50 Digital Team-Building Games

Fast, Fun Meeting Openers, Group Activities and Adventures using Social Media, Smart Phones, GPS, Tablets, and More

John Chen

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781118180938
• eBook ISBN: 9781118240311
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Use technology to increase loyalty and productivity in your employees

50 Digital Team-Building Games offers fun, energizing meeting openers, team activities, and group adventures for business teams, using Twitter, GPS, Facebook, smartphones, and other technology. The games can be played in-person or virtually, and range from 5-minute ice-breakers to an epic four-hour GPS-based adventure. Designed to be lead by managers, facilitators, presenters, and speakers, the activities help teams and groups get comfortable with technology, get to know each other better, build trust, improve communication, and more. No need to be a "techie" to lead these games—they're simple and well-scripted.

Author John Chen is the CEO of Geoteaming, a company that uses technology and adventure to teach teams how to collaborate.

• How to lead a simple, fast, fun team building activity with easy-to-follow instructions
• How to create successful "virtual" team building that requires NO travel and little to no additional expenses
• How to engage standoffish engineers, "hard to reach" technical teams, or Gen X/Y teammates with technology they enjoy using

Successful technology-based team building can build buzz for your company, build critically important relationships and communication internally, and keep your team talking about it for weeks afterward!

CHAPTER 1

Icebreakers

Icebreakers are great openers for most team-building events. They introduce people, help them find out each other’s names, and kick off the team-bonding process. These are especially important when new teams are forming. You can also use them anytime you add a teammate or want to discover something new about your team, even if the team members have worked together before. You can put these kinds of initiatives together very quickly and easily, and they help put the group at ease. You can also use icebreakers when you’re introducing a new piece of technology. Make sure to start with the most basic of functions when using a new piece of technology for an icebreaker.

Me in 140 Characters or Less—Twitter Hypernetworking

Time: 10 minutes

Participants: 2–1,000

Technology: Twitter, text, chat, teleconference, web conferencing

Category: Icebreaker

Goals

Get to know about each team member and assess needs.

Game Summary

This icebreaker solves simple challenges such as knowing everybody’s name, associating at least one word with that person, finding things in common, and beginning to understand the other person’s personality and style. It’s also a great opening initiative for people who are new to Twitter. Once you’ve logged on to the Twitter website, this initiative trains your teammates in how to use it, keep their posts short, use features to find out information about other team members, and most important, learn the names and something about each teammate.

Setup

Arrange a time and unique hashtag to meet at (such as #50dteambuilding) if you are using Twitter. Using chat, send instructions on how to set up a Twitter account and how to search messages or view only messages using your unique hashtag. Note that you can go faster if you also have a teleconference line set up.

Instructions to the Audience

Since we’re a new team, let’s find out who is on this team and a little bit about each other. Go to twitter.com and log in with your username and password. Now let’s search for only the messages we want to see by typing “#50dteambuilding” into the Search box at the top and hit Return.

Since Twitter has a 140-character limit, you’ll have to keep it short and sweet. Click the “New Tweet” box with the pencil in it near the top right

.

Tweet the hashtag (i.e., #50dteambuilding), where you are from, what you do, and something unique about yourself in 140 characters or less.

For example, my tweet would look like this:

Any questions?

Okay, you have 5 minutes to complete your tweet and read other people’s tweets. Remember to refresh Twitter (by hitting F5 on most Windows Internet browsers, Command+R for Mac users, or clicking the “Reload current page” button

) to read other people’s introductions. Also, you can click their Twitter ID to find their full name and information about them.

Power Tips

Learn how to attach photos, videos, or links to other sites as a way to say much more than 140 characters of narrative.

Click on each person’s Twitter profile to see a picture of that person and his or her short bio. Read the bio and click the link to that person’s website. This will provide you with a lot of information about this person.

You can send a link to your participants in the meeting request that will take them to your hashtag search, https://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%2350dteambuilding (replace “50dteambuilding” with your hashtag).

Debrief

What did you learn about one another? What do you notice that you had in common with others? What challenges did you have in describing yourself in 140 characters or less? Whom do you feel closer to after completing this? Why? Do you know each other’s names now?

Variations

Feel free to customize the last question to gain information that you want to know about each teammate. For example, you could ask, “What do you want out of this team-building course?” as a way of doing needs analysis.

Case Study

At a monthly gathering of our Washington State Chapter of MPI (mpiwsc.org), we met technology expert James Spellos. For this event, everybody’s name tags included printed instructions to tweet their name, company, position, and favorite app or technology during the 30-minute networking period before lunch was served. About 40 people, out of 100, tweeted their information. During the 5-minute time reserved for structured networking, the MC then read the different tweets as each person stood or waved as they were read. This allowed the participants to get to know 40 of the people there. In addition, we received feedback on what apps people are using and which ones they like. The following is the Twitter log from this event:

bigkid #mpiwsc Welcome to August MPIWSC Meeting of Hot Technology with James Spellos http://t.co/lUxkK3z#mpi #eventprofs

bigkid #mpiwsc We will be running a high tech networking today. Tweet your name, company, position and your favorite app or technology #eventprofs

bigkid #mpiwsc John Chen, Geoteaming http://t.co/w2qLPGN, CEO, http://tweetdeck.com is one of my fav apps.

briannajmark Brianna Mark, Seattle’s CVB, Special Projects Manager, fav app is seesmic (for now). #Mpiwsc

bigkid #mpiwsc Chris Dunham, Meydenbauer Center, convention sales, fav app is Shazam in car, last song was from radio!

jspellos #mpiwsc - My fave app today is Spotify. What a game changer for music lovers!

bigkid #mpiwsc Terry Onustack, IASP, Meetings Manager, www.IASP-pain.org, I heart Facebook.com

bigkid #mpiwsc Jane Schmidt, LaConner Channel Lodge, director of sales, posting town specials, daily deals, spa deals at Facebook.com

bigkid #mpiwsc Sarah Nelson, LaConner Channel Lodge, dir of sales, groupon.com, sold 500 nights in 8 hours!!!

bigkid #mpiwsc Adrienne Miller, Suncadia, Natl sales manager, blackberry for e-mail!

briannajmark Chad Biesman, man of leisure, undercover tourist Disney world app #mpiwsc

bigkid #mpiwsc Carrie Zimmerman, renaissance Seattle, SR sales manager, Facebook.com and conference apps for Cascadia

briannajmark Roxy Inouy...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Title
• Copyright
• 50 Digital Team-Building Games Quick Start
• Preface: How to Use the Games in This Book
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction to 50 Digital Team-Building Games
• Chapter 1: Icebreakers
• Chapter 2: Communication/Games for Speakers
• Chapter 3: Trust
• Chapter 4: Improving Performance
• Chapter 5: Problem Solving
• Chapter 6: Creativity and Innovation
• Chapter 7: Collaboration
• Chapter 8: EPIC Team Building
• Chapter 9: Closers—Ending a Team-Building Event
• Appendix: Getting Online
• About Geoteaming
• Index