40 team-building exercise ideas: activities for today’s product teams
By: Mike Curtis
Tags: Resources, Creativity, Teamwork, Design, UX

Works virtually or in-person

Photo by Kaylee Garrett on Unsplash

Do yoga together

I used to laugh at people that did yoga…then I tried it and didn’t laugh anymore. Yoga clears your mind, centers you, and makes you feel good all over. If you can meet in-person, sign the team up for a yoga class. If not, there are lots of programs online you could follow remotely as a team.

Start a book club

The best thing about a book club is you can do it from anywhere. Pick a book, get reading, and set up a regular cadence to get together and talk about it. It’s a great way to be introduced to new material and share insights with your team that doesn’t always have to be work related.

Volunteer locally or virtually

I love this one! Serve someone else and do it as a team. Sew masks, donate your time at a shelter, clean up a city street, put hygiene kits together, make care packages for people in assisted living and nursing homes. Have someone on the team take the lead to find ways to give back to your community and get to work!

Make a team movie

Take pictures of all the activities you do and work together as a team to make a movie. Come up with fun ideas. Make a horror film. Make a music video. With free apps like iMovie on our laptops and phones and amazing cameras on them, you can throw together some really cool movies for your team that will be remembered forever.

Create an emoji song

Split your team into groups of two. Each group has to pick a popular song, one that most people should know, and use Emojis only to write out the title of the song. Then, share it with the other groups and see if they can guess your song.

Let’s see if you can guess this one: 🧊 🧊 👶

Leave a comment on this story if you know the answer.

Design team t-shirts

Who doesn’t love swag? Come up with a cool design for your team. Maybe it’s your company logo with a twist or simply a design that resonates with your team. It’s not expensive to print a few shirts or baseball caps. If you have the budget, get ’em done professionally or grab some iron-on paper and do it yourself.

Do a gift exchange

Why wait until Christmas? Why not Christmas in July or…whenever? Draw names, set a budget, and find something cool for your teammate. If you don’t know what they like, this is a great opportunity to ask others on the team. Get to know their interests, their favorite candy, favorite drink, hobbies, and more so you can select a really cool gift for them.

Have a hackathon day — work on anything

Give your team one day every quarter where they can work on whatever they want — so long as it contributes to the overall mission of the company. Let their imaginations run wild. Let them converse with all members of the organization to bring their ideas to life. Then, bring everyone together at the end of the hackathon and have people present what they worked on. Give out awards for innovation and creativity.

Watch a TV show you all like

Set aside 30-minutes on a certain day of the week where you all unwind by watching an episode of the same show together. There are lots of ways to do this virtually too. Pick a show, grab some food, binge watch some TV, and talk about the episodes as you watch them.