by-step guide to planning a workshop to learn how to put an effective workshop together.

Want to improve your facilitation skills? This article will help you see the key skills for effective facilitation you can use in workshops, meetings and in your general practice when working with groups.

We hope this blog post has helped you understand the what and why of running a workshop and has perhaps inspired you to facilitate one the next time you need to solve problems or create innovation in your organization!

Structured training programs and leadership skills workshops can help provide dedicated space for your leaders to level-up and grow in a collaborative format.

In this guide, we’ll explore why your team should invest in the growth of your leaders and share practical advice for how to facilitate an effective leadership workshop.

Let’s dive in!

What is a leadership workshop?

A leadership workshop is a collaborative session where new and existing leaders develop the skills needed to be effective leaders and work on personal development.

It’s a structured session that combines solid leadership theory with practical techniques and group discussion in order to fully engage leaders in their own growth.

Your organization might run a leadership workshop to fill a particular training need you’ve identified. For example, a lack of coaching skills might be holding back team development, or the company might be having trouble with group decision making.

A focused leadership development session might be specifically designed to solve those problems and teach your leaders the competencies needed for success.

Leadership workshops are also a great space for new leaders to learn in a supportive, experiential environment, free from the fear of messing up while, for example, giving their first performance review.

Many learning providers also provide training for developing specific leadership skills and core competencies needed to lead a team. It’s quite common for organizations to send team members to learn from experts and network with folks from other companies on these kinds of programs.

Want to see an example of what to expect in a leadership workshop? You might find this leadership development workshop template helpful.

Designed for new leaders, this template offers a 2-day structure to enable leaders to reflect on their leadership style, discuss what makes a good leader and build core skills like active listening, delegation and feedback.

What are the benefits of leadership development?

Good leaders set the tone for the organization and can rally a group towards great things. As such, it shouldn’t be a surprise that investing time, space (and of course, money) in a leadership skills workshop or a fully featured leadership development program can have far reaching effects on your business.

Yes, you can expect to achieve organizational success and meet business KPIs by developing the skillset of your leaders. But it goes deeper than that.

The best leaders I’ve worked with have supported me through career highs and lows, helping me achieve more and grow as an employee. They’ve been great strategic thinkers that have helped finesse the work of others and help guide key decisions with a firm but empathetic hand.

There are many reasons people might quit their job, though as Harvard Business Review notes, a lack of career development or the way people are managed are two of the main contributors to leaving.

Leadership development can help ameliorate this problem from both ends: giving folks meaningful career progression and opportunities for growth and ensuring that everyone in an organization is managed in a more empathic and effective manner.

What are the objectives of a leadership workshop?

In its simplest form, the goal of a leadership workshop is to teach leaders the skills they need to be effective leaders and thus help your teams and organization thrive.

The specific skills being taught or the depth of those skills is likely to differ based on the audience you’re working with. A workshop for new managers may include a broader set of leadership skills than an executive leadership workshop where a level of prior knowledge is already in place and folks want to focus on, say, change management or coaching skills.

In either case, the trainer or facilitator leading the program will determine the best ways to teach those leadership skills, often with a mix of theory, experiential activities and group discussions.

I want to take a moment to highlight those group discussions. In my experience, one of the core objectives of these kinds of personal development sessions is to meaningfully engage learners in their own learning.

You don’t want to just share slides so people can say they’ve learned about effective leadership. You want team leaders to have a great session AND deploy what they’ve learned while continuing to learn and grow afterwards.

One way to achieve this is to create space for leaders to share their experiences on topics like motivating a team or resolving conflicts and learn from one another.

All workshops are built on the collective intelligence of the group, and leadership development workshops are no different.

By tapping into this collective intelligence, you can stimulate folks to take ownership of their own learning and bring those learnings into the realm of the day-to-day, rather than limit the learning to slides or examples that have little to do with their actual experience.

How to conduct an engaging leadership workshop

Planning and running an effective leadership program is more than throwing a bunch of new managers into a room with a slideshow.

Even with an understanding of what good leadership looks like and the kinds of techniques you want to teach, it’s possible for such a workshop to fall flat or frustrate participants by failing to engage them in their own development.

In this section, we’ll share some tips for creating and running a leadership and development program that will engage your learners, achieve your wider goals and ensure that the program is time well spent for all involved.

You’ll have a greater sense of what makes an effective session and find some practical advice for facilitating the leadership development of your team.

Create and share the agenda in advance

All the most effective workshops have an agenda. An ideal learning experience isn’t the result of randomness but a structured flow of activities designed to engage participants and reach a specific goal. Your workshop agenda is the distillation of that structure and flow into a simple, easy-to-follow format.

Agendas are used at various points in the process of designing and running any leadership training program:

1. As proof to yourself (and your training team) that you’ve created a structure that will meet the goal of the session (ie: to improve the conflict resolution skills of every participant and help them be more confident managers.)
2. As a guide for participants before the session. This helps group members know what to expect, helps them prepare accordingly and fully engage with with the session when it begins.
3. As a running order during the session, helping facilitators run training effectively, time-boxing what needs to be time-boxed and also making informed changes if anything needs to change in the moment.

SessionLab is an effective agenda planning tool that helps optimize your workflow and deliver an engaging leadership training program.

At the design stage, SessionLab makes it easy to quickly structure your agenda. Drag, drop and reorder blocks to create your running order and add color categories to quickly see how balanced your learning flow is.

As you make changes, SessionLab will automatically recalculate your timings – no more manually amending your times any time something shifts.

Once your leadership workshop is ready, you can instantly export a professional quality agenda to share with participants and stakeholders. PDF, PPT, Word or an online agenda: however your team wants to review the agenda, SessionLab has you covered.

Want to learn more? Discover how SessionLab has helped boutique consultancy Cultivating Leadership design effective leadership development workshops at scale.

Make what you’re doing (and why) clear

While child learners can sometimes be expected to trust their teacher implicitly, adult learners often need to know why they are doing something in order to fully engage with an activity or learning experience.

As such, it can be helpful to give members of your leadership workshop a clear sense of context for why you’re doing something and a sense of why it will help them achieve the goals of the session. Launching into an oblique training activity without proper framing can put you at risk of losing your audience. 

This idea extends to the overall objectives of the session. Start by stating the objectives of the session at the beginning of the workshop. Then go deeper. Why is learning these skills important? Why do we as an organization want to have better leaders? What does that enable us to do as a team?

Making the deeper purpose explicit early in your leadership development programs can help ensure buy-in and get people invested in their own learning.

It can also be helpful to invite participants to ask this question of themselves. Why are you a leader? Why is becoming a better leader important to you? Using an activity like The 5 Whys can help anyone undergoing leadership development understand the deeper purpose behind what they’re doing.

In my experience, that deeper purpose is often much more motivating than the surface goal of an individual session. For example, the first level for undergoing leadership development might be “to advance in my career.” or “because my recent performance review showed a lack of communication skills.”

Fair enough, but if we go deeper, we might find that the reason you want to improve as a leader is to have an impact doing something you deeply care about and to connect more to the people you work with on a human level.

Help the group see the deeper purpose behind the training program as well as connect to their own purpose, and you are much more likely to enlist your group in the session.

Connect to personal goals

Great leaders (and teams) come in all shapes and sizes. While there are universal leadership goals that are worth exploring, many leaders have more specific reasons for wanting to deepen their skillset.

Encouraging participants to connect to their personal goals during any leadership development activity can help them take a more active role in learning and ultimately develop in the way that’s best for them. So how do you do this? Simple: just ask them!

It can be helpful to start a leadership development program with some self reflection activities where participants think about their strengths, opportunities and what they’d like to come away with. Even a framing question like “What kind of leader do you want to be?” or “How will I know this workshop has been useful to me?” can have a powerful impact here.

Even if the main content of the workshop remains the same, this lens can help participants think about what they’re learning during the session on a more personal level.

This can look like participants learning how to embody their personal values while being a leader or utilizing a leadership style that most aligns with how they want to show up in the world. Reflection and goal-setting techniques such as the GROW coaching model can be especially effective for this if you have time for them in your agenda.

In any case, the end result is a deeper engagement with learning and development that is likely to be better for all involved.

Balance activities to allow a mix of voices and create space for reflection

Whenever you bring a group of people together, you’re likely to find a mix of dominant and less dominant voices. Some leaders are quite used to being the loudest voice in the room and often have strong opinions about how things should be done. 

Conviction and well-informed opinions are great, but it’s vital to create space for divergent ideas and to balance conversations and discussions.

Use activities like 1-2-4-All to ensure that folks engage with your leadership training topics in a balanced fashion.

For example, you might want to ask people to consider what advice they’d give for de-escalating conflict in silence, taking their own notes. This way, they’ll first be able to organize their thoughts and explore in a safe environment, before sharing with someone else. Moving to a pair discussion also helps ensure that all parties are listened to and feel heard before you then open up to larger groups.

Contrast this with an open discussion where anyone can put up their hand to speak. It’s much more likely that a small number of will folks dominate; even in a well moderated discussion, its unlikely that everyone will actually get the chance to speak and be responded to in the same way as 1-2-4-All.

Try doing this kind of activity early in your session. It’s a great way to build trust, ensure everyone is comfortable with speaking. It’s also useful in order to exercise that self-reflection muscle which is a key part of retaining and deploying anything participants learn during the leadership training.

Be conscious of power dynamics

Power dynamics will naturally occur in any group setting, including leadership workshops, all the more so if you’re running an internal workshop with folks of different levels and seniorities. Without a sense of structure and safety it can be hard for frontline managers to take up space among senior leaders.

Expert facilitators and trainers will typically use intention setting activities and perhaps set some workshop ground rules at the outset of the session that allow everyone to participate equally.

This can also look like having a firm hand on group dynamics and carefully guiding discussions. 1-2-4-All is yet again a great activity here, though you might also find being explicit and directly name group dynamics as they play out can be helpful when course correcting behaviour. Check out our post on group facilitation for more on building this skill!

Framing the session with power dynamics in mind can also help. For example, “This workshop is about every leader in this room getting better at giving coaching to their team and learning from one another” can be a more effective inclusive framing device than “Let’s learn from the experts.”

In its simplest form, you might address these dynamics by, well, directly addressing them! A group contract at the start of your leadership training that makes how you want folks to interact explicit can do wonders.

Lead by example 

One of things I love about leadership workshops is that they provide multiple opportunities for groups to learn about effective leadership. The activities you choose, the examples you share and the discussions the group have: all these are important, but how the session itself is facilitated can also be a powerful learning tool.

During the session, an expert facilitator or trainer will hold space for a diverse group to all contribute towards a shared goal, managing expectations, getting results and helping everyone achieve their best.

Sounds a lot like good leadership, doesn’t it? In fact, I find many aspects of good facilitation to be synonymous with those of good leadership.

While this might feel a bit meta, the key takeaway here is to think of the session itself as a way to demonstrate some core leadership skills in action and provide trainees with a clear example of what good looks like through your facilitation.

