It’s the start of the 2025 work year, and many leaders are busy planning career development goals, team building activities and strategies to be more effective in the coming year. There is a unique enthusiasm for team building and goal setting in January with the optimism that comes with the turning of a year. For leaders, this is a strategic window to get your team more excited about their goals and building a better team for the future.
For leaders looking for unique team building ideas, consider these worth a try in 2025. Depending on the amount of time you have, these activities could be easily folded into existing team meetings or a kickoff to an off-site or deeper dive meeting.
- Visual Explorer Exercise: This exercise uses obscure pictures to help people articulate their feelings. There are a range of images that you can purchase or develop on your own, just make sure you have a surplus so there are plenty for people to choose from. You cast the pictures around the room for leaders to pick the one that most closely resembles how people are feeling. You could frame the thought question in terms of how they’re feeling about being a leader, how they feel about their team or how they feel about going into 2025. Ideally, you tie the thought exercise to the purpose of the meeting.
- Favorite Memory Activity: There needs to be a healthy level of trust for this activity to work well, but the idea is that people share a memory from their childhood, perhaps a funny story, challenging time or a proud moment. This is best when the prompt is shared in advance. Depending on the culture of the team or the mood of the meeting, you should frame the question accordingly. I personally enjoy the funny story from your childhood if there is a good level of psychological safety on the team. Seeing a teammate’s inner child is great for trust building.
- Scavenger Hunt: Ideal for in-person before or after an event, scavenger hunts can be a nice way for people to engage outside of work. Create a list of clues that lead participants to different locations within the office or a nearby area. Each clue should be related to teamwork or the company’s values.
- Minute To Win It Challenges: Divide participants into teams and give them a series of one-minute challenges to complete, such as stacking cups, transferring water with a spoon or assembling a toy or Legos.
- Volunteer Day: Organize a day of volunteering at a local charity or nonprofit organization where participants can work together to make a positive impact on the community. It’s optimal when the organization you’ve chosen to partner with is clearly aligned with your organization’s mission and purpose. Sometimes organizations open up volunteer opportunities for people’s families to join and participate as well.
- Design Thinking Challenge: Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. It is most useful to tackle ill-defined or unknown problems and involves five phases: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. Give participants a design challenge and have them work in teams to develop a solution. This can be anything from designing a new product to creating a marketing campaign and will likely take a few hours for complex topics.
- Games: Assuming most people on your team enjoy games, offer time for playing everyone’s favorites. Ask for input or for people to bring in their favorite games from board games to card games and video games that encourage teamwork and communication. Give people parameters on timing and complexity in advance to ensure it fits the culture and existing meeting norms.
- Books: Not everyone is a book lover, so it’s important to keep that in mind when choosing a book. My favorite approach is for everyone to contribute their favorite book, (be sure to specify fiction, nonfiction or both) and have everyone vote for their pick (and they cannot vote for their own book). A best practice is to have a good facilitator that prepares a few questions and stimulates a dialogue where everyone can share their takeaways, “aha” moments and surprising revelations about the content.
- Personality Assessments: There are a variety of personality assessment tools available that range in price and time needed to facilitate. Some of my team’s favorites are StrengthsFinder, Enneagram, Hogan, DiSC and Myers-Briggs. Select the assessment that helps team members better understand each other and drives better self-awareness.
- Vision Boards: Vision boards are a helpful way to visually describe and reinforce what people’s hopes are for the future. The beginning of the year is always a great time to hit reset and reimagine what you want your life to look like. Vision boards can be created through using magazines, online searches for pictures or scrapbooking materials, or good old-fashioned markers and poster boards. It is important that you give ample time for people to create their boards and then a few minutes for each person to explain a few pieces of their board that they feel comfortable sharing.
Team building activities usually revolve around dominant group interests like golfing or happy hours. While these can absolutely still be team building activities, it’s helpful to round out activities that appeal to the full group, not just dominant group members. The beauty of these unique team building activities is that they help a diverse group of people connect through a shared experience. Research shows that shared experiences drive team connectivity and engagement. They help to build psychologically safe work environments where people can bring their full human selves.
Depending on the team building idea you choose to try, be mindful about matching the activity to the existing culture, ensuring it has an objective and purpose and set the team up for success by sharing details on what to expect in advance. Even well-intentioned team building ideas can fall flat when they deviate from existing norms, people are confused about why they’re doing it and they are unprepared.
Teambuilding isn’t just a nice to have activity, it’s a must-have activity to enhance psychological safety and trust on teams. Consider some of these ideas to try in 2025 or brainstorm your own as a team using this as a primer. Engaging the team in the team building design gains buy-in and increases the likelihood of success.