Last updated August 12, 2024
I often get asked for suggestions for 5-minute and 10-minute fun exercises that can be used as fast and quick team building activities so, in this post, I am sharing some great options for you to use when training adults, employees, and managers, for teaching students, and for quick group training.
Benefits of Quick Team-Building Exercises
The reality in a lot of training is that time and money resources dictate that the length is often short, i.e. a 1 hr, 2hr, or 1/2 day training session. For this reason, running lots of 45-minute or 1-hour activities for the participants can be unrealistic sometimes. With this in mind, here below are 21 fun and quick team building activities that you can use.
21 Fast and Quick Team Building Activities
1. Desert Island Activity
Time needed: 5 minutes.
Number of Participants: No limit but 8+ will make it more fun.
Items Needed: No items are needed although a whiteboard can be useful for an end-of-activity discussion.
Intention: This is a quick team building activity that brings participants together in a fun and easy manner.
How to Run the Activity: Ask participants to imagine that they are stranded on a desert island and the problem is that they are only permitted to bring one item onto the island. They must choose their item and then explain why they have chosen it.
One item would not, of course, be enough to survive on a desert island. Nonetheless, for whatever reason, they must choose their one item.
You can suggest to the participants, for example, that they might perhaps select an item based on a hobby, interest, desire to catch food (or for other survival reasons), or even a photograph. There is no right or wrong answer.
Ask each person one at a time to say what their item is and why.
As the training facilitator you might want to write the list of items on the whiteboard so that participants can see a tag cloud of the items chosen. If you wish to extend the activity, the tag cloud can be used as a base for an extra 5-minute discussion.
You can run this as a 5-minute activity or 10-minute activity.
If you have a large group, you might want to split it into sub-groups to ensure it remains a quick activity.
2. Quick Draw
Time needed: 5 minutes.
Number of participants: No limit but easier with 5 or more.
Items needed: Writing materials.
Intention: This quick team-building activity is great for bringing out participants’ creativity and for quick thinking. It’s also a good icebreaker to use towards the beginning of the day.
How to Run the Activity: Start this activity by explaining to participants that you are going to call out a word or say a phrase, and they will then have 60 seconds to draw the word/phrase.
The focus for the drawing is on creativity and does not require any special artistic ability as this is intended as a quick and fun training activity.
As the training facilitator or teacher, you can run this 5 times, i.e. call out 5 terms/phrases.
Examples of words you might call out might, for example, be “pineapple”, “extra-terrestrial”, “sailing boat”, “rose”, or “beach bar” but you can use any words.
If you are teaching a specific topic, then you might want to relate the words/terms to that topic to suit your audience.
At the end of the activity, it can be worth allowing one minute for participants to walk around and look at each other’s drawings to enjoy the creativity and often funny and interesting pictures drawn.
3. The Name Game
Time needed: 5 minutes.
Number of Participants: No limit 5+ ideally.
Items Needed: No special items are needed.
Intention: This can act as a brilliant icebreaker as this exercise helps participants to remember each other’s names. This is also a fun activity where some interesting stories come up.
How to Run the Activity: Explain to the participants that, in this activity, they will give their name and then say one interesting and fun fact about themself.
It might be a fact such as a nickname they have been given, something they have achieved or done, etc. Anything they wish.
To get started, begin as the training coordinator or teacher, by giving your name and one fact about yourself. Then go around the room so that everyone has a chance to give their name and one fact.
4. Speed Introductions
Time needed: 5 minutes or 10 minutes.
Number of Participants: Five or more is ideal.
Items Needed: None.
Intention: This is a great choice if you are looking for quick team-building activities that are also good icebreakers for starting a teaching session. This is quite similar to the ‘Name Game’ but with a slightly different aspect.
How to Run the Activity: If you have more than 12 participants, divide the participants into two groups (or more if you have a very large number of participants).
In this exercise, participants will each have 30 seconds to introduce themself to the group and they will include:
- Name (and job role if relevant)
- 1 fact
- 1 hobby or passion they have
As the training facilitator, use a stopwatch to ensure that everyone stops on their 30-second limit, given that this is intended as a quick team-building activity.
You can though give participants one minute each and make the activity a 10-minute team-building exercise.
Alternatively, you can give participants 30 seconds to present and then allow 30 seconds for a question from the others to be asked and answered, if you want to build more engagement between participants.
5. Pictionary Relay
Time needed: 10 minutes.
Number of Participants: 6+ works well.
Items Needed: No special items are needed although a whiteboard is useful.
Intention: Another easy-to-run fun team activity.
How to Run the Activity: You will need to pre-prepare a list of words and phrases that you will use for this activity. Have these words/phrases written or printed onto cards or pieces of paper.
