Best Team Building Games Classes Near Me: Find In-Person & Virtual Training

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Strategic activities and events that are designed to help a group collaborate toward a shared goal, discuss important issues constructively, and build stronger relationships. Whether you’re meeting virtually or at the office, doing activities together can energize your team and brighten their day, providing a morale boost and a reconnection to your company or organization’s mission.

Humans have cooperated and collaborated since before the early days of civilization, but the concept of team building first emerged in America around the 1920s and 1930s when applying psychology began to gain traction in the business world. Edward Bernays pioneered the public relations industry on the principle that understanding and tweaking human thought and emotion could convince consumers to buy products while researchers began applying behavioral psychology to workers as well as customers to improve business bottom lines.

The team building industry was officially born in the 1990s, as some of the first event companies emerged to facilitate team bonding activities for organizations. Then there was the launch of the internet, which was the catalyst for companies focusing more on internal operations and adopting similar cultures and attitudes towards teamwork. Today, team building exercises are commonplace in most work environments, especially corporate ones. Finding the right exercise can be challenging and will be dependent upon your organization’s goals and the wants and needs of your team. It’s important to choose an activity everyone feels safe doing and that will foster connection.

This article will explore various types of team building activities, why you should leverage them for your team, and the various advantages to different kinds of team building events. Keep reading below to learn more.

Why Host Team Building Games?

There are many reasons why you should learn team building. You’ve probably heard it many times: teamwork makes the dream work. Team building games often prove this to be true. If you work in HR, are a team manager, or oversee volunteers for an organization, learning team building can help you become a better leader. Collaboration is key on any team, whether you work in finance, marketing, healthcare, manufacturing, the nonprofit sector, or in any other industry.

Team building games are an excellent way to reward your hard-working employees with a little fun. Showing your appreciation for their continued dedication can bolster morale, reestablish company trust and employee commitment, and increase productivity. Plus, happy employees and a healthy work environment often mean the client will also be happy with the results.

In-person team building events often use event venues outside the office, which is always good for your employees’ productivity, creativity, and health. Stepping outside of your usual space to bond with your coworkers in a “non-work” environment can help break down barriers and allow for deeper connections. This environment offers a fun, lighthearted space to reassert your company’s values, beliefs, traditions, and mission. Employees who feel like they’re working towards a greater good and feel aligned with their company’s vision often report being happier in their workplace. Team building is a great time to remind them of these things and show them the more personable side of a typically professional environment.

Team building events can strengthen your working community, and make the work environment a place your employees love to come back to every day. Groups that attend team building events tend to be more communicative and collaborative and are more effective at making collective decisions. So, consider what types of team building activities would best suit your team and their wants and needs. If your team is remote, you’ll want to consider what team building activities are best suited for a virtual setting and how supplies will be provided to participants, if they’re needed.

All of this and more will be discussed below. Plus, if you keep reading, you’ll be able to learn about current in-person and remote team building game offerings through CourseHorse.

What Will You Do in a Team Building Game?

While team building exercises are fun, they also offer many more benefits. It may be surprising how many different skills you can learn in one team building exercise. A few of the big hitters are outlined below to help you get a better idea.

Trust Building

According to the Harvard Business Review, employees at high-trust companies report 74% less stress, 106% greater energy, and 50% higher productivity. With team building, workers learn to support and fall back on one another when needed. The trust you build also reduces micromanagement and makes employees feel safe to engage in open communication. In its 2016 global CEO survey, PwC reported that 55% of CEOs think that a lack of trust is a threat to their organization’s growth, so using team building to foster trust can drastically change your team and company’s long-term goals.

Cross-Department Connection

Building a strong business isn’t just about how team members work within their immediate teams; it's also about collaboration with other departments. Cross-functional collaboration is essential to meet objectives that require people from different teams to work together. Team building can help employees familiarize themselves with people in different teams rather than working in a silo with direct team members, forming positive relationships that lead to a more productive business.

Improved Communication

Most team building activities and games require team members to communicate well. According to Team Building Hub, 63% of leaders agree that team-building activities improve communication among employees. Improved communication is even more important in today’s remote and hybrid work environments. With most communication happening via email, messaging, and video calls, effective communication becomes critical when we lose the ability to read body language and environmental cues.

