Team Building Activities for Women

Companies have made great strides in the area of team building. It has become a primary focus and an invaluable tool in creating more effective teams. Productivity is a constant issue for managers, as is creating a feeling of cohesiveness, especially among women. Managers are now making use of clever team building activities to help women recognize each other’s talents and contributions to the team.

The media can be hard on a woman’s self-esteem, making it difficult for her to recognize her own positive attributes. The objective of the Campaign Game is to help women recognize and verbalize their own best qualities. Campaigning takes a lot of courage; it isn’t always easy to stand up in front of a group of people and sell yourself. However, with a little bit of creativity and a certain amount of humility, it can be a lot of fun. This activity is simple and requires nothing more than a set of colored pens, paper and poster board. Each woman creates a campaign that includes an original speech, a slogan, a campaign button and a poster. The campaign is based on each woman’s own positive attributes and traits. Once everyone is finished, the women go around the room and share their campaigns with the group.

Women often have a difficult time accepting compliments, especially when the compliment is given in front of a group of people. The objective of the “envelope” activity is to help women give and receive compliments. This activity requires one envelope per woman, along with paper and pens. Each woman receives an envelope and puts her name on the front. The envelopes are then passed simultaneously to the neighboring woman. Each woman takes a moment to write down on a slip of paper one compliment about the woman whose envelope she has and then slip it back into that envelope, having signed her name. This continues until each woman gets her own envelope back. The leader of the group then gathers all of the envelopes, pulling one slip of paper at a time out of each envelope and reading it aloud to the group, without reading the name of the person who wrote it. The woman who is the object of the compliment must then guess who wrote it. If she is right, she gets one point. The leader goes around the room reading one compliment from each envelope until all of the compliments have been read. At the end of the game, the woman who received the most points wins. After the game is completed, each woman collects her envelope and keeps the compliments as a reminder of her wonderful qualities.

Communication between co-workers is essential to a successful business. The objective of this activity is to encourage interactive conversation and to help women open up effectively and appropriately. One woman is selected from the group and asked to leave the room. The remaining women choose a “secret” word. When the woman who left the room returns, it is up to the group of women to get her to say the “secret” word by engaging her in conversation, asking her questions and/or finding other creative ways to get her to say it. Once the “secret” word has been said, another woman is selected and the game begins again.