To run this activity, start by dividing participants into two teams (or more teams if you have a lot of participants).
Now explain to the participants that one person in each team will pick a piece of paper/card with one of the words/phrases on it.
That person will then try to draw the word/phrase and keep drawing until his/her team has guessed what the word is. Now another member of the team will take a new word and so on until every member of the team has drawn a word and the team guessed it.
In essence, this is a race between each team to see which team can get through the words fastest.
8 or 10 in each team can work very well.
You can run this as a 5-minute activity or as a 10-minute activity, as you require.
You can also adapt this such that you have a set time (i.e., 5 or 10 minutes) and then the team keeps on going until the time is up.
The winning team in this situation will be the one who went through the most words in the given time.
6. Guess the Sound
Time needed: 5 minutes or 10 minutes.
Number of Participants: Works well with 5+ participants.
Items Needed: Something on which to play music to the participants (a smartphone will often suffice) and music clips that you will use in the activity.
Intention: This is a quick and easy team-building activity that gives participants a chance to work together and to use their listening skills.
How to Run the Activity: Before the session takes place, you will need to prepare a batch of sounds that you can play to the participants.
The sounds you use might be clips of audio of an animal, a plate dropping, a certain instrument playing, a can of cola being opened, etc.
You can, if you want, use this video with 50 sounds to play for the group. Ensure the sound quality is clear.
For a 5-minute activity use 10 sounds (or 20 sounds for a 10-minute activity) as you will need to play each clip twice, to give participants a chance to try and work out the sound.
Some sounds will immediately be familiar (perhaps the cola can being opened with the fizzing sound) and others might be harder.
Explain to participants that you will play the sound clips and that they should write down what they think the sounds are.
After all clips have been played, read out what each clip was.
This can be a great activity at the start of a session where you will be teaching listening skills, i.e. active listening skills.
7. Emoji Story
Time needed: 5 or 10 minutes.
Number of Participants: No minimum.
Items Equipment Needed: Participants will need access to Emojipedia (or a messaging app that supports emojis).
Intention: This is one of the most enjoyable fast team-building activities for a lot of younger participants given it involves emojis. This exercise also promotes communication and storytelling.
How to Run the Activity: As the training coordinator, you will have to decide what platform everyone will use (if not using Emojipedia.org).
Start the activity by explaining that they will create a short story or message but it must be done so ONLY using emojis.
They must then share their message with the rest of the group (sharing by adding it to shared web space or via a smartphone-dedicated group such as WhatsApp).
Give participants 3 minutes to create their story or message using emojis.
The other team members need to guess the story or message.
8. Memory Challenge
Time needed: 5 minutes or 10 minutes.
Number of Participants: No limit but 5 or more works well.
Items Needed: A number of images or items/objects and a way to show these to the class, i.e. via computer/projector.
Intention: This is one of the easiest fun team-building activities to run and it works especially well when you want to create a bit of fun competition between groups.
How to Run the Activity: Make sure you have 20 photos of objects/items on your computer. Each photo should only show one item in each.
Now divide everyone up into groups of say 4 or 5 people in each group.
Now explain to participants that you will display each object onscreen for 5 seconds and they need to try and memorise as many objects as they can. To start with they must NOT write anything down.
Start the activity and show the objects onscreen.
After all 20 objects have been shown, ask participants to write down as a group, as many of the 20 items as they can. Only give them 2 minutes to do this.
Then show all items again and ask them to give themselves a point for each object they got.
Then ask each team for their score and announce the winning team.
9. Compliment Chain
Time needed: 5 or 10 minutes.
Number of Participants: 5+ participants.
Items Needed: None
Intention: This is another fun and quick team-building icebreaker that can be used in most training sessions.
How to Run the Activity: The idea in this activity is really quite simple in that each participant will give a compliment to the person next to them (let’s say to their right side each time) and this in effect creates a positive feedback chain.
So ask participants to create a circle and explain to them that they must try and give a genuine and honest compliment to the person next to them.
The compliments will go around the circle until the first person who gave a compliment then receives one too (as the feedback has fully gone around the circle).
If the participants are colleagues this might be quite an easy and good exercise to use.
If participants are new to each other it may be a little harder, i.e. they will have to focus on a feature they can compliment the other person on.
This activity is great if you are teaching soft skills topics such as feedback skills or teaching first-time managers.
10. Rapid Fire Questions
Time needed: 5 minutes or 10 minutes.
Number of Participants: 5+ participants.
Intention: Another easy-to-run team-building activity at the start of a teaching session.
How to Run the Activity: Ensure that, before the teaching session, you have prepared a list of questions that can be used in this activity. The questions should be fun, easy, and quick for participants, i.e. employees or students, to answer.