Obviously, it’s important to know your limits. You can likely model great soft skills and how to manage group dynamics while facilitating, but you may not be able to effectively plan a company strategy. Own what you know and defer on what you don’t. (Yes, that’s another example of leading by example!)

If you want to explore this further, our guide to facilitation skills may help you figure out how best to hold space when leading such a session.

Don’t be afraid to go back to basics

Leaders are often very skilled, but they’re not infallible. Leadership workshops are a great place to challenge assumptions and also go back to basics. 

You might be surprised by how many leaders have risen to an executive position but have holes in their skill set, especially when it comes to soft skills. And that’s okay! No one can be expected to be great at everything. The goal of many leadership development programs is for leaders to safely identify what needs to be improved and then take steps to improve.

Though this depends on the scope of your leadership training program, you may begin by determining competency with a group discussion or using experiential activities that allow folks to demonstrate their skills and knowledge on subjects like effective feedback or communication.

The results of such an exercise might mean you can move ahead quickly or need to go back and spend more time shoring up core competencies.

Self assessment is another impactful way to get learners thinking about strengths and opportunities alike. Leadership Pizza is a great tool for any leadership program that includes self assessment and goal setting as part of the curriculum.

Whichever way you go, take steps to create psychological safety in the group before discussing competency. I’d recommend creating a group contract or doing some warm-up activities where your team get to know each other a little better before asking folks to share their weaknesses with the group.

Use examples and case studies (but encourage personal stories too!)

Examples and case studies are great, but first, let me share a confession: if I have to listen to the same story about Steve Jobs during a training session one more time, I might scream! 

Choosing the right examples and case studies is heavily dependent on your group and the tenor of your session. For example, your group of technical founders might benefit from how leaders in their sector have brought their teams together while scaling with very specific, practical examples.

On the flip side, if the focus of your leadership training is on softer skills, inspiring examples from outside the sector might be more useful. Aim for relevancy and for examples that will chime with your group – don’t just go for the old standards. (Sorry, Steve!)

I’d also say that personal stories from the group can often be more powerful than an example from some business guru folks can’t relate to.

Personal stories give folks an opportunity to share their learnings, form connections and go deeper in a way that a slideshow just can’t. This approach is based on sound learning theory and so it’s a vital technique for engaging leaders in the workshop too. 

Appreciative Interviews is a powerful technique for encouraging examples from the group that both enable learning and reflection. By focusing on success stories in small groups, you can help facilitate this peer learning and support pretty easily!

Give your leaders practical, easy to action tools

Giving leaders practical tools they can action the next day is a hallmark of effective leadership training.

In many cases, it can be extremely effective to share a leadership technique with the group, get them to practice it together and then encourage them to take the tool away with them and use it with their team. A great example is the Heard, Seen, Respected activity from the Liberating Structures toolkit.

Here, you would get your trainees into pairs where they would take turns sharing a story about a time where they did not seen heard, seen or respected. While one person shares, the other person would listen without trying to fix the situation or leap to judgment.

By experiencing this technique firsthand, leaders would then be able to deploy it when working with their own direct reports and have a sense of how powerful it can be to just be listened to.

This is just one example of making leadership development both experiential and practical. Discover more techniques you can bring to your session in our collection of effective leadership training activities.

What about leadership training programs?

Good leaders are seldom born, nor are they made in a single leadership workshop. A training session can be a great way to start closing a skills gap, but true and lasting growth occurs when these factor into an ongoing process of practice, learning, coaching and continued leadership development.

But what do these look like? Your own L&D team will likely have a specific approach that works for your organization, but often this is a cyclical process of:

• discovering a skills gap or potential new leaders in need of development
• enrolling people on a program of leadership development which is often a combination of:
  • skills development workshops where a cohort learns collaboratively;
  • self-directed learning in line with the goals of the program and the individual learner. This can include webinars, books and self-paced courses;
  • coaching, whether from experts or in the form of peer coaching;
  • skills practice and reflection. Leaders will often put learnings into practice with their team and reflect on their growth;
  • 1-1s and check-ins with supervisors;
• program feedback, reflection and iteration

Broadly speaking, leadership development programs offer an ongoing structure to help new leaders grow and existing leaders improve over long periods of time. However these are initiated, you will typically determine a skills gap or developmental goal and deploy a means to fill it. You’ll then reflect on the process, improve it, then repeat.

The ongoing nature of a leadership development program is a great fit for peer support groups and cohort-based learning. Get your new managers and team leaders to meet on a regular basis, whether formally or informally, and they’ll all benefit from their shared experiences.

Internal leadership development programs are also an effective means to share your internal best practices and standards for leadership. They’re a place where you’ll talk about your company values and how you wish to see them demonstrated by your leaders and the team they work with.

What’s next?

Whether it’s your senior leaders or your frontline team leads, everyone should have the opportunity to grow. Investing in the personal development of your leaders and giving them the skills to drive organizational success can be one of the most impactful ways to empower your business.

I hope we’ve given you some practical ideas for running a leadership development workshop that has impact and will help enlist your team in their own leadership training.

Check out the leadership development workshop template for an example of an ideal structure for developing the skills of new leaders. Easily adjust the agenda to your needs or just get inspired!

Looking for techniques and activities to use during your workshop? Our post on leadership games and activities has you covered with over 30 practical techniques your team will use long after your leadership training is complete.

Finally, when it comes to designing your workshop, it’s important to think about learning flow, activity balance and structure. Check out our guide on how to plan a workshop for a step-by-step guide for turning that initial needs assessment into a final workshop.

But why are workshop rules so essential? They create a framework for how groups work together, increasing clarity, preventing misunderstandings, and keeping discussions focused. Whether you’re leading a brainstorming session, a team alignment meeting, or a training workshop, ground rules set the stage for meaningful collaboration.

In this article, we’ll explore what workshop rules are, why they matter, and how to use them effectively. You’ll find plenty of examples, practical methods for co-creating them with participants, and tips for handling common challenges. Read on to learn everything you need to confidently guide a group in establishing how to work together for productive and engaging workshops!

What are workshop ground rules?

Ground rules are agreements established at the start of a meeting, session, or workshop to guide participant behavior and contributions. These rules often cover etiquette, such as whether smartphones should be silenced or turned off, and encourage active participation from everyone involved.

Ground rules can be set by a facilitator or co-created by the group, making them adaptable to the session’s needs. Essentially, ground rules serve as the do’s and don’ts that help create a productive and respectful workshop environment. 

You might have heard ground rules referred to by other names. Some leaders and facilitators prefer terms such as ‘group agreements’. While essentially referring to the same thing, ‘group agreement’ is a softer terminology that empathizes the collective nature of the agreements reached, and the fact that they exist as a guideline rather than as norms that might be enforced with a penalty! 

In groups that work together more continuously, I have also seen the term ‘group contract’ used. Referring to a group contract, or to ‘group norms’ often indicates that the rules established will be used throughout a group’s work and life, rather than for a single workshop, session or event. 

Whatever you choose to call your agreements, they represent a solid foundation for groupwork, and are especially important in the collaborative, participatory atmosphere of a workshop. This is why most expert facilitators will dedicate some time at the start of any workshop to defining, discussing and approving them. Below we will see some practical tools and methods for doing this with the support of the entire group.

10 (real-world) examples of ground rules for workshops 

Every year, I run introductory workshops to facilitation and group dynamics to first-year students in a peace and conflict transformation program. Every year, we start by creating ground rules. 

In this particular case, it makes sense for us to spend a fair amount of time, generally around 45 minutes, just to establish how we will work together. This is because:

• Participants are learning by doing: by co-creating ground rules they are having their first experience of facilitation in action;
• The extremely multicultural nature of this group, and the language barrier, means that nothing can be taken for granted and many nuances (e.g. “what does ‘punctuality’ mean to you?”) must be explored before we can have a meaningful agreement;
• Ground rules therefore become an opportunity to investigate and understand the nature of the group better. Although they are only ‘offical’ during my workshops, they inform how the group will work together going forward and, ultimately, for two entire years. 

While every group is unique, these are some examples, in no particular order, of the typical ground rules my students come up with:

Punctuality

What does punctuality mean for this group? This varies vastly among different groups, cultures, and situations. Avoid miscommunication by clarifying the specific, particular meaning of ‘punctuality’ we will be using for the duration of this workshop clear.

For me, this often means: we will start and end on time. If you join later, you don’t need to provide justification, just join quietly. I’ve recently seen a great picture of a training room where a large poster on the door says “You are late! You can only come in with sweets for everyone or a big smile”. 

Maintain confidentiality

Depending on the nature of the workshop, it might be a good idea to establish a rule around confidentiality. If we are discussing team dynamics in the office, for example, we might be ok with sharing with people present, but not with others. It is common to have a ground rule around confidentiality expressed in terms such as “It’s ok to share stories from the workshop, but only in anonymized form”. 

Phones should be silent

I deeply enjoy the conversations we have with students around rules related to cell phones, as they are often revelatory and surprising. By openly discussing phone use, I’ll often find out that participants tend to multitask, but don’t like to do it; a rule discouraging multitasking can help them self-regulate. At the same time, I have found that cell phones are support for, among others, speakers of other languages who use them to translate or look up definitions and information in real-time. What we usually land on is an agreement to keep phones silent. 

Active participation 

Participation in a workshop means more than just showing up; it involves actively contributing ideas, asking questions, and listening attentively. This rule encourages everyone to bring their best energy to the session and be present both mentally and physically.

All questions are welcome

By making it clear that all questions are valid, this great rule creates a safe and supportive atmosphere where participants feel comfortable seeking clarification or exploring new ideas without fear of being dismissed or judged.

The space we are in is everyone’s responsibility

This is about taking care of the space around us. When things get hectic in workshops, people can easily forget to pick up after themselves, resulting in strewn coffee cups and sticky notes everywhere. Including a ground rule about taking care of the space is a useful reminder to pay attention to how our work impacts the environment we are in.

Use clear language and avoid jargon 

Workshops often include people from diverse backgrounds or roles. Using simple, clear language helps avoid misunderstandings. Avoiding technical terms or remembering to always explain industry-specific jargon ensures inclusivity and keeps communication accessible. Sometimes we will add a dedicated hand gesture participants should make when anyone (facilitator included) is speaking too quickly or using mysterious words. 

Hand signs, by the way, can be a very useful addition to ground rules. This can include gestures to ask for a break, make a direct point, express enthusiasm and more. 

Be supportive

Lift each other up and respect different perspectives. A supportive ground rule reminds participants to approach conversations with kindness, patience, and understanding. By creating a culture of encouragement, the group can collaborate more effectively and build trust.

Be open and curious

Approach the workshop with a willingness to learn. This ground rule encourages participants to set aside preconceived notions and embrace new ideas or viewpoints. Being open and curious helps foster innovation and productive dialogue. Critical comments can be reframed as questions that help the whole group progress. 

