Team building is a crucial component of every work environment. Most people interact with their workmates as much as they do with friends and family, and lack of proper harmony between team members can feel like attending an awkward family dinner every day of the week. It is easy to dismiss how important team building is in strengthening the bonds we form with our teammates, which in the long run help us work better together.
What factors affect team building?
No one factor decides how a team is going to perform. Team members might have disagreements with one another, with their unrelatedness preventing them from coming to a compromise. Troubleshooting might be a problem when an employee is not familiar with the hardware he has to set up to work at home. Whatever the problem may be, better communication between teammates will always solve problems faster.
Good synergy between teammates
There is no “I” in teamwork, and it is very important for the success of a team for everyone to work in harmony. Team building events are the perfect occasion for employees to let off some steam and get to know each other better beyond cooperating in daily tasks. By having a better understanding of one another, people can prioritize everybody’s needs more effectively and produce superior results.
Technological advantages and disadvantages
Thanks to modern technological advances in the way we reach each other such as video meetings we have been able to extend our connections on a scale previously only dreamed of. However, the marvels of technology only reach as far as our understanding of how to use them goes, and many home offices have dealt with unexpected troubles due to not having the IT department nearby.
The switch to working remotely
There is more to working remotely than using the right equipment. The people behind the screens are the real protagonists who keep the show going. Restructuring the way communications work has been quite the challenge for many companies, especially for those where working over the distance was not even considered as a possibility before the pandemic.
How Team Building Questions Can Help Your Team
Get everyone better acquainted with working remotely
Several systems and processes used during work, like video-conferencing software, are similar to those used during team building activities. This gives team members who are not that well acquainted with such systems a more relaxed environment to practice using them. Since the focus is not on work-related issues, they have more headspace to better learn how to use software or how processes work.
Bond better through team building exercises
Working remotely and the changes to daily life produced by the covid-19 crisis have taken a heavy toll on the mental health of a considerable part of the population. Team building activities help teammates connect with each other and have some quality time together, building trust in a time where most people feel more isolated than ever before.
Break the barrier between you and your team
Many employees might feel intimidated by the figure of authority presented by their manager or other superior, and maybe the current work environment has not been particularly welcoming to their personal space needs. A quiz game will help them loosen up and better navigate the ins and outs of their job without being afraid of belonging to the team.
What are good team building questions?
Experts in team building events will tell you that one very important reason to perform team building activities is to allow team members to rediscover themselves in a non-professional context. By adding the following trivia questions for work meetings you can help your team build stronger emphatic ties and see themselves as more than mere coworkers.
Icebreaker Team Building Questions
A quick round of questions can help team members warm up and get them ready for further team building exercises. Icebreakers are convenient go-to questions that don’t require much effort to understand and can be used to promote conversation.
Quick trivia questions for team members
- What is your favorite color?
- What ice cream flavor is the best?
- What color are the socks you’re wearing?
- What was your favorite school subject?
- What did you do last weekend?
Workplace-related trivia questions
- How long have you worked here?
- What was your first job?
- What is a tool or skill you can’t do without?
- What advice would you give to team members who are just starting?
- What would you like to ask team members that are more experienced than you?
Team Building Questions about Personal Tastes and Hobbies
Questions about personal taste are a great way for shy teammates to open up and share a bit about themselves, and by knowing what kind of activities they enjoy we can have a better understanding of what kind of people they are. They also help create bonds of camaraderie between people with similar tastes.
Hobby-related sample questions
- Do you have a particular hobby or activity you enjoy doing?
- How long have you been practicing your favorite hobby?
- Do you collect something?
- Are you the master of any skill or activity not related to the work you do?
- Are there any hobbies you would like to get into but haven’t tried yet?
Movie/TV show-related sample questions
- What is your favorite movie/TV show?
- Have you ever binge-watched a show?
- Are there any move lines you can recite by heart?
- What is a movie you would recommend everyone to watch?
- Do you have a favorite cartoon character?
- Which fictional character are you happy is NOT real?
- What part of real life would you like to be more like the movies?
- Is there any movie or show where you wish the bad guy had won?
- If they were making a movie about your life what would it be called?
- Imagine you are an extra in the plot of the last movie you watched. How lucky or unlucky are you to be in your situation?
