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Effective Group Activities for Team Building

Priya Johnson
Team building is an important aspect that needs to be focused upon in every arena of life. Wherever there are a bunch of people, there arises the need for team building. Have a look at some games that will help break the ice, and bring people on the same page.
Ask any lecturer, team leader, boss, preacher, or any leader and they will tell you how important it is to build a team that gels well with one another, and works towards a goal in cohesion.
Most of the failures that occur, most of the deals that are lost, most of the disappointments seen at the end of the day, are spearheaded not because of the lack of individual talent, but because of the lack of teamwork.
We, as human beings are interdependent and linked to one another. Thus, to taste success, we need to work together, hand in hand, hauling those left behind us and looking at the greater picture. By including some group activities in one's curriculum or lecture, one can help develop bond formations between team members, delegates, parishioners, students, etc.

Balloon Frenzy

Number of Participants: Any

Material Required: 2-3 balloons per participant, a stopwatch, music player, steel spoon, and plate.
Game: This ice-breaking activity will surely get the group chattering and laughing at the end of it. Get all the participants to stand in a circle. Give each person a balloon and leave the rest of the balloons on the floor besides the human circle.
Put on some music and ask the participants to begin bounding the balloon without allowing it to fall to the ground.
Every 5 seconds add one balloon into the circle, giving more balloons for the members to bounce. This means besides bouncing their own balloon, the participants have to bounce the team's balloons as well.
For every dropped balloon there is a penalty, which will be announced really loudly by banging the plate to the spoon. This will create more tension in the air!
The game allows 6 penalties, after which the stop watch has to be stopped and the time has to be recorded. Then, if time permits, the group can play the same game again, this time trying to break the previous time limit.

Treasure Hunt

This is one of those team building exercises that truly tests most aspects of teamwork. It's a fun game, but can get frustrating if the team does not work together.
Number of Participants: Any

Materials Required: A plastic bag, a piece of blank paper, a pen, and a few assorted items like toys, bottles, bags, etc.
Prior Preparation: This game needs to be played in a place where you can have access to the playing area way before the participants come. Moreover, it should not be an open grass field or lawn, because you need lots of crevices and spaces to hide things. Once this issue is settled, get on with collecting small articles (preferably unwanted items).
List these articles on a piece of paper. So, if you have hidden 30 items, now split the 30 items into groups of 3.
List each group as A, B, and C. This means each group has a different set of items allotted to them. Hide these items behind bushes, under dried leaves, and several other places. Your job doesn't end here. Next, sit and jot down names of 5 items that are commonly found on people like finger rings, shoe laces, hair clip, necklace, and cell phone.
Add these 5 common items to each list. Thus, the final list contains 15 total items. Your prior preparation ends here! Reduce or increase the number of items depending on the number of participants.
Game: Sort the participants into three groups; A, B, and C. You can give them cool names if you want. Ask them to stand in a line and hold hands to form a human chain. One hand of the first and last member of the human chain will be free.
Give the first member the list we prepared earlier and the last member a plastic bag. The game is to go around the entire campus (place boundaries if the area is vast) and hunt for the hidden items.
The rule is that no group is at any given time allowed to break the human chain, not even when they find an item.
Any break will lead them to disqualification. The idea is to run in a chain, and when an item has been found, the first member of the chain needs to lift the item with his or her free hand and place it in the plastic bag of the last member of the chain. This way they have to collect all the items.
About the ring, shoelace, etc., the team members need to figure how to get them off their team members without breaking the chain. They have two free hands, so it's up to their creativity! The team which collects all the items first and reaches the starting point is the winner.
These were just two simple, yet fun and effective group activities that you can try out. There are scores of such team building games that you can use as tools to initiate sparks of friendship and team spirit in the group you are working with. All the best!