Use “I” statements

Speak from your own experience to avoid assumptions. This ground rule helps participants have more constructive discussions by taking ownership of their opinions and feelings. Phrasing comments as “I think” or “I feel” rather than “you should” or “people tend to” reduces defensiveness and promotes constructive conversation.

Ground rules for brainstorming and ideation

Brainstorming and innovation workshops thrive on creativity, open-mindedness, and the willingness to explore new possibilities. Establishing clear ground rules ensures that participants feel empowered to contribute without fear of judgment or rejection, creating an atmosphere where fresh ideas can emerge. These rules are particularly important in brainstorming sessions, where the goal is to generate as many ideas as possible, no matter how unconventional they may seem at first glance.

Ground rules for these sessions should emphasize creative freedom, and a commitment to collaboration. By setting expectations around behaviors like suspending judgment and encouraging bold thinking, facilitators can help participants move beyond their comfort zones and into the realm of innovation. 

Below are five examples of ground rules tailored to brainstorming and innovation workshops.

No bad ideas

Encourage participants to share every idea, no matter how incomplete or unconventional it may seem. This rule reinforces the notion that creativity often emerges from unexpected places and that even “bad” ideas can spark meaningful conversations or inspire others. By setting aside the fear of being wrong, participants are more likely to contribute freely.

Blue sky ideas

Think big ideas, go beyond the constraints of what’s currently possible. Blue sky ideas are about imagining what could be, without worrying about limitations like budget, time, or resources. This ground rule invites participants to dream without restriction, often leading to innovative solutions that can later be refined or adapted.

Postpone judgment 

Encourage the group to suspend criticism or evaluation during the ideation phase. To get the most out of a brainstorming session flow, it should be fine whether participants are coming up with feasible ideas or unlikely solutions. This ground rule is critical in maintaining the flow of creative energy, as premature judgment can stifle the process.

Participants should be reminded that evaluation will come later, during the refinement stage, at which point it makes sense to consider practical constraints and exclude some ideas. It just should not be done when ideas are first shared. This is not about not using our critical thinking and judgment at all: it’s about being clear about when to encourage wild creativity and defer judgment to a later point. 

“Yes, and..”

Build on each other’s creative ideas. Inspire collaboration by encouraging participants to use one another’s ideas as a springboard for new thoughts. This rule fosters a sense of teamwork and amplifies creativity by combining perspectives. For example, someone’s initial idea might evolve into a breakthrough when others add their insights.

Use of AI for ideation

In the brave new world of generative AI being at most people’s fingertips, ideation and brainstorming workshops in particular will benefit from establishing an agreed-upon guardrail for AI use. It’s super-easy to flood the workshop with AI-generated ideas, and then ask for even more ideas, which can be overwhelming, confusing and counterproductive. 

Discuss with participants how to put AI to good use for example by turning drafts into more tangible ideas, critiquing and judging ideas, or adding a small batch of new ideas at a time, which participants can use a springboard for their own thinking. For more on how to use AI in brainstorming, check out resources from the AI Tinkerer’s Club!

Adapting ground rules for workshop types

As should be clear by now, there is no unique and universally valid set of ground rules that will work for any group or workshop type. You can start with a standard set of generic principles, such as “active participation” and “respect”, and see where the conversation with your participants leads. 

When facilitating a conversation around such agreements, you should also give some thought to having lists of rules to specific workshop types. We have seen above a list of ideas that help participants get into the right frame of mind for an ideation or brainstorming session, for example.

To adapt a starting list of ground rules to the specific workshop type, ask yourself, and the group: what do we want to achieve in this session, specifically? What sorts of guidelines or mindset would help us get there?  

If you are working on strategy or decision making, you might want to encourage the group to explore rules that help clarify, direct and focus thinking, such as having a parking lot. 

A parking lot refers to having a space, usually a poster or a section of a shared whiteboard, where to park off topic ideas, questions or comments that fall outside of the focus of a specific time or activity. Ideas and notes in a parking lot are usually addressed at a later time, perhaps towards the end of the workshop. This allows participants to free mindspace and restore focus when conversations are getting off-track. 

So far we have seen various reasons in support of having a strong container for your workshop, co-creating ground rules with participants to land on a list that reflect the group’s intentions and aspirations and enables everyone to participate at their best. 

But are ground rules always a good idea? As with most things in facilitation, the answer is “it depends”. There is quite a spirited discussion among professional facilitators as to how and why caution should be taken in considering them an all-purpose tool. Can ground rules actually hurt, or hinder, your group? 

Suppose the main purpose of your workshop has to do with personal development, authenticity and self-expression. In that case, you should approach the idea of regulating behavior with much more caution. 

I have worked alongside practitioners of restorative justice, for example, for whom it was very important not to censor behaviors that might be generally viewed as “loud” or “overly emotional”.

A rule such as “Do not interrupt” can enforce a certain communication style over another and end up being accidentally repressive. Reasons for choosing such rules must make sense for the specific situation, at a specific time. And in some cases, you may not want ground rules at all, but rather accompany the group to solve clashes and disagreements as they appear, allowing for a more emergent approach to group regulation. 

Workshop rules and culture creation: aligning group agreements, goals and values

As you can tell, ground rules can be a mixture of elements such as:

• Etiquette. How will we behave in practice? Examples of this include discussions on punctuality and timing, or on use of phones and laptops;
• Communication styles. How do we speak with one another? This includes things like using ‘I’ statements or avoiding jargon;
• Behavioral agreements. Who do we want to be? These are harder to define as proper ‘rules’ as it’s hard to tell whether they have been adhered to, but are more akin to intentions, values and aspirations. We know we might fail at being constantly supportive, open and curious, but we agree to try.

The latter type of ground rule offers every group an opportunity to shape their group culture not only in terms of the present (how things currently are) but of an ideal future (how do we want to be).

Group agreements can, in fact, be viewed as a practical, concrete application of team values. What does it mean for us to be kind, or to have a growth mindset, or to be present? How do we manifest these ideals into practical behaviors?

Many groups I have worked with in the nonprofit space have a ground rule meant to encourage presence and focus attention: if at any point anyone feels their attention wavering, they can ring a bell to ask for two minutes of silence and concentration. This is a great example of how a group can use ground rules to co-create cultural norms and ways of being. 

The Thiagi Group has an activity to select and discuss training workshop rules with participants, based on using pre-existing lists of 70 different ground rules and inviting people to choose among them. Their list is full of great ideas for culture-shaping rules such as “Expect to be surprised” or “Don’t lose your sense of humor”. 

5 methods to encourage participants to co-create group agreements

Throughout the article I’ve been stressing the importance of co-creating agreements with your participants, rather than imposing them yourself. Co-creating agreements with participants has many advantages, including:

• Ownership. Participants are more likely to adhere to codes of conduct they have created themselves;
• Fit-to-purpose. You might be surprised by what participants come up with! I’ve had group agreements that included tips on where to park cars to make it to the workshop on time, or on when and how to take screenshots in video calls. No facilitator can possibly predict everyone’s needs, and the only way to find out what fits a specific group is by asking;
• Improved trust and alignment. Co-creating agreements doubles as a team-building experience that will leave the group more cohesive, and establish shared awareness around needs and boundaries, ultimately helping people deepen bonds by learning more about one another.

If you’d like to try your hand at guiding a group conversation around meeting rules, here are 5 methods from SessionLab’s library of facilitation techniques that can help you do just that.

Let’s start with a write-up on how to establish a group contract, taken from The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth by Amy Edmondson. Besides the useful, detailed questions to use for workshop discussions, what I love about it is that it starts by inviting participants to visualize themselves at the end of the workshop session if everything has gone spectacularly well. How do they feel? What happened? What behaviors enabled such success? This is great anchor point to start off discussions. 

When short for time, you can still create good meeting guidelines by looking at the deceptively simple question “What do you expect from today?” In this method from the International Association of Facilitators’ library, divide a flipchart into four quadrants and ask for suggestions on what people expect from themselves, from other participants, from the trainer and the training. 

Gamestorming’s recommendation on how to create a code of conduct includes useful tips for the facilitator. Using as a guiding question “What would make this workshop meaningful and pleasant?”, create visual mindmaps that synthesize emergent ideas. 

Last but not least, my personal go-to method for group agreement creation, which I learned early in my career and have stuck to because, from my personal viewpoint, (1) it works and (2) it’s easy to remember, being based on the mnemonic of 4G: ask participants to think of Gains (expectations, what they want to take from the workshop), Gifts (what are they bringing, what can they contribute) and Groans (worries, concerns, anxieties). Then turn those into potential Guidelines for the day. 

How workshop ground rules help create a constructive and positive atmosphere

Ground rules are part of the process of ‘container-building’. This refers to setting in place the conditions for positive, collaborative work. A meeting or workshop is, after all, an artificial environment, where behavior is not as spontaneous as in day to day life, but responds to a specific set of criteria to create a productive, collaborative space. Inside the workshop ‘container’ specific modes of behavior apply. 

Many actions facilitators and team leaders take at the start of a workshop have the overall intention of creating and strengthening this container, in order to help participants understand their role, and +make the space psychologically safer. I am saying ‘safer’ and not ‘safe’ as we can never truly establish a ‘safe space’ for everyone. But we can do our best to make it safer for attendees to express themselves and raise any questions or concerns. 

Some of the actions of creating a container include:

• sharing the objectives and agenda of the workshop;
• pointing out any logistical needs, such as times for breaks;
• clarifying intentions and desired outcomes.

Setting and discussing ground rules is arguably the most powerful lever a facilitator can pull to create a solid container for a workshop. This is especially true in diverse, multicultural settings, where the same word can mean wildly different things to different people. A typical example is “punctuality”. Punctuality is probably implied in any professional setting, but what does it mean, exactly?

When setting ground rules, a group might unveil different cultural expectations and sensitivities around punctuality. Does it mean we start on the dot? Or, as common in many academic settings, that a session will begin 15 minutes late? What is expected from people who arrive later? Will we wait for everyone or begin without them?

It is interesting to note that any group convening to work together will, in fact, create ground rules for itself regardless of whether this is an explicit process or not. When a group of people gathers, they will automatically establish some do’s and don’ts. What dress code and attire is acceptable, and what is not? How do we refer to one another? Who gets to speak more, or less? 

At the beginning of my career as a professional facilitator, I worked a lot with non-profit groups and grassroots community organizations, introducing them to effective meeting models and facilitation concepts. One of the things I would ask at the beginning is: “What is your group contract? What are your agreements?” 

Often, the initial response was “We do not have any”. But was that true? A bit of digging would uncover the existence of unwritten, unspoken rules all members in fact adhered to without even noticing. Some could be good, effective, and functional, such as “We always begin on time, and people joining later enter quietly”, but others often needed rediscussion, such as a pervasive “It is ok to interrupt newcomers, but senior members can completely dominate the conversation for as long as they want”. 

In the absence of explicit ground rules, in other words, the group will revert to whatever is considered “normal” in the general context. This may be functional or dysfunctional and, in any case, will remain unspoken and hidden. Hidden norms can be the source of much conflict, as different people will interpret them differently.