For the activity itself, start by explaining to everyone how the activity will work.
Basically, you are going to ask one of the questions and the first participants will need to answer as quickly as they can, with each person answering one at a time, i.e. going around the class.
Emphasise that speed is of the essence, i.e. they must really say their answer very quickly as this is a speed activity and intended to be fun.
If you have a lot of participants, then you can split people into groups, i.e. groups of 8 or 10 and have one person be the question asker.
You can have a different person answer the question first, i.e. by pointing to the person who should start answering and then the others answer by going around clockwise.
11. Story Dice
Time needed: 5 minutes or 10 minutes (as you need).
Number of Participants: 5+ participants.
Items Needed: Access online to a digital random or image generator.
Intention: One of the best quick team building activities if you are teaching topics such as storytelling, collaboration, or creative and strategic thinking.
How to Run the Activity: To get started, explain to the employees or students you are teaching that they will use the image and phrase generator online to generate images to create a story that they will collaborate on together.
So, the first person will generate an image or phrase and then the next person generates an image/phrase too and then they must tell a story that connects the two images/phrases.
This continues around the group with each person generating a new image/phrase and adding to the story, until everyone has participated.
To ensure that this acts as one of the quick team building activities as promised, you might need to split participants into smaller groups of 8 to 10 if you have a lot of participants.
12. Object Guessing
Time needed: 5 to 10 minutes.
Number of Participants: Ideally 8+ participants.
Items Needed: A box and a range of objects of differing shapes, sizes, and textures. The items might include things such as a comb, a spoon, a tea strainer, etc. (avoid anything sharp so that it is a safe exercise).
Intention: This fun activity is about thinking about attention to detail and communication and how our brain takes certain details such as size, and texture, and communicates the item to us.
This is a handy activity at the start of communication skills classes and workshops.
How to Run the Activity: You will need, beforehand, to get a box or bag and collect the items together.
When running the activity, make sure that participants will not be able to see the items as they touch and feel them. So a deep bag (you can use bin liners) is good for this activity.
The best way to run this activity is to have one item in a bag (you might need to put participants in small groups of 5 or 6 people if there are lots of participants) and to have each team member feel the item and try and guess what it is and then, as a group, to make a decision and write down what they think the item is.
You can then have the groups pass each other a new bag to try.
You might want to end this activity by explaining that whilst this is a very basic exercise, they should consider how small details can be put together to communicate information. The spikes of a hairbrush, combined with a wooden handle, for example, can communicate to us what the item is without our seeing it.
13. Funny Faces
Time needed: 5 or 10 minutes.
Number of Participants: 5+ participants.
Items Needed: A smartphone.
Intention: This can be a great team-building icebreaker activity as it tends to create a lot of laughter and helps to build a relaxed atmosphere at the start of a training or teaching session.
This activity though does tend to work best for younger groups, i.e. it isn’t perhaps suitable for a business workshop involving business people.
How to Run the Activity: In this activity, participants take turns making funny faces and then share the image with the group.
Participants should use a smartphone to try and take the funniest face they can make.
Each participant will then share their image with the rest of the group by showing their image to the group via their own phone.
14. One-Word Story
Time needed: 5 minutes.
Number of Participants: 5 or more.
Items Needed: A whiteboard can be useful.
Intention: This is a variation of story dice in that participants will develop a story by each adding to the narrative. This is one of those quick team building activities that is good for most training sessions as it helps promote collaboration, creative thinking, and quick decision-making.
How to Run the Activity: I recommend starting this activity by explaining the nature of this exercise which is to form a story together, by having each person add one word to the story.
The trick for participants is to try and build to the story by adding their word as quickly as they can before the person to their right then adds the next word.
Participants will ideally be sat in a circle so that the story can keep going around the circle. Allow 5 minutes for the story to build.
At the end of the activity, I would suggest mentioning how important active listening skills will have been in the activity, in order to be able to continue the story.
15. Team Juggle
Time needed: 10 minutes.
Number of Participants: 5+ participants.
Items Needed: Some tennis balls or juggling balls (at least one per participant).
Intention: This is an activity that involves teamwork, quick thinking, and collaboration.
How to Run the Activity: Organise the group so that everyone is standing in a circle but such that they also have enough space.
Hand ONE person one tennis ball (or juggling ball) and explain that when you say to, they will need to gently throw that ball to one other person in the circle.
The person who received the ball (the catcher) will then lob the ball to another person in the circle.
After 30 seconds, give them another ball also to throw at the same time (so two balls are being thrown around the group at the same time). Every 30 seconds add another ball and do this for 5 minutes.
This activity is about cooperation and communication and working together as a group, to try and avoid anyone dropping any of the balls.
