HR MANAGEMENT - Team-Building Exercises Using Creativity

Team-Building Exercises Using Creativity

by Audra Bianca, Demand Media

Team-building exercises bring employees together.

Your small business can use team-building exercises to form members into a cohesive group. Focus your team on specific goals or try a brainstorming session. You want individuals to share ideas so the team will become more effective in completing work activities. As the team leader, select the right exercise for the team's needs. No two teams are alike.

Bring an Idea

Focus your team on a topic by sharing it in advance of a brainstorming session. Set aside an hour or two when the team will brainstorm ideas in a conference room with a big white board, or bring along a pad of chart paper. If there are multiple topics to cover, set a limit for how much time you can spend on each topic, just as in a regular meeting. Let everyone know that their idea is a potential idea for the group to choose.

Open-Ended Brainstorming Session

Another approach that might work for a very cohesive team that needs to use the right brain is the open-ended brainstorming session. As the leader, present a clear idea for the team to develop into a detailed concept. For example, you might say that the team must create a company newsletter, and let them plan the design and content on their own.

Narrow Set of Limits

Sometimes it's necessary to give the team specific guidelines for a project in a written format, such as printed on paper or displayed on a PowerPoint slide. The team should be able to refer to your guidelines during any brainstorming session. It's important for the team to use combined resources to flesh out the project details in its own way. It's not about how the team gets to the details; it's about achieving the end result within your guidelines.

Text Message Translation Activity

Create a question and a clue for each group to solve in this team-building activity. Translate each clue into text message format using an online service. At the beginning, divide the team into groups of four to six members. Write down the cell phone number of a member from each group. Provide each group with a question. Then send each group a clue via the group member's phone number. Each team must work together to decode the text message and use it as a clue to find the answer to its assigned question.