Suppose I think it’s perfectly ok to use my phone to multitask during a workshop, while someone else may find it rude and even feel hurt by such behavior, deeming it disrespectful. This can give rise to secret resentments and grumpy judgments that we will carry with us throughout the day, negatively affecting our collaboration. 

Setting ground rules at the start of a workshop allows the group to have clear expectations and even set aspirational goals for how they hope to behave together and towards one another. 

When I worked as a tutor for summer schools, I generally dedicated about an hour at the start of the program to craft a group contract together with students. We would write it up on a sheet of poster paper and carry it with us from classroom to classroom, from site visit to lecture, hanging it up as a reminder wherever we went. Working with university students, the hot topic of asking questions often came up. 

Someone would timidly raise the idea of having a ground rule around asking questions: “Can we write that it’s ok to admit not to know something?” Having an open, honest discussion in which many participants revealed their fears of being judged if they asked so-called “stupid questions” led to a lot of relief.

We would generally include an agreement along the lines of “All questions are welcome and are a gift to advance our collective learning.” This generally led to lecturers and professors being enthusiastic about working with our group, as we would reliably have great discussions rather than stone-faced silence during Q&A sessions. 

The key takeaways here are that ground rules can help groups build a collaborative atmosphere by:

• Reducing participant stress by clarifying expectations for contribution;
• Preventing conflicts that might arise from misunderstanding the intentions behind one another’s behavior;
• Creating a more cohesive and aligned group by making implicit norms explicit;
• Ensuring the session stays focused and productive by setting shared expectations;
• Giving team leaders, facilitators, and participants a convenient reference point that can be useful later in the workshop to resolve discussions and disagreements.

Common challenges when setting ground rules (and how to overcome them)

Having come this far, you should feel equipped to establish a strong foundation for your next workshop, with a clear understanding of why a meeting guideline matters, and how to create one. But as with any aspect of facilitation, things don’t always go smoothly. Here are four common challenges you might face when setting and using ground rules, along with tips to help you navigate them.

1. Time is tight

This is probably the most common issue with dedicating time at the start of a workshop to co-create ground rules. If you’re only working together for a couple of hours or half a day, is it really worth it?

In my experience, even with limited time, it’s important to establish at least a basic code of conduct. When time is short, you might need to sacrifice the discussion phase. Instead, prepare a pre-established set of standard rules and present them to the group, asking for quick agreement (a thumbs-up or brief verbal acknowledgment can suffice). While this doesn’t allow for full alignment, it sets a baseline for behavior.

When I’m designing shorter sessions, I’ll always dedicate at least 5-10 minutes to “housekeeping.” This includes presenting the agenda (what are we doing?), reminding participants of our objectives (where do we want to be by the end?), and introducing the agreements I hope they can commit to (what’s expected of us during this time?). Even brief alignment makes a big difference.

I DO ARRT is the perfect structure to use if you are short on time but still want to make sure you have a strong enough container to start the workshop. The title is a mnemonic device to help you remember to start any meeting or workshop by introducing Intention, Desired Outcomes, your Agenda, Roles, Rules and Timing. 

2. Ideas are too vague

Sometimes participants will suggest broad rules like “respect everyone” or “stay positive.” While well-intentioned, vague ideas can lack the specificity needed to guide behavior in practice.

When this happens, it’s often a sign that participants don’t feel comfortable sharing what truly helps them stay focused, productive, or comfortable. To address this, consider using a facilitation activity like 1-2-4-All to help participants articulate their ideas more clearly. 

Another helpful strategy is to ask, “How will be able to tell if this rule has been followed or not?” This invites concrete examples and helps the group develop actionable, pragmatic agreements.

3. Perfectionism 

Senior facilitators and trainers are righteously wary of using the precious time at the start of a workshop, when energy and attention are high, to define group agreements together. Is this the best possible use of that time? 

The question is particularly important if people get mired in perfectionism, attempting to craft the ideal set of rules and find the perfect answer to every possible future problem. This can lead to haggling over details such as wording; energy will diminish rapidly, with some people starting to disengage.

In some cases, there might be a real and interesting conflict behind the search for a “perfect” rule. In this case, naming it and parking it for later discussion might be the best course of action. 

In most cases, though, the group is trying to complete a task at its very best. To shift that helpful attitude to the actual purpose of the workshop, rather than losing momentum by fixating on a perfect set of rules, here are two useful reminders you can mention as facilitator:

• The agreements we create should be “good enough for now and safe enough to try”, a useful framing I’ve picked up from Sociocracy to remind everyone that we are not writing a national constitution, just a set of guidelines that will dissipate at the end of the day, or weekend, or training course. Can we live with it, knowing it’s not perfect? This usually gives some relaxation and respite and allows you to move on more quickly;
• We can revisit our agreements later. Especially if the group will be working together for a length of time, it’s useful to remind everyone that the set of agreements you start with can be checked and revisited, for example at the start of Day 2, to verify if they work well and add what may be missing. 

Ultimately, the process of creating ground rules should be engaging and should not take away too much time and energy from the rest of the workshop. 

4. Participants don’t take the rules seriously (and nobody enforces them) 

To address this, involve participants in co-creating the ground rules whenever possible. When people participate in establishing the agreements, they are more likely to take ownership and respect them. You can also explain the purpose behind each rule, linking it directly to the workshop’s objectives (e.g., “This rule helps us stay focused so we can achieve our goal of generating actionable ideas.”). 

Ground rules are only effective if they’re followed, and it’s often the facilitator’s responsibility to ensure they’re respected. Without visible reminders or active enforcement, they can quickly be forgotten.

To prevent this, write the ground rules on a visible surface—such as a flip chart, slide, or whiteboard—and refer back to them as needed. If you notice behavior veering off track, gently remind the group by pointing to the agreements and asking, “Does this align with what we agreed on? Are we okay with this, or should we adjust?”

Balancing firmness and flexibility will depend on your facilitation style and the cultural context, but showing accountability is key to maintaining a constructive environment. Finally, model the behavior you want to see: your own commitment to the ground rules can inspire others to follow suit.

Setting ground rules may seem like a small step in workshop design, but it can have a transformative impact on your sessions. These agreements create a foundation of trust, clarity, and mutual respect that helps participants feel safe to contribute, collaborate, and thrive. While challenges may arise, each offers an opportunity to fine-tune your approach and learn what works best for your group.

What’s next

If you came looking for ideas and recommendations on how, and why, to establish a code of conduct for a group, chances are you a planning a workshop, session or event.

To learn more about tips and tricks on how to run successful, engaging workshops, we’ve created a quick how-to guide with some foolproof ideas and techniques on how to run a workshop.

For a more detailed and thorough overview of everything that goes into planning a workshop, from initial concept notes all the way to feedback and reporting, read our complete guide to planning a workshop.

Perhaps you are interested in the idea of hosting a workshop, but not so clear on what kind of topic and activity is right for your group? In this article, we’ve listed 20 workshop ideas for all sorts of teams.

Have you tried out any tips or methods listed here? Or perhaps you have different ideas on what works to set basic rules for a workshop? Let us know in the comments, or join SessionLab’s free, friendly community to discuss with other facilitators and trainers! 

In this guide, we’ll share an effective ideation workshop structure and a heap of tips for running an effective ideation process, whether you’re trying to solve problems for users or simply need to create innovation in any context.

What is an ideation workshop?

An ideation workshop is a structured process for brainstorming innovative ideas and refining them into effective solutions.

For me, an ideation workshop is one of the best ways to go from zero ideas to great ideas that you can actually implement.

Typically, an ideation session will follow a process that begins with defining the problem and brainstorming potential solutions.

After initial ideation, groups will then refine those ideas and begin turning them into well-defined solutions. Once those solutions have been presented and explored, groups will tend to end a session by choosing one to move forward with or committing to further research and exploration.

While the exact make-up of the ideation workshop will differ based on the problem statement, team and solution space, they will generally follow a similar structure to the one detailed below. Here, we’ll explain each stage in a typical ideation session and offer a little advice for each step. Let’s dig in!

User research and data gathering

Generating ideas without a good understanding of the problem you are trying to solve is a surefire way of creating an ineffective solution. The most effective creative processes often start with research and gathering data to inform the innovation process before the date of the workshop.

You might conduct user interviews designed to surface problems and understand core needs – the user interview method below is a great source of advice for this.

You might also gather and collate quantitative data, explore the wider competitive landscape and more. We’ll explore this more below, but the key takeaway here is that you should always do some research before approaching any ideation process.

In some cases, you might even invite experts to your session so participants can ask questions before they generate ideas or supplement your research during the workshop.

In the Design Sprint 2.0 workshop, for example, the first day starts with a section on expert interviews that helps inform the rest of the session and provide a foundation for new ideas. These experts might be users, members of your target audience or simply those people in your team most familiar with the problem space.

Try and provide as much supporting information as you can to help define and contextualize the problem you’re solving while also providing valuable insights for creating solutions that will actually solve that issue.

Problem analysis and discovery

Once you’ve gathered all this raw data to inform your understanding of the problem, you need to make sense of it and set a direction for the rest of the ideation session. This can be as simple as creating a problem statement based on the findings, or opening up further avenues of discovery with the group.

The key here is that you and your team have a strong understanding of the problem you are trying to solve, even if the specific root cause is still elusive.

For example, let’s say you’ve created a fitness tracking app and your users aren’t renewing their subscriptions. What should you do? It’s likely that some initial ideas will spring to mind, but without first gathering insights from users, those ideas may not actually solve the issue and you’ll end up wasting time pursuing them.

Then, let’s say you’re running a cross-functional ideation workshop to help explore new ideas and create a solution. If you’re not aligned on the actual problem you’re trying to solve, it’s possible your teams diverge completely and again start ideating in the wrong place.

In my experience, a successful ideation workshop is one that moves between convergence and divergence at the right moments – get aligned on the problem you’re solving, but absolutely encourage your workshop participants to diverge in how to solve it, at least at the start of the session.

Ideation and brainstorming

This is the stage many people get excited about when attending an ideation workshop: the moment where everyone is encouraged to come up with as many ideas as possible in a free flow of creativity.

Typically, the facilitator leading the session will use their favored ideation techniques or brainstorming activities alongside principles like “no bad ideas”, “yes, and..” idea mash-ups and more to aid the free flow of possible solutions.

As discussed above, it’s imperative to have a proper grounding and alignment before you ask a group to generate ideas. I find it helpful to frame this as less of a (brain)storm raging in all directions and more as a way of directing the group’s collective energy to drive a wind turbine. Focus and a general direction are your friends here!

Once that’s in place, let the creative juices flow but ensure you have thought about how those ideas will then be shared, discussed and refined. If in doubt, try a technique like The Six Thinking Hats to build this kind of feedback loop into your session with ease.

For example, participants will brainstorm freely while wearing the green hat before changing to the grey hat to look at things critically or the yellow hat to consider the values and benefits of various ideas.