Increased Engagement, Morale, and Productivity

It’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day of your job, so a team building exercise is a great way to generate communal focus and intention. These things can help improve participants’ sense of self and connect them with the role they play in the grand scheme of things. Boosted engagement and morale are known to improve productivity, and team building exercises also allow participants to pick up new knowledge and skills; sharpen their current skills; understand one another’s weaknesses, strengths, and aptitude for certain tasks; and properly divide and conquer their workload accordingly.

How Long Will Team Building Games Last?

Learning team building games is usually an easy and straightforward process so it typically doesn’t take much time. The most time-consuming part of the process is usually deciding which team building games or activities to pursue. You’ll want to consider the members of your team, their personalities and interests, and what your goals are for the experience.

The actual team building event is typically only a few hours long, at most. The duration will vary depending on the activity or game chosen but, generally speaking, they are fairly short and can be easily scheduled within your team’s work hours. The skills learned in these short classes can have a lifelong impact. Better communication and improved collaboration will serve your employees and teams well for years to come, making the short-term investment well worth it in the long run.

What Are the Advantages of Hosting Team Building Games?

As previously discussed, team building activities allow participants to build trust in themselves and each other, form cross-department connections, improve communication, and increase engagement, morale, and productivity.

Team building also allows you to flex existing skills or learn new ones. You can practice applying skills in new environments and with members of other teams. New skills learned in a team building exercise allow participants to put them into action in a low-stress environment. This can help them become more comfortable with these skills that they can then use in a professional setting.

Team building activities are also a great way to show your staff or teammates gratitude for their ongoing work. Employees who feel respected and acknowledged appropriately by their employers often report more contentment at work and a desire to remain with their current company. Team building can help companies increase their retention rates and hold on to valuable top-performing workers.

Best Team Building Games

Hosting team building at your office or chosen location can allow teams and departments to come together in-person and foster stronger professional relationships. CourseHorse offers many team building games that can be brought to the location of your choice. A few of these offerings across the country have been outlined below, but be sure to check your local area for more options.

Located in Chicago? Check out Office Olympics, a series of team-based, fun, hands-on, and generally silly competitions that will get your group laughing as they compete for gold. A facilitator will welcome the group, go over the rules of the game, and start the event with high energy. Groups will then engage in silly challenges such as type-racing, Family Feud-style challenges, racing to build the tallest marshmallow towers, playing harmonicas, and spoon races with props provided by CourseHorse.

Escape Room: Mission Mars is also offered in the Windy City. Your spaceship has crash-landed on Mars, and with only 60 minutes until a deadly solar flare, the pressure is on! Through a series of puzzles, you’ll work together with your teammates to repair your ship’s systems and relaunch in time. Want to make your special event even more special? Speak to CourseHorse’s concierge team about customizing your event with things like a happy hour, catering, and more.

Do you have a team of trivia lovers in NYC? Check out NYC: Private Trivia where you can flex your mental muscles as you face off in a friendly trivia competition with your work team. Through four varying rounds of play, participants will laugh and compete fiercely with other teams in a format that emulates lighthearted bar trivia events. The trivia style changes every round, so your team will need their ears, their eyes, and maybe even their dancing shoes to make it through.

NYC Pictionary is a great option for the more artistically minded. Your group will be split into teams to go head-to-head in speed drawing challenges. Team members will work together to guess what their teammate is drawing on a whiteboard as fast as possible. There will be easy (snake), medium (jet ski), and difficult (son-in-law) prompts to keep things interesting.

If you’re located in Los Angeles, check out Guess That Price, a thrilling experience as you compete against friends and/or coworkers to accurately estimate the prices of various products and experiences. You and your team will work closely together in an hour to determine the exact prices of products, ranging from grocery items to luxurious vacations. From high-tech gadgets to dream vacations, test your pricing skills in a fun and interactive environment.

Game Night: Battle Royale is also offered in the Los Angeles area. You and your teammates will compete in a series of classic board games in this fun group event. Let the best team win…and be named the Game Night Masters! An energetic facilitator will guide you through three rounds of games, promoting team building and friendly competition.

90s Cartoon Trivia is available for teams in Houston, Texas, featuring four rounds of different style trivia over 60 minutes that center around the cartoons of the 90s. Designed for the avid watchers of Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, this trivia will test your knowledge of all animation in the 90s. From Tommy Pickles and The Rugrats to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, we'll make sure you paid attention to every episode.