You can end the activity, if you wish, with a quick discussion on the value of good team work and communication and ask them if they used any problem-solving skills to create a strategy for this activity.
16. Ball Toss Questions
Time needed: 5 to 10 minutes.
Number of Participants: 5 or more participants.
Items Needed: A tennis ball.
Intention: This is a quick team building activity that is great for getting participants to communicate with each other.
How to Run the Activity: As the training facilitator or teacher, you will need to pre-prepare some easy-to-answer fun questions that participants will answer.
Get participants to stand in a circle and one person will hold a tennis ball and then gently throw it to one other person in the circle.
Whoever catches the ball will then have to answer a question and the ball gets thrown and passed between participants for 5 minutes.
Questions on the list can include ones such as:
- What famous person would you love to meet?
- What is your favourite destination or place in the world?
- What is your favourite food?
17. Alphabet Chain
Time needed: 5 minutes.
Number of Participants: 5 or more.
Intention: This activity requires both listening skills and the ability to think quickly and creatively and works well as a team-building activity.
How to Run the Activity: In this quick icebreaker activity, participants need to stand in a circle and the first person will say one word. The person might, for example, say the word ‘Banana’.
The second person in the circle will follow by then choosing and saying aloud a word that begins with the last letter of the last person’s word. Banana ends in the letter ‘A’ so the next person must say a word that starts with ‘A’.
The fun in this activity is that participants must see how quickly they can move around the whole circle so that every person has said a correct word. It can be worth using a stopwatch to time it to see how fast they can do it.
This is also a good activity for large groups because of the speed of the activity.
18. Impromptu One-Minute Speech
Time needed: 10 minutes.
Number of Participants: 4 or more participants.
Items Needed: A list of interesting topic ideas.
Intent: If you are running a workshop on a topic such as presentation skills or confidence building, this can be especially useful as an activity to use.
How to Run the Activity: You will need a list of some fun and quirky topics participants can be asked to do an impromptu speech on.
Basically, they will have to stand up and do a one-minute speech each but they will only find out the topic they will speak about when they start the speech.
Topics might include:
- What I ate last night.
- The most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.
- How I’d spend a million pounds/dollars if I had one week to spend it.
As the trainer or teacher, have this list of questions prepared. You will also need a stopwatch (use an app on your smartphone) to keep each speech to a maximum of 60 seconds.
For the activity, if you have a lot of participants, then limit the groups to a maximum of 10 if you want to keep this to a 10-minute activity.
19. Mimic a Pose
Time needed: Run this as a 5-minute or 10-minute activity.
Number of Participants: 5 or more.
Intention: If you are looking for quick team building activities that are also great icebreakers then use this one. It generates a lot of laughter and is good for teaching communication skills and especially body language and non-verbal communication.
How to Run the Activity: An open space is useful for this activity so you might need to move some chairs out of the way.
Now explain to participants that one person will strike a pose, and then everyone else must copy the pose as quickly as possible and hold the pose.
As the teacher or training coordinator, now ask another person to do a pose and once again everyone must copy.
Give everyone a chance to choose the pose.
20. Sentence Starters
Time needed: Run as a 5-minute or 10-minute exercise.
Number of Participants: 5 or more.
Items Needed: A list of sentence starters.
Intention: Another great activity that connects with creativity and teamwork.
How to Run the Activity: You will need to have already prepared a list of sentence starters (e.g., “If I had a superpower, it would be…”).
This is a really simple exercise where you, as the teacher or trainer, will read aloud a sentence starter and then one of the class will need to complete the sentence starter.
Use a different sentence starter for each person.
21. Name That Fact
Time needed: 5 minutes or 10 minutes.
Number of participants: Any number.
Intention: This is a fun team-building activity that helps team members learn a few fun facts about each other and it thus creates some points to chat about and get to know each other.
How to run the activity: Hand each participant a piece of paper and ask them to write one fun fact about themself on the paper. Then collect all the pieces of paper and put them into a bag or small box.
Now randomly pull out one piece of paper from the bag/box and read it aloud to the team.
Everyone in the team must try and work out or guess whose fact it is. The team can discuss the fact and try and work out who wrote it. You can then ask them who they think it is and confirm this with a show of hands.
Go through the different facts/pieces of paper over a 5 or 10-minute period.
Examples of Facts
- “I once met a famous celebrity in a Holiday Inn.”
- “I can speak four languages.”
- “I am an avid collector of vinyl records.”
- “I have climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.”
- “I’ve visited over 35 U.S. states.”
Paul is Co-Founder of Symonds Research and is a qualified researcher with a PhD in wayfinding. Paul helps the team at Symonds Research build and focus on providing high-quality training materials packages and programs for trainers, classroom teachers and HR departments.