Have you ever been in a meeting with your team and felt like something was missing? Have you ever done a presentation, only to have everybody turn their heads at the same time and look at each other? Do you want to improve your communication skills but don't know where to start? Do you want better employee retention rates and customer service?
If you answered "yes" to any of these questions then this blog is for you. We will share with you communication exercises, activities, and games that can help improve communication in your workplace.
Emotions are contagious, so it’s important that team members understand each other’s feelings. When working with a team, try to actively identify the emotions of your colleagues. Ask questions, like “What are you feeling right now?” or “What does your work-life look like?” Then ask them to draw something that describes their emotion to the questions.
This indoor communication exercise or game can help your team hone their emotional intelligence. With practice, you can learn to identify emotions in real time and respond accordingly to improve your relationships with colleagues.
What you need: paper and pens
What to do: Split your colleagues into 2 or 3 subgroups. Keep each group in a separate room. Now ask your colleagues to describe their feelings to the above questions using emojis or drawings. Once everyone is done, go around the room and exchange the papers to people in the other rooms. Now ask employees to guess the emotion each person has written down.
After you have tried to guess which one is whose emotion, ask them to guess what they were feeling. Guess the emotion exercises help you to become more aware of nonverbal signs and then draw conclusions about the person’s internal state based on those signs. It is a structured activity that can be done in a group, either in a work setting or in a team outing. It can be done in a large group or broken up into smaller groups.
This communication team activity requires teams to work together on canvas, creating an abstract artwork that represents the organization’s vision. The goal is to then combine their pieces into something larger—a giant big picture! Since each team has had an input into the bigger picture, their interest in the outcome is immediate.
Teams gain an interesting perspective as they work together to create the picture, using foresight and collaboration.
Participants in this challenge are given a large assortment of tools and materials to construct a bike. They must perform in perfect harmony to finish the job first. Once their bike has been constructed and is ready to ride, it is given to a charity that provides these bikes to children in need.
Employees are split into different teams and are given the task of building a roller coaster out of wooden canes, pipes, and zip ties in order to move a ball from point A to point B. A minimum length and design brief need to be followed, along which each team builds a section of the track. Later these sections are put together to form a gigantic roller coaster which will act as a circuit to test using the rollers. The ball must use only gravity with no human intervention; bonus points are awarded for loops, drops, spirals and other design elements. This communication exercise helps your team improve their not only communication skills but also much more like change management skills, creativity skills, strategy skills as they think about how to set up this rollercoaster using the given resources and team skills.
This remote communication game requires your team to get creative with origami. Origami is a Japanese art of paper folding that requires concentration, patience, and precision. There are many visual inputs required in learning origami. You must fold origami using only audio instructions. Concentration, patience, and precision are required to fold origami. You remember the days your art teacher pointed to the paper and said, 'Turn the corner and fold it like this,' but in this game, you will be instructed to 'Bring the top left corner down to the bottom right corner.' There are many interesting results if this alteration is made. It improves visualization, listening, empathy, problem solving, and empathy.
A person selects the sequence of participants for this game. The first person says, 'Once upon a time in my garden and then the second person says 'there was a snake.' The third person adds one line, and so on and so forth. The activity becomes amusing and you can establish a structure as 'intro, plot one, plot two, plot three... and finish' by controlling the time and rounds. The lead must keep the narrative under control and prevent it from going off track.
This activity combines dumb charades and Pictionary to create an alien invasion scenario. It's a great icebreaker for global teams. Here is how it works: What would you and your team do if a UFO landed in front of your office today? You and your colleagues are the first to arrive on the scene, and you must discover what they want. Unfortunately, the aliens don't speak any earthly languages. It's up to you and your colleagues to figure out how to communicate with them. 'Aliens have landed' is a popular activity among remote employees worldwide. Assemble your team and figure out what the extraterrestrials want.
Hacker Trackdown' is an intense and super thrilling communication exercise or team activity for your remote team.
Here are a few story snippets from the activity: Imagine you are at the office and one day none of your systems work and find that your systems have been hacked. Primary diagnostics indicate that sensitive information and top-secret files of your company have been compromised. The hacker plans to sell your organization's sensitive information to a rival organization for a huge profit. The situation demands you to work as a team to stop the hacker from releasing the information before it's too late. Decipher secret messages, solve complex puzzles and track down the hacker within the time limit.
You may like: Most Effective Secret Guide To Master Remote Communication
To sum up
Communication is a vital aspect to every company's success and it is important for companies to do what they can to help their employees with communication. In the end, creating and maintaining a strong workplace might be just as much about personality tests and communication activities as it is about offering high salaries and company perks. In fact, it just might be more. Companies like Zappos have discovered that taking care of employees is an investment that can lead to greater yields in the long run. Many companies are realizing this and are investing in strategies to boost employee communication. There is a lot of value in good communication, especially in the workplace. The above activities, exercises and games will help you develop these skills in your team, with an added bonus of them learning more about each other as individuals and growing as a strong team too!
Bonus: From improving your team’s communication skills to dealing with employee burnout, we have team building activities catering to every team need. Partner with us to unleash the fullest potential of your team with the help of fun and engaging experiences