Looking for holiday party options? The White Elephant Team Gift Experience in Houston can help with that. A facilitator will welcome the group, go over the rules of the game, and start the event with high energy. Hosted over CourseHorse’s custom-built White Elephant game app, there will be a set of wonderful, quirky, and diverse gifts that each participant will get a chance to "unwrap." The order of the gift unwrapping will be chosen via a fun-and-fast-paced one-round holiday trivia contest. All participants will then take turns unwrapping a new gift or stealing a gift from someone else. By the end of the game, each team member will have their final gift mailed to them after the event.

Live Online Team Building Games

Online team building activities are ideal for remote work teams. CourseHorse offers many options, like their Virtual Brick Building Challenge, a 75-minute online course that has participants build unique structures with Legos® to complete a series of both team and individual challenges. Participants will be sent their own Lego® kits that they can use to put their architectural skills and creativity to the test. Each round will feature prompts that require teams to collaborate and tell a story with their creations, and the winning builds will be chosen by popular vote. This course is a great reminder that everyone is capable of a completely different style of greatness, even when using identical materials, and encourages participants to embrace diversity of thought and outside-the-box thinking to be their most creative selves.

Virtual Feud Frenzy is another great option. A digital twist on the classic game show, Family Feud, multiple teams will face off in a series of fast-paced rounds, each centered around survey-style questions. Participants aim to guess the top answers to these thought-provoking questions, earning points for their team with each correct response. The clock is ticking though, adding an extra layer of excitement and urgency to the game.

Another option for the game show lover is Virtual Game Show Bingo, a completely reimagined version of the classic game where video clips, images, and riddles will test your pop culture knowledge as you compete with your team to fill in squares. As you compete with cohorts for the opportunity to fill in squares, you won't need to wait for numbers to be called out. You'll need your wits about you to earn every box you tick as you battle your way to being able to shout BINGO and declare victory! It's every player for themself in this raucous spin on a beloved party game.

Virtual Mini Game Showdown is a whirlwind of fast-paced, high-stakes challenges designed to bring out the best in teams. This fun-filled event offers a selection of exhilarating rounds that promise an hour of non-stop action, laughter, and friendly competition. Each Mini Game Showdown features four action-packed rounds drawing from a variety of game types like trivia, speed type racing, Feud Frenzy, and escape room puzzles. Expert hosts will keep your team engaged and having a blast as they lead you through each round.

In Virtual Scavenger Hunt, participants will break out into mini-groups and embark on a unique scavenger hunt experience that combines team building, creative projects, and hilarious interactions with their surroundings. Whether your team is in the office or at home, this hour-long event will get everyone fully engaged and entertained, leaving you with a winning team and a Zoom room filled with laughter and camaraderie. Teams will compete in Riddle Races, a collection of cryptic clues that correspond to common objects, and they'll earn points for cracking the code and finding the items. The following show-and-tell round is sure to leave folks laughing as the host prompts teams to share their makings, findings, and doings with one another.

Finally, for the Sherlock Holmes lovers, there’s Escape Room: Murder Mystery. You and your team will become trainees at the CHPD (CourseHorse Puzzle Detectives), solving the sort of crimes that only the most puzzling criminals leave for solution-oriented enforcers. Your team will dispatch to a high school reunion gone sour when the star quarterback is found dead on the floor of the gymnasium. As the murderer lurks among the terrified student body, they'll leave puzzles and clues to taunt our officers, with a warning about their next strike. Your team will have to crack these sinister codes before the killer strikes again.

These offerings are just a small sample of the many that you’ll find through CourseHorse. Be sure to check their website for additional options and how they can be customized to fit your team’s needs.

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Learn More About Team Building Games Courses

Why Host Team Building Games?

What Will You Do in a Team Building Game?

Trust Building

Cross-Department Connection

Improved Communication

Increased Engagement, Morale, and Productivity

How Long Will Team Building Games Last?

What Are the Advantages of Hosting Team Building Games?

Best Team Building Games

Live Online Team Building Games

Team Building Games Corporate & Onsite Training Noble Desktop

Team Building Games Training Map & Top Locations

152 Courses Available Live Online

51 Courses Available in NYC

Team Building Games Topics

Escape Room Team Building Activities

Trivia Team Building Activities

Team Building Games
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