Clustering

This part of the ideation workshop is about making sense of the ideas generated so far, to begin noticing patterns and help set the stage for idea refinement. Typically, workshop participants will add their ideas to a shared space, perhaps briefly framing their idea and then together, the group will begin to cluster ideas and make sense of where they’re at.

In some settings, it’s common for a facilitator to use ideation techniques like mash up innovation or a form of brainwriting to have a stage of early refinement before clustering.

Personally, the decision comes down to our understanding of the problem, the level of divergence in the group, and the time available. If the group requires a bit more warm-up, I might have them create 10-20 ideas in a first round and then ask them to do a second round.

On the other hand, if the group I’m working with already has a strong understanding of the problem and have perhaps ideated before the session, we might move straight to clustering after a silent brainstorm.

In any case, I’d always recommend having a clustering and sense-making step before moving into refinement. A simple affinity diagram can help a group quickly turn an overwhelming mass of ideas into something more manageable.

The best ideas often come from a synthesis of others, and making the groups thinking visible can help facilitate alignment and excitement. It’s also possible to see that one idea or cluster is clearly rising to the top and so exploring that particularly solution space more deeply may be of interest.

Refinement

Remember what I said about coming up with ideas being easy? This is where you take all those first drafts and (potentially) horrible ideas with a seed of greatness and collectively turn them into something that will stick.

The refinement stage is the one most pliable to the needs of the group. Some teams will have a sticky note for each idea up on a board that everyone is encouraged to silently review before then undergoing a second round of ideation. In other teams, facilitators will put folks into groups to improve the most innovative ideas and turn them into something a little more concrete.

In our fitness tracker example, someone may have the idea to give people extra subscription time based on performance in order to help retain them as a customer. Okay, not bad. But what would that look like in practice? Could you take it further or refine it so that it matches your brand values and the specific problem statement?

While the ideation step was to get all the ideas out and share them with the group, refinement is about helping the best ideas rise up organically and beginning to turn them into something that you might deploy.

Depending on the group, you may run multiple rounds of refinement or even go as far as having groups start to build a business case or begin to scope the work necessary to deploy a solution. Often, the best bet is to refine enough to have a paper prototype, mock-up or clear vision you can share with the group, but not go too deep into implementation. Who knows – your idea might not make it or may be refined further down the line.

I think of the refinement state as taking a raw idea and transforming it into a potential solution. The aim is to shape, add depth and start to think about what that grand idea might look like in practice.

Presentation and voting

After the group has successfully refined their ideas, now comes the time to present them to the rest of the team. The format for this can differ based on the session you’re running and the nature of solutions you’re working with.

When we’re working on product ideas at SessionLab, we’ll create paper prototypes and hang them up in a space that folks can walk around like a gallery, leaving comments and sticky dots on the bits of the solution they like.

On the other hand, if we’re ideating on strategy and marketing items, a stand-up presentation is often a better way to help everyone understand the vision, ask questions and then qualify next steps.

After everyone has had the chance to present and/or review the various solutions, now comes the time for folks to share what they think and give an indication of which solution they would most like to implement.

In some cases, this is a democracy, where the group will collectively decide which idea to implement. In this case, a method like dot-voting is a fast, proven technique time and again by facilitators running ideation sessions.

It’s worth noting that even if there’s a single decision maker, it’s a great idea to give the group chance to share a snapshot of how they’re feeling. This can help inform the team lead’s decision and ensure everyone in the session continues to be engaged and included in the process. It also helps get an early sense of the roles various folks might play in implementation too.

Decision making

The culmination of a successful ideation workshop is usually the moment where you choose a solution you’re excited about and that the whole group is behind.

Sometimes, making a decision is as simple as getting folks to vote on which they think is most likely to resolve what came up in your problem statement.

In other ideation workshops, you may need to undertake a more involved process of ranking possible solutions. You likely consider possible impact and effort while thinking through the ramifications of possible solutions in order to pick the best one to work on right now.

With our fitness tracker example, it’s possible that you have a great idea for radical new features and diversifying business strategies, but you simply don’t have the capacity to implement them at present.

As such, your team might choose a simple solution in the short term while beginning to work on a larger project. (An impact/effort matrix is perfect for this!) Making the right decision means taking a little time in the ideation session to think about what it actually takes to make those ideas a reality and selecting a solution that solves your challenges while still being feasible.

Want to go deeper? Learn more about how to effectively make group decisions in this post on decision making techniques.

Next steps and closing

So you and your team generated a heap of new ideas, refined them as a group and then decided on a solution. Super! An effective ideation workshop also ensures that action is taken afterwards and that folks are best positioned to continue the momentum of the session.

I find it useful to have each person say what they’re going to do following the session and set a date for the next check-in meeting. This keeps things moving and ensures accountability and ownership.

As with any workshop, it’s also valuable to have a check-out round where people reflect on the process, share what they’re feeling and provide feedback. Symbolically closing your ideation workshops can help participants shift gears, putting aside those bad ideas they were attached to or adding them to a backlog and creating focus for the task ahead.

Though these steps are not exhaustive, they do provide a solid structure for an ideation workshop that you can tinker with further. I hope it’s given you an understanding of what to expect in an ideation workshop and how you might approach designing and running such a process.

Specific frameworks such as the Design Sprint also include steps for prototyping and testing you may want to consider too. As with each of the points above, consider what will best address the problem you’re working with and what is most feasible for the project and group present.

This ideation workshop template from the Board of Innovation is also a great example of how to approach the ideation process with a group. Check it out for inspiration or adjust to your needs!

Why run an ideation workshop?

In my experience, a diverse group of people will often be better than any single individual at solving a complex problem. Ideation workshops provide a powerful structure for helping a group quickly come up with new ideas and refine them into solid solutions that will actually solve the challenge at hand.

Running an ideation workshop is especially great when trying to solve important, complicated issues that have no obvious solution. If you find that a problem keeps occurring despite your attempts to fix it or you have a business critical issue that needs your attention, that’s a great trigger for a workshop.

So in short: if an issue is important to your business and you don’t know how to solve it, running an ideation workshop will help you discover how to solve it, get buy-in from your team and give you next steps too.

One misconception I’ve seen is that ideation and innovation workshops are only suitable for product teams or for folks that are building and designing things. While it’s true that the origins of these design thinking frameworks comes from product teams working to solve user issues, their application doesn’t stop there.

In my experience, a (tailored) design sprint or ideation session can be effective even when approaching any complex issue you want to solve collaboratively. This also applies to challenges like low employee morale, or complex systems issues and team conflicts.

While these frameworks aren’t quite one-size fits all, a skilled facilitator using a general ideation structure can help any group of people make progress on solving tough problems.

Tips for running an ideation workshop

So you’re running a dedicated session for ideation. Your room is booked, the right people are invited and you’re turning your mind to running the workshop and guiding the group towards the perfect solution.

In this section, we’ll share some tips and advice to help you and your group get the most out of your session. Not only will these help you in moment-to-moment facilitation, but they’ll ensure that you create a workshop structure and approach that is best suited to the problem space you’re working with.

There are no bad ideas (but there are irrelevant ones)

No bad ideas is one brainstorming rule you might have heard of. So what do we mean by bad ideas, and why are they okay? There are two main reasons:

1. Warming up.

Sometimes it’s helpful to think of ideation and creativity as a muscle. Before you go out for a big run or lift an incredible amount of weight, you warm-up and stretch. Not only does this help prevent injury, but it helps you achieve more during your exercise too. Not-so-great ideas are the equivalent of a warm-up for your creative brain.

This is also an extension of the quantity over quality principle. Don’t worry about whether they’re good ideas or bad ones, just get out as many as possible as quickly as possible in order to clear the way for better ideas to arise.

2. Creating a sense of safety.

The most effective ideation sessions I’ve ever been a part of have been ones where it’s felt safe to take risks, dream big and suggest something left field. Even if those first ideas that come out during the early stages aren’t perfect, feeling safe to suggest them helps the group go wider, think differently and keep moving.

In some groups I’ve also seen the term “negative ideas” used. This can mean “bad ideas” but can also refer to challenging ideas, or ideas which upset the status quo.

Sometimes, those ideas which challenge us the most are those which present new angles and help create genuine innovation. Make it safer for the group to truly innovate and solve business problems by letting all ideas exist in the space without being too quick to label them as good or bad.

So “bad ideas” are encouraged, but where I try and guide the group more carefully is when it comes to “irrelevant ideas.”

For example, let’s say we’re running ideation workshops on the subject of our fitness tracking app. During that session, one of the attendees writes an idea on a post it and presents it the group that reads “Soda should contain less sugar.”

Is it a bad idea? Technically no, but it is an idea that isn’t attuned to the needs of this particular ideation session. We don’t sell soda. Our users haven’t told us that soda is a problem they’re facing. The danger of an irrelevant question is that it splits the groups attention and sends folks down a rabbit hole that doesn’t serve the problem space you’re attending to.

All that said, an irrelevant idea is less dangerous than creating a sense of unsafety. No reprimands or public dressing down, please! In the above case, I’d gently try and move things along, guide the group back to relevancy and restate the problem space you’re working with.

Choose a wide or narrow approach

A framing question I find useful when thinking about running an ideation workshop is “how clear is the problem we’re trying to solve?”

The answer to this question will determine everything from who should be in the room to the ideation techniques you’ll use in order to find an effective solution.

Let’s take the example of the fitness tracker app with low user retention. You’ve got some background data but you’re not yet aligned on what’s causing the issue nor how should you approach it.

The cause of that issue is likely to be quite complex and so the specifics of the problem are unclear. As such, starting with the wider problem space of low retention is likely a better approach than narrowing immediately to an assumption like “our user emails have low engagement and that’s why retention is low.”

In this case, I’d advise the group to start wide and explore the low retention problem space before narrowing towards a solution.

On the flip side, if you’ve already done extensive research and discovered that your user onboarding emails are a big problem that deserves the team’s full attention, then the problem is clear, and so you can direct your attention to working on that explicitly with a more narrow approach.

Once you understand your level of clarity on the problem, then you can best choose who needs to be present.

If things are unclear and you need to do some big picture thinking, enlist those people in the group. Getting into the details of your entire onboarding program and need to discuss creative ways to personalize your communications based on user data? That’s likely a slightly different group of people.

Narrow and wide approaches are both extremely effective, but you’ll want to ensure you’re deploying the one that matches your challenge for best results.

Clearly frame the problem space you’re working on

We’ve established above that an ideation workshop can take a wide or narrow approach based on how much clarity you have on the issue. An effective ideation workshop is also one in which everyone is aligned on the problem you’re solving, regardless of their initial approach to solving it.

In the fitness tracker with low user retention example, you would frame either approach by saying that the the group will be working on the issue of user retention and then provide some supporting information. Why is this important? This framing ensures that people are focused and aligned on what to bring to the table. Without it, you might get great ideas that have nothing to do with the issue and find a lack of traction or shared understanding.

