Employees are human beings with human emotions and needs. One of those needs is to have a trust in one another. If they trust one another, they are more likely to be open with each other and work together towards common goals. Virtually all companies can see the value in that, and that should be encouragement enough to get them interested in some of the team building games that help facilitate that.

Two Truths And One Lie

This is a game that can help employees learn more about how much they already know about each other. It is also a great game for uncovering what employees think about one another and what biases they may have in their heads.

The game is simple and only requires 20 or so minutes to play. You start by having everyone write down two truths about themselves and one lie. They should make the lie as believable as possible so as to make it difficult to figure out which things are true and which are a lie. Once everyone has these written down, each person reads theirs out loud to the group one by one and the group tries to decide which is the lie.
It is a fun game which encourages teamwork and learning more about one another.

The Silent Trading Game

In this game, employees are given a card or two with various goods that they possess. They are also instructed on what goods they need to receive from others. They are not allowed to show their card(s) to anyone but must try to trade with others to get the things that they need.

The catch to this game is that they are not allowed to speak. They must use non-verbal communication to get the point across to others about what kind of things they need from one another. It is not easy, but it does encourage players to work with each other and use their non-verbal skills to get what they want.

Believe it or not, a lot of the communication we do with one another is non-verbal to begin with. As a result, this game is only tapping into a skill that we should be using quite frequently anyway.

Scavenger Hunt

There is always the classic Scavenger Hunt game to fall back on when other games are too burdensome or too hard to explain. This game is another good one for team building. It involves teams working together to find hidden items based on clues created by those who have hidden the items.

It is more challenging than some might think, but the bottom line is that it evolves combining brain power to solve the puzzles.

While these games may seem like they are designed for school children, in reality anyone can get a kick out of them. They may start out awkward at first, but over time most embrace the reality of the games and end up gaining something valuable from them.