Love them or hate them, team-building exercises work! They are an essential ingredient to a well-bonded team. Giving your team a way to let their hair down while working together to solve problems creatively can help them learn and get to know each other in a fun way. It also gives you, as a leader, the opportunity to gauge team performance and team effectiveness in a fresh and relaxed way. It’s like one big casual team assessment.

But how do you do that when every one is bound to working remotely and virtually? 

You get creative.

Just because you can’t all meet together doesn’t mean you have to scrap team building altogether. In fact, you should make it a priority. You can still create an opportunity to connect, learn, bond, and bridge the emotional distance while assessing your team’s performance and effectiveness with some fun virtual activities. 

Here are a few to get you started.

 

1. Break the Ice

While everyone is getting more comfortable using virtual meeting platforms like Zoom and Google Meet, it can still feel awkward. Reserving the first 10 minutes of your meeting or call to play a few icebreaker games is a great way to energize your team and put them at ease. 

Try this: Rapid-fire random questions. Give each participant 30 seconds to answer a random question. Here’s a helpful list of icebreaker questions and a question generator to get you started. 

 

2. Play Team Games

Setting aside time to play a few games can break up a long workday or be a nice treat after a long week. You can adapt many long-time favourites like charades, Pictionary, and Scategories to a virtual setting. 

Try this: Skribbl.io is the online version of Pictionary. Each player gets 80 seconds to draw a word while the rest of the players guess what they’re drawing. Or try virtual bingo. You can print up free Bingo cards here.

 

3. Have a Scavenger Hunt 

Shake things up with some healthy competition by playing an online scavenger hunt. Create a list of easy, challenging, and weird stuff for your team to find around the house. It will get everyone moving and a sure way to get some laughs.

Try this: Go completely virtual by using a scavenger hunt app. Here’s a list of 14 different ones you can try. 

 

4. Virtual Escape Room

Give your team a chance to interact in a creative way that will encourage them to problem-solve together. A Virtual Escape room encourages collaboration, patience, and a lot of creative problem-solving. 

Try this: Bring the escape room experience to your team virtually with Remote Adventures.

 

5. Healthy Lifestyle Challenge

Keep your team healthy and sharpen your goal setting with a Healthy Lifestyle Challenge. Pick an activity or food habit to do daily for a month and reward those who follow through. Start easy and then slowly increase the difficulty of the challenge.

Try this: Track everyone’s progress with this free Healthy Habits Tracking chart.

 

6. Virtual Murder Mystery

Kick things up a notch and plan a Virtual Murder Mystery party. Encourage your team to have fun with their character with a costume and props. Set aside a special day to play and end the game with some socializing over snacks. 

Try this: Use the Murder Mystery Co to plan your interactive party. They do all the work, so you can just show up and play!

7. Guess The Baby

Do you know who the members of your team were before you all started working together? Probably not! Playing Who da Baby is an interesting way to get to know your team in a whole new light.

Try this: Get everyone to submit a baby picture of themselves between the ages of 2-3. Put the images in a shared google folder or dropbox and have everyone guess Who da Baby is. 

 

8. Virtual Team Trivia

Another way to boost healthy competition with your team is to play online trivia. Challenge everyone to think fast and intelligently answer as many questions as they can. 

Try this: Get fancy and organize a fully hosted Virtual Pub Trivia party for your team. Complete with a host and quality trivia questions, you will be free to enjoy. 

 

9. Online Fundraiser

Nothing brings a team together in a more meaningful way than joining together and supporting a worthy cause. Choose to support a charity or cause together that resonates with all of you, and everyone feels connected to.

Try this: If you’re stuck for ideas, here are 14 creative virtual fundraising ideas to consider. 

 

10. Team Assessments

Assign your team members one of our team-building assessments to complete and work through our free workbook to identify team strengths and differences. 

Team building is a necessary element to developing a well-connected, synergistic team that functions well together. Keep building your team with creative online solutions. 