Music-related sample questions
- Do you have a favorite artist or band?
- Do you like to dance? Are you any good at it?
- What are your favorite genres of music?
- What song or songs did you listen to the most during the last year?
- Do you play an instrument?
- What musical instrument do you think best describes your personality?
- What kind of music do you think your team would play if you were a musical group?
- If you had a theme song, what would it be?
- What was the last music act you saw live?
- Are you looking forward to going to a particular festival/show once covid-19 restrictions are fully lifted?
Sport and outdoor related sample questions
- When was the last time you exercised?
- Do you play sports?
- Do you follow a sports team?
- If you played on a professional sports team what would your jersey number be?
- If the whole team were to play a sport, what would you have them play?
- What sports, if any, do you watch on TV?
- If you were to go to the Olympics, what discipline would you compete in?
- When was the last time you went out of the city to spend some time with nature?
- What is the best season to go out on walks and why?
- Would you rather spend a day at the beach or trekking through a mountain path?
Funny team building questions
Laughter is very important for the human psyche. We laugh to let those around us know that everything is OK and we always laugh around those we hold closest to us. Workplace-related trivia questions can benefit from a bit of laughter to loosen up the nerves. You can catch team members off-guard with a funny question or have a bunch of them ready to share with the team.
Funny virtual team building sample questions
- What old-school slang term would you like to bring back?
- If you were a fly, where would you fly to?
- What is the worst piece of advice you would give somebody?
- What rumor would you like to start about yourself?
- If your keyboard could speak, what would it say about you?
Fun team building exercises
A way to create fun quiz questions for adults and reinforce teamwork is to formulate questions where teammates can have a chance to chip in and add a funny spin to the previous answer. Here are some examples:
- Team member A chooses one superpower they wish they had.
Team member B chooses a wacky side-effect.
- Team member A chooses any country in the world they would like to travel to.
Team member B chooses the method of transportation.
- Team member A says what their dream vehicle would be.
Team member B decides what sound the horn would make.
- Team member A chooses an animal they would wish to transform to.
Team member B chooses what habitat they would live in.
- Team member A chooses a real or fictional character they would wish to meet.
Team member B chooses the place of their meeting.
Other types of team building questions
Food and drink-related sample questions
- Do you like to cook? If so, what is your specialty?
- If you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life, what would that be?
- What is the perfect drink for a Saturday evening?
- What is the best food to commemorate a special event?
- What two foods shouldn’t mix together well but do?
- If you could ban one food item, what would it be and why?
- Is there any hot beverage you would rather drink cold, or vice-versa?
- What dessert do you wish would grow on trees?
- What unhealthy food or drink do you wish wasn’t bad for your health?
- If you could take anyone (real, historic or fictitious) to dinner, who would you take and why?
Hypothetical situation-related sample questions
- If there was a monster under your bed, what habits of yours would it complain about?
- If you could choose one invention to erase from history what would it be?
- If you could send a modern object to the past, what would you send and when would you send it to?
- Aliens contact you and ask you about our world. What is the first thing you tell them about?
- If you were to found your own country, what would you call it and what would the flag look like?
Engaging word-related team building activities
- Say a word, then have a teammate quickly say the first word that comes to their mind when they hear the word you said. Other teammates can also join, making a chain of word impressions.
- Give team members a choice of three movies, three books, three carpentry tools, etc. to take to a deserted island.
Wanna customize a team building activity?
Coeur À L’ouvrage will help you better prepare your team building events and ensure you have a delightful team building experience. Strengthen the bonds between your team members and improve their engagement. The emotional distress caused by the pandemic can be lessened by teammates discovering each other’s human side and new opportunities arise for team members to learn how to better work with each other.
If the conditions allow it, a limited gathering of team members following social distancing protocol can be implemented alongside the virtual team activities. With this approach, small teams of 10 people or less can enjoy outdoor team building events in any part of the world!
Our team building activities begin with a video “teaser” personalized for your team and delivered to their email addresses days or weeks before the event taking place. Before the event there will be some time for everyone to get familiarized with the software we will be using. The team will then head outdoors to partake in fun team building exercises, ending with testimonies from the participants and a sharing of the highlights of the event.