While you might have different perspectives on how to solve the problem you’re facing or even a different understanding of why a problem is occurring, it’s vital the whole group is aligned on the core issue you’re working on. Think of it as a north star you’re all travelling towards, even if the route is different for different participants.

Having trouble getting to the core problem you want to solve? Try The 5 Whys activity to help a group go deeper and frame the problem space effectively.

Work on the right problem

It’s one thing to have everyone aligned on the problem you’re working on, but it’s also vital that you are working on the right problem.

Narrowing down to a specific problem too soon or making an assumption without exploration can result in teams working on the wrong problem and, ultimately, spending time creating solutions that may not actually help address your biggest challenges.

So how do you avoid working on the wrong problem? Depending on how your organization works, you should have a way for challenges and initiatives to be recorded and to rise to the surface.

At SessionLab for example, we have a quarterly planning session where we choose what to work on in order to achieve our company goals. In this framework, challenges go through a consistent process of validation, background research and consideration before the planning session and even more during it.

Aligning your problem discovery process with your company goals is a great first step, but beyond this, you’ll also find that creating a well-defined problem statement, conducting user research or doing a root cause analysis before or during the session is helpful.

If you’re taking a wide approach to ideation, try starting the workshop with an exploration what your participants consider to be the biggest contributors to the issue.

The Sailboat exercise is a fantastic example of an ideation technique you can use to explore a problem space with a team and narrow down to the right problem in an informed, practical way.

Do your (user) research and gather data

Good data and user research are vital for any ideation or problem solving process. They are foundational pillars you’ll use when crafting a problem statement and also when informing new ideas and the solutions you develop.

In many cases, user feedback and data is what triggers the ideation session in the first place. Whether that’s consistent feedback about broken features or data to show a consistent decline in new subscribers year over year.

Whenever possible, bring data and user insights to share at the start of your ideation workshops and to support the framing of your challenge. This can help ensure you’re solving the right problem and also orient folks towards the root cause or even start the creative gears turning.

Whatever you do, ensure you’ve done some data analysis or can rattle off a summary to help folks make sense of what you present. I’ve seen ideation sessions get derailed by vast swathes of data that isn’t actually relevant or which would have been better presented in the form of a summary.

It’s also important to note that it’s not always possible to source deep user research to inform every idea or problem. Some times, you actually need to move faster than data gathering permits. In these cases, having experts and well-informed, smart people in the room is a good stop gap.

The final thing I’ll say on data is that there are times in an ideation workshop where making a decision on two great ideas feels impossible without first doing some further research to validate some assumptions.

In these cases, create a focused research task to be done at the first available opportunity and defer the final decision a touch until you can get at least a little validation.

Document everything (and make it accessible)

In both my personal and professional life, diligently recording ideas and taking notes has been instrumental in making projects become a reality.

A lot of ideation techniques involve each team member writing ideas on sticky notes and then sharing them with the group.

Take a photograph of the completed idea boards or ask a note taker to record those that resonate with the group and any connected conversations. It’s unlikely that you’ll implement all potential solutions immediately, and so these notes can be helpful when a product manager needs to remember that one great idea that now makes sense but which you can’t quite remember.

If working with an online whiteboard board or document, this is especially easy. Simply ask all workshop participants to add ideas to the virtual board, drag in inspiration and leave comments for everyone to see. You’ll also find online workshop tools that can help create summaries or transcriptions of your online chats to ensure nothing is missed.

The idea of documenting everything also extends to using a parking lot to capture conversations and ideas that might be peripheral to the problem at hand, but are worth coming back to. In a tightly structured ideation workshop, it can feel important to stay on topic. A parking lot means that anything that comes up while running an ideation technique isn’t lost, and you can circle back to it when it’s appropriate.

Balance solo and group thinking

Ever been in a session where one person speaks for an hour before you get chance to contribute or even have space to reflect? Not the best environment for new ideas, is it? Round robin brainstorming techniques can be incredibly exciting and effective at producing as many ideas as possible. Be sure to balance these group activities with time for reflection and solo ideation for best results.

Solo thinking and reflection time is also vital for avoiding group thinking and giving time for divergence to really occur. Particularly in groups with strong personalities and loud voices, this personal time can ensure that all areas are properly explored and you don’t double down on a particular solution just because the boss like it.

1-2-4-All is a great example of a technique that helps balance solo and group thinking while also ensuring everyone in the group is able to participate and have their ideas heard.

Engagement is key

When everyone in the room is fully engaged in the process, it can feel a little like magic. One person suggests something that challenges a long-held assumption and something clicks. Ideas come thick and fast and people step up to take ownership of deploying the solution. Getting participants fully engaged in the process and the problem is a large part of what facilitates this outcome. So how do you engage your group?

A well-designed agenda with varied ideation techniques is a great start. Try using brainstorming techniques that encourage visual thinking and critical thinking alike so that people with a broad set of skills can take part.

Workshop facilitation best practices can also help create an engaging atmosphere that positions the session for success. You’ll want to ensure you guide discussions effectively, solicit input, create space for reflection and much more. For more tips on facilitating engagement, read our guide on how to run a workshop.

Conclusion

When you bring the right people together with a common purpose and an effective structure, you can create genuine innovation and solve tough problems. An ideation workshop provides the ideal structure to make that happen.

Whether you’re looking for the perfect ideation technique to inform your process or some advice for leading the group effectively, I hope this guide has helped provide some practical examples you can bring to your next workshop.

Looking for an example ideation workshop as inspiration? Design Sprint 2.0 is a tried and tested process you can run over 4 days, including time for prototyping solutions and validating those prototypes via testing.

Need help understanding how to put together your ideation workshop? Explore our guide on how to plan a workshop to start making your session a reality.

But how to choose the right workshop format to use and how to make the most of time spent together as a team? In this blog post, we’ll share workshop ideas ranging from corporate sessions you can use to make an impact in the workplace all the way through to creative activities you can use to engage participants at any workshop event.

When should I host a workshop?

While there are a near infinite number of potential triggers and workshop topics, the primary reason you may need to host a workshop will likely fall into one of these two camps:

1. You have a group of people together in one place and someone (maybe you) says “Let’s use this opportunity effectively and run a workshop!”
2. You have a specific, (often challenging) goal that requires people to collaborate.

While the specific circumstances can differ, I find this useful to think about when understanding why you should run a workshop, and what kind of a workshop you should run.

If you have a specific goal, this is easy. Whatever your challenge or task, a well-facilitated workshop that is designed to achieve that goal is a great way to go. In the context of this blog post, you’ll find different types of workshop that each have a goal in mind, whether that’s skills development or problem solving.

Using these sessions as inspiration for your next workshop event will help you move things along swiftly while benefit from the insights of experienced facilitators too.

If you’re running a workshop event that is not in response to a specific goal, this is a little trickier. Maybe you have a three-day company conference and have been tasked with running a workshop one afternoon. What do you do?

In this case, it comes down to thinking about the needs of your participants and the context that brings them together. Workshops are always purposeful, even if that purpose is as simple as having fun as a team and building bonds.

If this is you, you’ll find a heap of workshop ideas that can serve as inspiration below. In addition, it’s worth talking to your team, your managers and event organizers to determine what would best serve the group with the time you have available.

You can read much more about this topic in our post on what is a workshop and why you should run one.

If you’re ready to move towards planning your workshop agenda, check out our guide on how to plan a workshop which also includes a template for a series of client planning meetings.

What are the different types of workshops?

So now we’ve established that workshops are a powerful way to bring a group together and get things done and you’re eager to run one. Next, it might be useful to understand some of the different types of workshop you might run.

Whether you’re organising a session in a workplace environment, at school or as part of a community, each of these workshop activities can be a great way to encourage teamwork and make meaningful progress on your goals.

Before you jump into designing a session, we’d recommend considering this (non-exhaustive) list alongside your goals and the needs of your workshop attendees. By holding all these details together, you can select the right workshop format as the basis for creating an engaging, interactive session.

Whether you’re looking for online workshop ideas or an agenda for an in person event or hybrid workshop, you’ll find something fit for your needs here.

Added bonus, for most of these workshop ideas we’ve also included a ready-to-use, high-quality template for you you can look at for inspiration or even take as a guideline to base your next workshop on! Let’s take a look.

Corporate workshops

In a corporate setting, workshops tend to be used in two primary ways:

1. as an efficient structure for collaboration;
2. as an engaging format for learning and development.

There are many ways to use workshops as a collaborative workplace tool. You might run an ideation workshop to create innovative ideas and solve tough problems facing your company.

Workshops can also be used to set team values, develop company strategy or effectively open or close an important project. What all these use cases have in common is a need for a group to work collaboratively on a common goal. Workshops provide an excellent format for structured work that encourages participation and shared responsible.

For example, a leadership development workshop can help aspiring managers develop the skills they need to lead their teams and build confidence. Similarly, a communication or public speaking workshop can improve how team members interact with each other and with clients, leading to more efficient and harmonious workplace dynamics.

By addressing specific needs and challenges within the organization, corporate workshops can drive significant improvements in performance and morale.

Skills development and educational workshops

While traditional lectures and teaching formats will always have their place, workshops are a powerful tool for learning. Educational workshops are designed to enhance knowledge, skills, and competencies by focusing on the latest research, trends, and best practices in various industries. Examples of educational workshop ideas include college workshops and industry-specific sessions tailored to meet the specific learning needs of the participants.

Educational workshops are particularly effective because they offer a hands-on, interactive learning experience. Participants can engage with the material in a meaningful way, ask questions, and receive feedback from experts and peers.

This approach not only deepens understanding but also helps attendees retain and apply what they’ve learned. Whether it’s a workshop on the latest technological advancements or a session on effective teaching strategies, educational workshops are a powerful tool for continuous learning and growth.

Creative workshops

Remember: all workshops have a goal. Sometimes that goal can be lofty and specific, such as in a strategic planning session or project retrospective. Other times, the goal of workshop events can be to simply create space for fun, memorable experiences with a group.

Creative workshops are interactive sessions where participants get the chance to practice and develop creative skills in a safe and engaging environment.

Examples of creative workshop ideas you might use with a group include art classes, music, and creative writing workshops. These sessions encourage participants to think outside the box, develop new skills, and build confidence in their creative abilities, all while sharing the experience with others.

For event planners, creative workshop ideas can be a great addition to a conference program, networking event or as part of a company retreat. At SessionLab for example, we always try to build in time for collective creativity during our team retreats, whether that’s an art class, pottery making workshop or even cooking together.

In our experience, the right creative workshop can also have profound effects on things like team cohesion, trust and general happiness. Especially as a fully remote team, we’ve found running a virtual workshop with the express goal to have fun and be creative as a group has helped keep our emotional batteries running high.

Corporate workshop ideas

Workshops are one of the most effective ways for a group to get things done. In a corporate environment, workshops can be used to help teams tackle workplace challenges, create innovation, learn new skills or even have memorable, team bonding experiences.

One misconception I’ve seen is that workshops are fluffy by nature, only for exploring creative topics and learning skills, and not for serious work. On the contrary, workshops provide a structured space for collaboration in whatever form is needed by the group.

