You’ve done Boat Building, Team Olympics, a Scavenger Hunt, Cooking, Bocce Ball, Ropes, Murder Mysteries, Escape Rooms and more. So what now?! Yes, most team building providers still offer these options, but the most creative and forward thinking companies are moving beyond the standard offerings. Here are some of the latest ideas and possibilities:

1. Make team building fit your meeting schedule by doing short team challenge breaks rather than one 2-3 hour event. Things that offer a series of challenges that are either stand-alone or build upon each other are great. An excellent example is “Engineering Minutes-to-Win-It”—a series of fast-paced design and construction activities. Each one takes about 15 minutes, and includes constructing things like a Table Top Hover Craft, a Rocket that will fly over 100 feet in the air, a Ping Pong Catapult—and many more. These are great energizers, and can easily be accommodated into any agenda.
2. Escape Events—they are not limited to small groups and to brick and mortar escape rooms. These can be done anywhere for any number of participants and in any time frame. The essence of an escape room is figuring out a number of puzzles and the meaning of various objects in order to open a lock and “escape” a room. This sort of scenario does not need to last an hour and can be recreated in any meeting space. This means your group could experience an “Escape Break” that lasts for 15 minutes. Or, if you have more than 200 participants, they can all experience an Escape activity together. They don’t need to be broken into small group.
3. Company Trivia Challenges– not Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit, but a series of interactive competitions that rely on company or meeting information in order to win. The series may use familiar game concepts like Pictionary or Charades, but all require specific company knowledge. For example, in Company Pictionary– instead of telling people what to draw, we ask them a question. The two people doing the illustrating for their team—must know the answer and draw it—hoping to get their teammates to say the answer. Corporate Games offers a series of six different Company Challenges like this. Great variety, fun, and a learning event too.
4. Don’t just paint. There are plenty of places where your group can go to paint already-illustrated canvases—and color them in. But that’s not very interactive nor is it really a team exercise. Consider a “Collaborative Team Painting” event instead. Starting with a blank canvas, each team of 3-4 people needs to actually paint part of a scene. This is usually a landscape or still-life. The canvases from all the teams will eventually be one large painting.  There is an art lesson before each team decides what they will paint, how their canvas will match up with the team’s canvas next to theirs, and what color palette will be used. Team must talk to each other and coordinate their efforts in order to make this happen. Many unique twists include having teams leave their painting halfway through the activity—and  finishing another team’s canvas.
5. Make better use of a unique venue. If you are holding your meeting in an interesting place, like a ship (for example, USS Hornet Aircraft Carrier), an amusement park, an art gallery, or museum—do more than just walk around and look at it. Yes, there are tours and things to see, but many creative team building events can utilize the unique features of the venue. Scavenger hunt types of events are a great way to explore these venues, but you can also do Mysteries, Escape Events, Creative Movie Making and more. We’re only limited by our imagination.