Want to take your team building one step further? 

Request your free workbook for another great team-building exercise.

 

What enables some teams to achieve incredible results while others flounder? That question drove my recent conversation with Chris Mefford and Kyle Bucket, authors of the book “Leadership is Overrated: How the Navy SEALs and Successful Businesses Create Self-Led Teams That Win.” 

Chris serves as Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at TCW Global, while Kyle is a retired Navy SEAL leader and current business executive. Together, they draw on lessons from military special operations and thriving corporate cultures to illustrate the power of “self-led teams” – groups of empowered individuals who operate without micromanagement.

Over the last few decades, organizations have invested heavily in traditional leadership training. Yet year after year, research shows the majority of employees remain disengaged or dissatisfied with their direct supervisors. Clearly – the status quo isn’t delivering. As Chris put it, either the whole leadership development industry is broken, or the people we label as “leaders” simply aren’t doing their jobs well. 

The root issues, Chris and Kyle explained, stem from misplaced priorities and flawed assumptions. Too often, organizations promote individuals into positional leadership roles based on tenure or relationships rather than actual readiness. Once in management, these subpar leaders feel threatened by team members with greater expertise or experience. In response, they tighten control rather than empower people, strangling innovation and morale.

In contrast, elite teams in the military, government, and business cultivate broad leadership capacity. They leverage the strengths of each member and encourage honest dialogue. Chris and Kyle pointed to a study showing engaged workers care far more about appreciation and recognition than compensation. Yet the average manager shows little interest in fostering personal connections. No wonder people lose motivation.

Cultivating “self-led teams” requires humility and emotional intelligence from leaders. Instead of chasing glory, effective senior managers praise team members publicly and motivate them to take ownership of complex challenges. They admit mistakes readily and accept feedback. Chris and Kyle outlined six key practices of humble leader:

1. Listen more, talk less. Understanding individuals’ talents, needs and insights is the foundation.
2. Show appreciation. Recognize unique contributions customized to resonate with each team member. 
3. Step out of the spotlight. Consistently redirect praise to the group rather than self.
4. Admit mistakes. Transparently own up to errors and imperfections.  
5. Don’t micromanage. Empower the team to determine optimal methods and tactics.
6. Welcome criticism. Actively solicit suggestions and process them with empathy.

Instilling these attitudes and actions takes time, dedication, and intentional role modeling. However, the benefits for organizations are profound. According to research by Gallup, teams in the top quartile in engagement realize 41% less absenteeism, 24% less turnover, and 21% greater productivity than bottom quartile units. Other studies correlate self-led team practices with innovation, customer satisfaction, and overall performance.

For all those reasons, Chris and Kyle advocate integrating self-led philosophies widely, especially in nonprofit institutions like churches where turnover and burnout are high. While financial incentives may be limited, faith-based groups can still foster purpose, flexibility, development opportunities, and information flow. Ultimately, healthy cultures depend far less on structures and formal authority than on the thousands of daily decisions made by managers and staff.

Leadership is indeed overrated – or misdefined. As Chris and Kyle argue persuasively, with the right vision and environment, teams can deliver phenomenal outcomes together even without much traditional top-down supervision. That’s a message worth contemplating for any organization seeking to maximize its potential.

Discussion Questions

1. The article opens by contrasting some highly effective teams with those that struggle. What are some real-life examples you’ve seen of teams operating at an extremely high or low level? What factors drove that performance?
2. The authors argue that many employees feel dissatisfied with leadership training and manager relationships in their company. Do you agree or disagree? What have your own experiences been in this area?
3. What do you think of the “self-led team” concept? Where might it work well or struggle? Would you enjoy working on such a team?
4. Which of the “six practices” for humble leadership resonated most with you? Which seems most challenging to embody? How could they impact your workplace? 
5. The article closes by advocating wider adoption of self-led principles in nonprofit organizations like faith groups. Do you think these ideas could help or hurt within a church setting? What potential pitfalls exist?