You might run a leadership development workshop where would-be managers can share experiences, practice their skills and gain confidence as leaders. On the other hand, you might run a workshop to plan your yearly strategy or resolve an emerging problem.

It’s key to remember that workshops are goal and outcome oriented, designed to reach an intended outcome by engaging all participants in the process. If you have a clear goal and bring the right people together in pursuit of that goal, there are few things you cannot achieve in a workshop.

What’s more: workshops produce results quickly. Under the guidance of a facilitator, a corporate workshop can move things forward more swiftly than endless emails or Slack threads.

Here are some impactful ideas for your next corporate workshop:

Leadership development

Great leadership doesn’t happen overnight. The best organizations know that investing in learning and development is a powerful way to equip new and existing managers with the skills they need to lead their teams well.

Leadership development workshops often comprise a combination of training scenarios, skills development and peer support, all designed to engage new leaders and improve their abilities.(Read more on this in our guide on how to run a leadership workshop.)

While it’s possible to teach many of these skills asynchronously, the experiential format of a workshop can help spread best practices, improve learning potential and help new leaders learn from one another as they grow. Interactive workshop activities can play a crucial role in making these sessions more engaging and effective for leadership development.

The workshop format also allows participants to practice leadership skills and techniques under the guidance of an experienced facilitator. Yes, a role-playing scenario might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but in the right format, it can help new leaders feel more confident in leading and managing their team.

Check out the leadership development workshop template to see what such a workshop looks like in practice.

You might also find our collection of leadership training activities helpful for building out a learning and development program.

Team building

Team building can come in many different forms. Happy hours, escape rooms and fun games can all strengthen relationships in your team, but you can go further.

Team building workshops offer a dedicated space for collaboration that helps teams practice and demonstrate skills that will also help in their day-to-day work. These can come in the form of group problem-solving games, collaborative challenges or even exercises designed to expressly deepen connections and help people get to know each other more.

In our experience, these kinds of workshops can help improve communication, create memorable shared experiences and build bonds.

Explore our team development day workshop template to see how you might effectively structure such a team workshop.

Have limited time but want to add team building elements into your session? Our collection of team building activities come in all shapes and sizes so you can easily plug them into an existing agenda!

Design sprint 

When you have a tough problem without a clear solution, a design sprint is one of the best ways to approach the issue. First developed at Google, the design sprint is a structured approach for teams to explore a problem and ideate, refine, prototype and test solutions.

One of the major strengths of a facilitated workshop is structure. When collaborating on tough challenges with others, it can be easy to go down a rabbit hole or spend time inefficiently. Workshop formats like the design sprint have been tested and refined by facilitators for years. By using the benefit of all that experience, you’ll instead be able to focus on resolving challenges and creating innovation.

Check out the 4-day Design Sprint 2.0 template by AJ&Smart for a ready-to-use method for solving tough problems. Want to focus on fresh ideas and brainstorming? The one-hour brain sprint template offers a self contained brainstorming workshop that is ideally suited to a short workshop event.

Diversity and inclusion workshop

Workshops led with the guidance of an expert facilitator can be one of the most powerful ways to explore emotionally charged and complex concerns. Promoting awareness and action on diversity and inclusion can help create an equitable and inclusive work environment, but it’s not enough to just update company policies and ask folks to read up.

Workshop events can be used to create a safe forum for discussion, help participants feel seen and heard and to give practical examples to the group. By dedicating time and space to DEI, you can ensure that it’s given full attention by participants and ensure complete understanding too. 

When running a diversity and inclusion workshop, we’d recommend that you bring in an external facilitator to help. The expertise of a skilled facilitator with dozens of DEI workshops under their belt can’t be underestimated. Furthermore, the role of a facilitator as an unbiased third party can really help create the psychological safety needed for such a topic. 

Project opening and closing

So your team is starting a big new project. Isn’t the best bet just to email all stakeholders and say you’re getting started? Nope. A workshop is an ideal forum for kicking off complex projects, engaging all stakeholders and surfacing potential issues before they arise. 

A project kickoff is designed to engage all participants in the planning process and ensure that work will be smooth once you get started. It’s a great place for everyone involved to air concerns, ask questions and get aligned. You’ll often end with a list of follow-up actions, check-in dates and clear scope for the project.

Closing a project with a dedicated workshop is also important. A retrospective workshop can ensure key learnings are shared, celebrations are held and that the project is symbolically closed. 

Kickoff and project retrospectives are two formats that especially benefit from meta analysis. Take the time to reflect on the process itself and improve how you run these sessions in order to make future workshops even more effective.

Read more in this guide for running project kickoffs or try using this kickoff workshop template as the basis for your next agenda. 

Running a retrospective? This retrospective workshop template provides a simple and effective structure to aid reflection and help team members work on concrete steps for improvement.

Strategy planning workshop

Working on company strategy is rarely easy. Companies have many moving parts, competing priorities and organizational needs. The process of exploring, planning and implementing a strategy is often best served by the dedicated space of a workshop. 

A strategic planning workshop typically involves a process of exploring possible strategic directions and tasks, discussing them in line with overall goals and then formulating a plan for implementation.

Getting your best minds in one room and following a structure such as this EOS strategy planning workshop can help ensure decisions are made effectively and that all stakeholders are able to contribute effectively. 

Templatizing your process is a great way to simplify and improve how your strategy is created and rolled out. At SessionLab, we run a quarterly strategy planning process that benefits from reusing a recurring agenda and a Miro board that’s been refined over many strategy planning sessions.

Learn more about how we approach this process at SessionLab with this guide to running a strategic planning workshop.

Company values workshop

Your organization’s values determine everything from cultural norms inside your company to your direction and focus. It’s not uncommon for companies to develop internal friction if these values aren’t defined or people aren’t aligned on how best to live and practice them. 

A company values workshop is designed to either define or refine a company’s core values. Your team will explore questions like: What does the company stand for? What is most important to us? How do we want to treat one another and work together? How are our shared values reflected in our goals and company mission? 

By dedicating time and space to exploring these as a team, you can help create alignment, improve team cohesion and create a set of core values you’re proud to stand beside. 

Want an example? Explore your team values and define how you want to work together in this team canvas workshop template.

Stress management and mindfulness workshop

Mindfulness in the workplace needs more than lip service in order to be effective. While wellness budgets and no-meetings Tuesdays can help, you can have a more profound and lasting effect on employee stress levels by holding workshops designed to help solve root causes and teach valuable techniques to your team.

Stress management workshops and sessions dedicated to mindfulness can come in many forms. You might teach time management techniques and provide resources for reducing stress and achieving a better work-life balance. Alternatively, you might host a problem solving workshop on the topic of workplace stress and discuss the various obstacles and opportunities for tackling the issue.

Remember that workshops are emergent by nature: even bringing people together to talk about the subject can have transformative effects on how your team approaches stress and self care.

Using a group discussion format like World Cafe to invite folks to self-organize and discuss what’s most important on the topic of stress and mindfulness can help whatever needs to surface come to the fore.

Training workshops

When you need to teach your employees important new skills, competencies or train them in the use of technical equipment, you’ll likely need to run a training session or distribute learning materials. While some concepts can be taught with a single email or seminar, important topics can benefit from the experiential learning environment of a training workshop. 

While classic training may be more passive in nature, training workshops are designed to be interactive and practical. Participants will be expected to get involved, share their experiences with other participants and learn by doing. Training sessions like these are especially effective when teaching softer skills or when it’s beneficial to receive instant feedback from the trainer or facilitator. 

You’ll find more on this in our guide to running a training session and in our various skills development workshops below. 

You might also find this training workshop template – heavily informed by Kolb’s learning cycle – useful when it comes to structuring your next training event.

Skill development and educational workshop ideas

The distinction between a training session and a workshop can feel quite narrow, especially in the hands of an experienced facilitator or trainer. While training sessions may have a pass/fail criteria for participants learning a new skill, skills development workshops are often softer in approach.

For example, if you need your participants to master a piece of highly precise technical equipment, that’s a training session. If you want your participants to practice various ways of giving and receiving feedback in order to improve their interpersonal skills at work, that would work great as an engaging workshop.

In this section, we’ll share some ideas for workshops where learning and skills development is the primary goal. These are extremely useful for developing individual competencies or helping teams work together more effectively moment to moment. Let’s take a peek.

Conflict Resolution

Conflict and friction can occur whenever passionate people work together. In our experience, conflict is often a sign that something is important and needs extra attention. What’s important is that people are able to express a difference of opinion without it escalating into an unproductive or damaging discussion. As such, it’s important that companies equip their teams with the skills to manage and resolve conflicts effectively.

Developing conflict resolution skills in a workshop can look like a combination of case study analyses, role-playing activities and de-escalation techniques. It can also be incredibly effective to work on building team trust or giving participants tools like active listening and self management techniques that can help ensure discussions are more inclusive and productive in the first place. 

Read more in our collection of conflict resolution techniques, which contains exercises designed to teach conflict management skills alongside frameworks for discussing and deescalating conflict.

Emotional intelligence in the workplace

Emotional intelligence is one of those so-called soft skills that is incredibly important to the functioning of any organization. Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and understand the feelings of yourself and others and respond effectively. When folks are emotionally intelligent, communication is good, people feel seen and heard and collaboration is a joy. Without it, communication breakdowns occur, people feel misunderstood and it can be hard to get anything done.

Emotional intelligence can be broken down into distinct skillsets and techniques such as self awareness, self management, empathy, group dynamics and more. This self awareness workshop template is an effective session for exploring and strengthening this skillset with practical techniques. 

Want more? See this guide to emotional intelligence activities for more practical techniques and workshop ideas you can bring to virtual workshops and in-person sessions alike.

Decision-making

The ability to quickly make effective decisions is an important skill to master. In truth, making good decisions often comes from a composite of many different skills working together and the application of decision making models. Good decision makers need to leverage everything from critical thinking, root cause analyses and interpersonal skills when making decisions.

Running a workshop on improving decision making skills can have a profound impact on how your team makes decisions both micro and macro. Making faster, more informed decisions about how to spend your day and what to prioritize can often be as valuable as how to make a decision on company direction, for example. Such a workshop would likely be a mix of decision making exercises, advice on how to make good decisions and moments for participants to discuss and practice as a group. 

Explore possible exercises and decision making workshop ideas with our collection of decision making techniques. 

Running a workshop where you want to actually make an important decision as a group? This is an excellent idea!

Read more in our guide on how to run a group decision making process. You’ll find heaps of tips and structures that will help your group discuss and finalize even the most complex decisions.

The decision making workshop template is also an excellent example of how you might structure such a process.  

Effective communication skills

How we communicate and share information can have a profound effect on our relationships and the work we get done. Whether it’s for customer facing teams or for improving internal processes, an effective communication workshop can be a powerful way to solve issues and improve efficiency in your organization. 

