The 9 Easiest 5-minute Team Building Activities

Team building activities are essential for companies. When your employees are feeling connected and know each other on an emotional level, they will be more motivated to do good work, and they’ll be more willing to go above and beyond when it comes to solving problems or coming up with creative solutions to everyday business issues. Nowadays a lot of employees work remotely, luckily there are plenty of team building activities that can be done virtually. We’ve put together this guide of 5 minute team building activities that can also be done virtually! If you have a virtual office or remote employees, these activities are perfect for you.

A selection of 5-minute games for (virtual) meetings

Browse through the following 5-minute team building activities and decide for yourself what would work best for your team and for the phase that your team finds itself in. The following activities can be executed with both fresh new teams or those teams that already work with each other for years. In short, pick your favorite!

Quick team building activities

Through another pair of eyes

Instead of having everybody introduce themselves, let the neighboring team member introduce the other. First let everyone introduce themselves in pairs. Then make a quick round in which everyone is introduced to the group by somebody else. This quick team building exercise is perfect to get to know other team members in a new team.

Two truths, one lie

Everyone tells three stories. Two stories are the truth, one story is a lie. The audience has to figure out which story is the truth. Sendsteps' multiple choice questions allow you to see in real time who guessed correctly! The winner is the one who gets the most answers right.

Compliment carrousel

Put one or few team members in the midst of the (virtual) room. Standing with closed eyes. Now let the other team members pass by them one time and make them whisper a short compliment in their ears. This is an easy team building activity for smaller groups and experience shows that receiving a compliment through a whisper, without knowing whom the compliment is coming from, can have a deep, touching impact.

Virtual team building ideas

Exciting sponge

Exciting Sponge is a fun and easy virtual team building exercise. To play, everyone grabs an object from within arm’s length, then tells a story about it. The idea of the game is to exaggerate what makes that object amazing. And for bonus points try making up ridiculous details! The more unbelievable it sounds, the better.

Illustration of a girl during an online meeting

Things

At the beginning of the game everyone adds multiple topics to a common pool. The most important part is that each topic must start with the word “things” (for example: things that are on my bucket list). One person is the host, and reads off a single prompt. The other team members anonymously submit their answers. This can be done via a live word cloud. The host reads the submitted answers out loud, and then each team member gets a chance to guess who said what. You can add a point system and let players win prizes.

5 minute games for meetings

Setting targets

Pitch the idea of your colleague

In corporate life we’re often used to give our own pitches. From a team building perspective it becomes more interesting if employees pitch each other’s ideas. This is also a fun virtual team building idea. Pick any of the more strategic meetings with your staff. Give a 1 time quick and clear instruction, already pre-meeting or at the very start of the meeting, and then let attendees interview each other about their idea for work (e.g. how to improve efficiency, which activities to set up in the coming year etc.).

Problem solving team building activities and scenarios

Describe and draw

Now here’s one of the simple but great problem solving activities. Hand a sheet with on it a triangle, a circle and a rectangle. Ask one of the attendees to sit with their back towards the rest of the group. Now let individual attendees make a drawing based on what they are told to draw. The person describing the drawing cannot indicate the name of the shape and has to find creative other wording to get the message across. You’ll find that in the end everyone comes up with different scenarios. Have a short de-briefing and learn how everyone receives messages differently. What does it tell you about the communication within your team? This fun team building game can also be done virtually!

Illustration of a guy with a pen celebrating

Need a 5-minute ice breaker?

Five finger showdown

This virtual team building activity is perfect to use as ice breaker. Each team member holds up their hand. The host lists specific and unusual life experiences. When a team member has the mentioned experience he/she can put a finger down. The player that puts all fingers down first wins.

Ice breaker questions

Asking ice breaker questions is another quick team building activity that allows you to get to know your team members better. These ice breaker questions can be asked via a live word cloud. Need some inspiration for ice breaker questions? Have a look at our ice breaker template!

Interactive software for team building activities

When you’re working with a team, it’s important to build relationships and trust. Sendsteps is the perfect tool for (virtual) team building activities. With interactive features like Word Clouds, Quizzes, Multiple choice questions and more you can engage your team in fun activities that will help them get to know each other better.

Valerie van Heekeren

As a content marketeer Valerie can use all her creativity in writing blogs. From writing blogs about student engagement to giving the readers the best icebreakers possible. Valerie is passionate about finding the new scope in order to give our readers the best and most up-to-date info about presenting.