The 10 Best Board Games For Team Building
In the modern work world, team building is more than just a buzzword. It’s an essential aspect of building your positive work environment…
In the modern work world, team building is more than just a buzzword. It’s an essential aspect of building your positive work environment, fostering better communication, and boosting productivity. One unique and fun method of team building? Board games.
Modern board games are not the Monopoly fist-fights of your youth or the pointlessness of Connect Four. New board games teach many skills that are highly transferrable to the workplace and building relationships in particular, and it’s a cost-effective way to get this accomplished.
Importance of Team Building
Team building activities play a crucial role in enhancing workplace relationships, resolving conflicts, and improving overall team performance. Some key benefits include:
Enhanced Collaboration: Team-building activities foster better collaboration among team members by promoting open communication, building trust, and encouraging individuals to work together towards a common goal.
Strengthened Relationships: Team-building activities provide opportunities for members to get to know each other on a personal level, fostering stronger relationships and a sense of camaraderie.
Enhanced Creativity and Innovation: Team-building exercises encourage creativity and innovation by providing a platform for diverse perspectives and ideas to emerge.
Board games provide the ideal venue for all of these positive activities.
10 Best Board Games for Team Building
As a longtime gamer and manager, I’ve been bringing board games into the workplace for decades to help connect with my team. Every company has embraced this concept and benefited from it. Here are some of the best options around:
Codenames
Codenames is a game of guessing which words in a set are related to a hint-word given by another player. Two teams face off in this modern spin on the classic game show, Password. Codenames encourages communication, critical thinking, and cooperation among your team, making it a perfect choice for team building.
Pandemic
In Pandemic, players work together as a team of disease-fighting specialists with a mission to treat disease hotspots while researching cures for each of different four plagues spreading across the world. The game is played cooperatives — players against the game, and it requires strategic planning and teamwork, strengthening the bond among players.
Carcassonne
Carcassonne is a tile-placement game where players take turns drawing and placing tiles to build a medieval landscape. Each turn, players decide whether or not to invest one of their pieces in hopes of completing a portion of the collaborative puzzle they’re all building together but with their own goals in mind. The game encourages strategic thinking, planning, and spatial reasoning.
The Resistance
This social deduction game set in the future stimulates communication, deception detection, and strategic planning as players work together to find the hidden traitors in their midst. This game teaches the ability to read body language, explores working together in a semi-cooperative environment, and builds bonds among the players.
Catan
In Catan, players collect resources and use them to build roads, settlements, and cities on their way to victory. There is trading, planning, and resource management built into the game, which encourages the growth of negotiation and operational skills.
Dixit
This storytelling game fosters creativity and imaginative thinking. Players use images to convey words effectively, which helps promote better understanding of communication styles and appreciation of each other’s thought processes and perspectives. While competitive, there’s definitely an element of cooperation in the game that work well.
Hanabi
This unusual cooperative card game has you playing with your hand backwards, so your fellow players need to send you clues about which card you should play each turn. This one is amazing for communication skills, divergent thinking, and deductive reasoning.
Splendor
In Splendor, players are merchants of the Renaissance trying to buy gem mines, means of transportation, shops — all in order to acquire the most prestige points. It encourages economic thinking and strategic planning, making it an excellent team-building activity.
Concept
In Concept, players use universal iconography to get each other to guess a myriad of objects, titles, and characters. This game boosts communication skills and encourages creative thinking as players work together to interpret the symbols.
Buy Indie — Buy Amazon
Let the Games Begin
Board games are more than just a source of entertainment. They’re a unique and effective tool for fostering better communication, collaboration, and strategic thinking skills.
So, next time you’re planning a team building activity, consider incorporating one of these games into your agenda. It’s an economical way to get your team together regularly out of the context of work, but in the habit of building strong skills and even stronger relationships.
Here’s to better team building and more fun in your workplace!
Full disclosure: Links may provide affiliate sales to the author, which helps support his writing.
If you enjoyed or gained value from this article, please consider becoming a Medium member. Your membership helps support my writing and that of thousands of other Medium creators whose content you can read once you subscribe. Thank you.