An effective communication workshop should include a combination of activities designed to improve self awareness and clarity, as well as tools for giving productive feedback and practicing active listening. It’s common for workshop participants to also spend time exploring why misunderstandings and miscommunications might occur and discussing how things might be done differently in the future.

This collection of communication games and techniques is a great starting point for running a communication workshop with your team.

Simply adding an active listening exercise or feedback technique like What I Need From You to a team building activity is a great way of developing this skillset and improving team collaboration in your group. 

Storytelling workshop

Humans love stories. Learning how to tell great stories is helpful to everyone from marketers and customer support staff, all the way through to leaders and folks delivering presentations and pitching to clients. 

Storytelling workshops will typically combine group discussions, some expert theory and plenty of opportunity to practice telling our own stories. Personally, I find that starting with examples of stories that have stayed with us is a great leaping-off point that helps keep attendees engaged before leaping into deeper workshop content.

A storytelling workshop typically includes techniques for grabbing the attention of an audience, storytelling devices that help create a compelling narrative and some practice on how to use visual elements, sound and memetic tools to help your stories stick. 

For a taste, you might find this story building activity useful when kickstarting your workshop. Alternatively, this creative writing exercise encouraging folks to write from the perspective of an alien is a good example of how creative explorations can inform how we tell stories.

Facilitation skills

Facilitation is a vital workplace skill that can improve how we hold space and collaborate. Key facilitation skills like process design, group management and consensus-building aren’t just for professional facilitators. Anyone who runs meetings, workshops or collaborates can benefit from these skills, especially if they’re also in a leadership role. 

Running a workshop on how to facilitate effectively can get a bit meta, but it can be an invaluable sandbox for learning how to lead better meetings, training sessions and workshops. It can help folks collaborate better internally and also make client-facing meetings run more smoothly and effectively.

Explore this facilitation skills workshop template to start imparting these valuable skills and begin building a culture of facilitation in your organization.

Effective feedback

The way we give and receive feedback can have a profound impact on our personal and working lives. It’s quite common for people to be afraid of feedback and to avoid giving or receiving feedback altogether. The result can be missed growth opportunities, recurring mistakes and an inability to express how something has made us feel. 

Feedback workshops can help participants understand how important feedback is to personal growth and development while also developing techniques to help make the process easy and productive. 

This art of effective feedback workshop is a simple template that will help teams explore the concept and develop practical feedback techniques they can put into practice immediately.  

Looking for a self-contained activity you can add to your next retreat or team workshop? Check this collection of feedback activities for practical, effective exercises your team can use in a pinch.

Creative thinking and innovation workshops

Creative thinking is a powerful skill to encourage in both our personal and professional lives. In a corporate setting, creativity can be important to everyone from CEO to frontline support. It can help everyone see opportunities for innovation and give them the tools to solve problems.

When people tell me they’re not creative, I’ve often found that they mean “I can’t paint or draw” or “I’m worried about being judged for being creative.” Workshops designed to awaken latent creativity or help people realize how to apply their creative impulses without fear of judgment can be transformative.

Whether it’s in the form of brainstorming activities or creative workshops, remember that creativity is often generative, joyful and gratifying for those involved. That’s even before you begin to think about the impact of those innovative solutions to your business. Take the time to encourage employees to think innovatively and solve problems creatively and you’ll see results both micro and macro.

Check out this collection of creative thinking activities for inspiration that can enliven any session.

Looking for a deeper session? This ideation workshop template provides an effective framework for creating new ideas and creative solutions.

Workshop ideas for business events

Workshops can add immense value to business events, whether you’re running a conference or networking session. Some of my most engaging and memorable experiences at these kinds of events have been when I’ve joined a workshop with people I’ve just met and created something as a group.

Remember that workshops can be effective in many different formats. Putting virtual participants in an online workshop where they get to do deeper work and connect more meaningfully can be more impactful than any number of icebreaker activities.

As with all of the session formats here, it’s important for the event organizer to consider the needs and expectations of the target audience when choosing a topic. If in doubt, ask attendees what they want as part of the event planning process and maybe even invite them to lead a session.

Open Space Technology 

When you bring large groups of people together in a shared goal or area of interest, something special happens. Topics emerge, ideas are shared and its possible to create lots of momentum for change. It’s also possible that the session descends into chaos. So how do you create space for emergence while also maintaining enough structure to ensure action and outcomes?

Open Space Technology was originally created by Harrison Owen and perfected in decades of collaborative work by the Open Space Technology world-wide community. It is an event format when participants of a session co-create an agenda together. To begin, a general topic or theme is decided upon for the open space. Next, participants are invited to propose topics for discussion and host breakout groups who will come together to discuss and work on that topic.

Sessions will then be run in parallel, with a mix of people hosting, contributing and coming and going freely from different sessions. Open space is designed to be emergent, though it has enough structure to allow for sessions to be organized, opened and closed with ease. 

If you have a group of people who all care about a certain topic or who have a giant problem to solve and you’re struggling to know what to focus on, Open Space is a great workshop idea. What emerges organically from a group of passionate people united in purpose is exactly what needs to come up, and it encourages folks to take responsibility, be creative and collaborate in an incredibly powerful way.  

Check out the Open Space Technology template to kickstart your event planning process and create a structured yet dynamic event.

Hackathon

Hackathons can be an extremely powerful way to create momentum and explore tasks in a safe, self-contained way that makes it easy to experiment. At business events, an impromptu or arranged hackathon can mobilize folks with a shared goal and deliver concrete outputs quickly. 

As with any other creative session, hackathons benefit from a careful balance of structure and free space to create innovative ideas. Hackathons typically have a focus area, topic or problem space and a strict timeframe in which teams work together to create a solution or innovation in that space.

Hackathons can be a wonderful addition to an event as they are often multi-disciplinary in nature, inviting participants with different skillsets to work together to create something in a short timeframe. I’d only urge that you take the time to add some structure to proceedings so that things can run smoothly can avoid potential descending into chaos!

Mastermind group 

Sometimes, the best way to learn is from our peers. A mastermind is where a group of skilled and like-minded people come together on a recurring basis for peer coaching and problem solving.

Masterminds work best with a consistent group that allows for accountability and vulnerability, though I’ve seen them create impact even when run as one-off sessions.

I once attended a cybersecurity conference when a mastermind format emerged organically in response to various professionals experiencing similar problems. We ran out first session on the spot and then followed up with online sessions as a group over the next few months. It was a great container for us all to share experiences and help one another solve tough problems. 

It’s also worth noting that Masterminds greatly benefit when there are people with significant experience taking part. Not everyone needs to be an expert, but if you have five people who are all newbies, it can be harder for any advice to be backed up by concrete learnings and practical experience. 

To experience the benefits of the peer-coaching Mastermind experience in a short timespan, you might want to try a Liberating Structure activity called Troika Consulting. This works by putting participants in small huddles of three people, in which one presents their current issue or challenge and the other two act as consultants. You’ll be surprised how much insight can emerge in the span of fifteen minutes!

What are the key characteristics of workshops?

Workshops come in many shapes and sizes and will differ in content and design based on the goal of the session. That said, workshops tend of feature some defining characteristics that collectively ensure that the session will be successful and engaging.

If you’re just getting started or need help understanding how a workshop is different than a meeting or a typical training session, this list will help make the distinction clear while also hopefully selling you on the prospect of running a workshop!

Workshops are an interactive environment

In comparison to lectures and webinars, workshops are interactive by nature. Workshops typically include a mix of practical exercises, group discussions, and real-time problem-solving where everyone is encouraged to participate and learn experientially.

The result is a session that emphazies full engagement and makes the process of working together a joy, rather than a dull, passive experience.

You’ll find a workshop format using interactive elements also encourages ownership and action: ensuring things actually get done after the session. If you find your meetings and events rarely result in decisive action and lack momentum, consider trying an interactive workshop instead!

Workshops have a clear goal and purpose

Workshops should always have a clear goal, such as developing skills, exploring a problem or building connections between team members. This purpose guides everything from the structure of the agenda to specific exercises and outcomes.

When running a workshop, it’s helpful to remember that a clear goal doesn’t always mean concrete, deliverable output.

In soft skills training sessions for example, the goal may be for participants to share previous experiences and practice new techniques as a team. There may not be a test at the end to give a pass/fail, but the goal of improving interpersonal dynamics has still been pursued.

On the other hand, the goal of a strategic planning workshop may include a completed strategy document, ready for the next steps of discovery or implementation.

All these goals are important and facilitators and event organizers should always measure whether they achieved the goal. Just remember that workshops are often very much worth running, even if the output isn’t a physical document: who doesn’t want to improve team cohesion or employee happiness?

Workshops are structured and time-bound

Workshops typically run for a specific amount of time, anything from an hour to multiple sessions over many days. To achieve the goals of the workshop in the allocated timeframe, the facilitator will create structure in the form of an agenda while also time-boxing and guiding the group through activities effectively.

Ever had issues with brainstorming going on for so long that you never get around to make a decision? Workshops can help with that.

Whether its a virtual or in-person workshop, the time-bound format is especially effective for helping attendees focus and leave other concerns at the door. When everyone in the room is gathered for a specific purpose for a specific amount of time, you’ll be surprised by what you can achieve together.

Workshops are facilitated

Workshops typically have a facilitator onboard to help guide the flow of the session, orient the group and provide structure. Teams might bring in an expert facilitator who also happens to be a subject matter expert or a manager or team leader might also take on the facilitator role. In addition to designing the session, the facilitator will also help manage group dynamics, run activities and report back.

The value add of a facilitator cannot be underestimated. Not only are they well positioned to encourage participation and ownership, but they’ll also ensure that the goal of the session is always in mind, whatever dynamically happens during the workshop.

Unsure about what else a facilitator actually does? Find a practical definition of facilitator and explore what they can bring to your session in this guide.

Workshops are dynamic

While workshops always have a concrete goal in mind, the way the best workshops achieve that goal is often dynamic and emergent in nature.

For example, let’s say you’re running a workshop to teach participants conflict resolution skills. The facilitator will have prepared an agenda in advance, but what happens if world events bring a unique energy into the room and some of the activities no longer seem fit for purpose?

Great facilitators will adjust the flow of the workshop in the moment to speak to the needs of the group and facilitate the best route towards the original goal. It takes practice, trust and a strong design foundation, but when it happens, the results can be especially impactful.

What’s next?

A great workshop is probably the best format for bringing people together to get things done. With effective design, good facilitation and the right workshop format, you can encourage participants to take part and create impact as a group. Truly, an engaging workshop can create memorable experiences that leave an indelible and lasting impression on all in attendance. So what are you waiting for?

I hope this list of interactive workshop ideas gives you some inspiration for running your next session and helps get the creative juices flowing!

For next steps, our post on how to plan and organize a workshop offers a practical, step-by-step process that can help you make your ideas a reality.

Check out the accompanying workshop planning template in SessionLab to kickstart your process with an easy to follow agenda that will help you design your next workshop too!

Have any questions or suggestions for other workshop ideas for keeping participants engaged? Get in touch in the comments below!