The exercises behind the breakthroughs.
A working library of the team building activities our facilitators draw from — grouped by what your team actually needs to get better at. Browse for ideas; we’ll help you choose, run and debrief the right ones.
Want to run one yourself? Many activities below include a free facilitation guide to download — purpose, setup, safety, and the debrief questions that make it land. Want it done right, at scale, and tied to real outcomes? That’s where we come in: tell us where your team is today and we’ll pick the mix, facilitate it, and make the lesson stick.
Communication & feedback
When people talk past each otherGroup Juggling
An icebreaker in fast motion: the team passes a flurry of objects in sequence and quickly feels what happens when everyone’s juggling too many things at once — communication tightens, or it drops.
Free facilitation guide (PDF) ↓Get It Together
Clear communication gets hard on purpose. The confusion the exercise creates makes giving and receiving feedback the only way through — and shows how committed the team really is to a shared goal.
Free facilitation guide (PDF) ↓River Crossing
The team has to move everyone across a “river” with only the tools available — and discovers, in real time, what gaps in communication and passing critical information actually cost.
Free facilitation guide (PDF) ↓Alphabet Soup
A race to sequence a series of tags reveals how the team improves — not by thinking harder, but by trying, learning and getting faster together. A live lesson in continuous improvement.
Free facilitation guide (PDF) ↓Who Are You?
A paired opener that moves people through three levels of communication. Partners learn more about each other in a few minutes than in years side by side — one of the best ways to start a session.
Free facilitation guide (PDF) ↓Trust & interdependence
When the walls are upTrust Walk
One partner leads, one follows — sometimes blind. It’s one of the simplest and most powerful ways to feel what trusting, and being trusted with someone’s safety, really asks of us.
Free facilitation guide (PDF) ↓Knot A Team
The group literally tangles, then has to work shoulder-to-shoulder to unravel — a physical picture of interdependence, and of the invisible walls people quietly build around themselves.
Free facilitation guide (PDF) ↓Problem solving under pressure
When “impossible” is on the tableChina Syndrome
Often called impossible at the start. No amount of brawn solves it — only critical thinking, a common vocabulary and the perseverance to keep going under a deadline.
Free facilitation guide (PDF) ↓Tied In Knots
A series of ropes with ten levels of difficulty forces the group to decide together, commit, and live with the call. Pure consensus-building — with the excitement of a puzzle.
Free facilitation guide (PDF) ↓Bull Ring
Guiding a ball with a ring and ropes starts easy — then we keep changing the rules mid-run, mirroring the constantly shifting business environment and the need to adapt fast.
Free facilitation guide (PDF) ↓Leadership & roles
When everyone’s waiting to be toldChain of Command
Leadership has to be shared for the group to beat the clock — which turns the debrief into an honest conversation about hierarchy, bottlenecks and who really needs to decide.
Free facilitation guide (PDF) ↓Let Go My Ego
Each person’s influence on the team’s success has never been clearer. The real work is resisting the urge to blame, and choosing to move the bar together.
Free facilitation guide (PDF) ↓Supply Chain
A physical demonstration that every member is a link in the chain — and a live look at how a group’s unwritten rules quietly cap its performance.
Free facilitation guide (PDF) ↓Perfect Square
Deceptively simple. Most groups skip planning and ground rules, then watch their frustration — and their real leadership patterns — rise straight to the surface.
Free facilitation guide (PDF) ↓Adapting to change
When the old way isn’t workingMagic Carpet
The whole team has to flip the “carpet” they’re standing on without stepping off — a vivid metaphor for stepping outside the comfort zone and taking ownership of change.
Free facilitation guide (PDF) ↓Change Five
Deceptively simple: the team feels its own resistance to change — the pull to snap right back to the old way — then chooses to embrace the new. Silly on the surface, genuinely instructive underneath.
Free facilitation guide (PDF) ↓Learning Maze
A hidden path the team can only find by making, and learning from, mistakes. How a group treats those mistakes — and the people who make them — tells you almost everything.
Free facilitation guide (PDF) ↓Don’t Touch Me
A puzzle solved only by challenging rules no one actually set. Fair warning: it tends to trigger a genuine paradigm shift about the limits teams impose on themselves.
Free facilitation guide (PDF) ↓Collaboration over competition
When silos beat the shared goalWin Win Win
Over five rounds, teams discover that competitive spirit only carries them so far — and that collaboration toward a common goal wins far bigger. Name the teams after real departments and it lands hard.
Free facilitation guide (PDF) ↓Team Shackles
A challenge that looks impossible until someone is willing to ask for — or offer — help. It exposes how rarely that happens back at the office, and how much it changes when it does.
Free facilitation guide (PDF) ↓Search and Rescue
The cooperation we all learned as kids, rediscovered as adults. It simply can’t be done without every single person contributing something.
Free facilitation guide (PDF) ↓Ball Mania
Everyone’s a link in a fast, funny chain — and underneath the laughter, a clear window into how the group makes decisions and gets a task done together.
Free facilitation guide (PDF) ↓Orange Ball Race
Every person is a link in the chain. As the team races a ball through everyone’s hands, each person’s role — and the cost of a weak link — becomes obvious, along with the truth that mistakes are just part of learning.
Free facilitation guide (PDF) ↓Washing Machines
The team gets an “impossible” brief: sell 10,000 old washing machines in a 30-second pitch. A fast, funny lesson in creativity under pressure — and how much more a group invents together than alone.
Free facilitation guide (PDF) ↓Not sure which your team needs? That’s the whole point of our approach — we start with where your team is today and where it needs to be, then choose and sequence the exercises that close the gap. And most of these can be paired with a philanthropic build like bikes, shoes or skateboards for kids in need — so your team’s breakthrough gives something back.
Frequently asked questions
Can we run these ourselves? +
Yes — many activities include a free downloadable facilitation guide with the purpose, setup, safety notes and debrief questions. But the real value is in the facilitation and debrief, so for high-stakes or large groups we recommend having us run it, or coaching your own facilitators.
How do you decide which activities our team needs? +
We start from your goal — where your team is today (Point A) and where it needs to be (Point B). Then we choose and sequence the right exercises. The activity is always the vehicle, never the point.
How many people can take part, and where? +
From small teams of five to groups of 5,000, indoors or outdoors, at your site or a venue almost anywhere in the world. Many activities scale by running parallel groups.
Can these be paired with the philanthropic builds? +
Yes. Many exercises make a perfect warm-up or debrief around a give-back build like bikes, shoes or skateboards for children — the team gets its breakthrough and a child gets the gift.
Tell us the goal — we’ll pick the activities.
You don’t need to know which exercise you want. Tell us where your team is and where it needs to be, and we’ll design and facilitate the right experience.