Favorite Team Building Games?

[hentzau]

I’m taking my Scout leadership off on a planning retreat this weekend, and want to do some team building stuff for the youth leaders. Anyone have any favorites they’ve come across? I’m going to do some of the old hoary ones...like 2 truths and a lie, human knot, a variant on the newly wed game...

One original one I came up with is this...I’m bringing some flip charts for planning etc. I have a commercial easel I’m bringing, but I’m going to divide them into two teams and drop a pile of staves and rope in the middle of the room and tell them to use their lashing skills to make me an easel to use for the day. Should be fun to see what they come up with.

Any other ideas?

[dbt1949]

Go paint balling.

[hentzau]

Go paint balling.

Against the rules. We teach the Scouts how to safely shoot rifles and shotguns, but we are not allowed to do any entertainment that has Scouts shooting weapons, even pretend, at each other.

[Kraken]

Challenge them to identify and eliminate the group's alpha male (without using weapons; rules are rules). Don't be him.

[em2nought]

Challenge them to identify and eliminate the group's alpha male (without using weapons; rules are rules). Don't be him.

Maybe that's what happened to the Mayan Empire.

[hepcat]

Two Rooms and a Boom? You can borrow my copy.

[Smoove_B]

There was something we did at JLT camp with pre-cut planks and trying to figure out how to cross a river. I wish I could remember the details, but it's been 30 years and I can only remember the bigger picture of trying to figure out how to arrange the planks so we could all cross. I'm sure it has a Boy Scout name, but I've seen it referenced as "lava river" or "alligator river" online. They're similar, but they're using string, presumably because they're being done in an office and not out in the woods where you have lots of free wood that can be cut to length.

[Pyperkub]

Not applicable, but I used to have Friday night L4D coop sessions in the office.

[Jaymon]

team building for a larger group

everybody play rock paper scissors. (two out of three is best) the winner moves on. the loser follows the winner around and chants the winners name. as the winners compete against each other, the loser and all followers join up behind the new winner and chant the new name.

thus it goes until an epic showdown between the last two winners, everybody else is lined up behind one or the other of them, chanting their winners name.


----


split into groups of 3 or 4, each group must find something they have in common, that no other group has in common.

[em2nought]

It would be kind of neat to try a da Vinci bridge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKdQV2q5PRk Kind of take teamwork.

[hentzau]

team building for a larger group

everybody play rock paper scissors. (two out of three is best) the winner moves on. the loser follows the winner around and chants the winners name. as the winners compete against each other, the loser and all followers join up behind the new winner and chant the new name.

thus it goes until an epic showdown between the last two winners, everybody else is lined up behind one or the other of them, chanting their winners name.


----


split into groups of 3 or 4, each group must find something they have in common, that no other group has in common.

That sounds like a fun game to run at the troop level. I'll file that one away. But the other one, that's in line with what I am looking for. That sounds like a fun one.

i guess I should have said I'm going to have 6 youth leaders on this trip...so these have to be useable with a small group. We're going to be in a large cabin, but will have access to the great outdoors for things as well.

[hentzau]

It would be kind of neat to try a da Vinci bridge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKdQV2q5PRk Kind of take teamwork.

That's fun. A lot of lumber though. Going to file that one away as well.

[coopasonic]

team building for a larger group

everybody play rock paper scissors. (two out of three is best) the winner moves on. the loser follows the winner around and chants the winners name. as the winners compete against each other, the loser and all followers join up behind the new winner and chant the new name.

thus it goes until an epic showdown between the last two winners, everybody else is lined up behind one or the other of them, chanting their winners name.

If you are going to do this, you need the more active variant... Ninja-Cowboy-Bear

[hentzau]

I seem to remember a race of sorts involving Rock Paper Scissors, where you jump from Hula-hoop to hula hoop until you meet someone from the other team, then you have to do a RPS game, the winner gets to keep jumping forward, the loser has to run back and tag the next player to start advancing.

[Anonymous Bosch]

I remember enjoying the 'All Adrift' or 'Lifeboat' game back in the day, and the survival theme should certainly appeal to Boy Scouts.

It basically revolves around a hypothetical scenario, in which an accident has stranded the group in a body of water and they must evacuate to a lifeboat with minutes to decide as a group which ten items to grab for survival. First, individuals write down the items that they would grab from 1 - 10 in the order of most important. Then as a team, they must decide and agree on which ten are the top priorities and fill in the worksheet. The group is given about thirty minutes or so to complete the entire activity and come to a consensus. There's also a scoring sheet that's used to rate their decisions. The premise being that you can often make smarter decisions as a team with combined knowledge than as individuals.

Anyway, here's a printable PDF, courtesy of Edinburgh's School of Informatics, that contains the scenario and worksheets and such for playing the game (though you could certainly craft your own version with a more American flavour if you prefer).

[El Guapo]

I believe the traditional exercise is to identify a barely tolerated minority and blame them for the rest of the group's ills.

[Jaymann]

I like the one where you fall backwards and trust your friends to catch you.

[The Meal]

I'm going to the moon, and I'm taking...