Teambuilding Activities

A Problem to Collaborate Through

Have you ever felt awkward amongst your peers at work? Not necessarily because they said something offensive or did something utterly stupid, but simply because you did not know what to say or how to connect with them. Ideally, the awkwardness fades as you have a chance to get to know the other person, but moving beyond the acquaintance phase to being friendly can be challenging. Becoming buddy buddy with everyone you work with or even being more than smiling and polite may be a lot to ask. However, the need to be able to communicate and work together as a team remains essential.

How do we move across that bridge? People are complicated, we have work to do, and code never ‘ran behind this morning and did not have time to shower.’ We have all participated in name games, trust exercises, and socials. None of those have really helped me personally though. They’re perhaps better than nothing, but frequently are more akin to surviving a painful experience together. Prior to my life as a software engineer, I worked in the entertainment industry. I co-produced a children’s radio show, built theatrical sets, and most recently created escape/puzzle rooms. All of these elements have a primary similarity: they bring people together. They present a single moment of clarity that is shared by everyone. It’s a single point of sameness regardless of what each person’s life has consisted of leading up to that moment. It does not matter if each person experienced the moment in the same way. What matters is that the moment was experienced.

This moment has an incredible amount of power. How can we harness that power to create healthier and more productive working relationships? I believe it all starts with a focus. A focus can be something to distract everyone from who they are and instead turn their attention to becoming part of a common goal. Next, we want to frame the experience in a positive light, perhaps by making it FUN. As such, I posit an excellent way to build a team’s ability to collaborate, communicate, and build unity is through collaborative board games. Collaborative board games focus the team on a single objective, which is to beat the game. The team has to work together in order to achieve the goal. Whether they win or lose, they experience a single moment in time where they are united in overcoming an obstacle. The team does not have to create conversation. Instead, the game provides the team with a subject that will organically change as the game progresses. The organic changes are, overall, a near perfect foundation for forging working relationships.

Please note: foundation. Everyone has to be willing to suspend their disbelief in order to buy into the experience. Part of the reason why escape rooms have been so successful, other than being fun, is the ability to fully immerse a group of people into a new environment. It’s easy to forget yourself in a themed experience as long as the experience is fully embraced. Everyone needs to be included, welcomed, and pushed to succeed. The game presents a moment in which to build community. Couldn’t we all use a little more community right now?

Here are a few of my favorite collaborative board games:

Five Minute Dungeon

Between setup, playing the game, and clean up a single round could easily be made fit into a ten minute slot. Incredibly easy to learn and high energy, this game is sure to be an excellent warm up.

Pandemic

A classic of the cooperative board game genre, this game has you race against a slew of defeat mechanics in order to save the world. This game gets drastically easier with less players.

The Big Book of Madness

This game requires players to work as a team. Every. Player’s. Turn. Counts. Luck will not go far and could sour at any time. This game gets easier with more people, but only if you work cooperatively.