Team building for introverts can be difficult, especially if remote work is the standard for your business. An employee who rarely engages with their colleagues can quickly become lost in an organization. If they’re part of a virtual team, there’s even less chance of them maintaining a connection with their colleagues.
Fortunately, you don’t have to let these wallflowers wilt away. By rethinking your approach to team building activities, you can break through and connect with the most introverted members of your team.
Why is Team Building Important?
Every business needs to prioritize team building. Employees who feel connected to their colleagues are more likely to reach out when they have a problem. When it comes to remote work, maintaining these lines of communication is even more important. When workers feel supported, they’re more likely to share knowledge with the people that they work with. Morale stays high, productivity gets a boost, and the business itself benefits from a healthier bottom line.
Along with their relationship-enhancing benefits, team building can improve the skill sets of your employees. Many soft skills are acquired from participating in team-building sessions. While many organizations overlook the importance of soft skills, they’re incredibly valuable to success.
Team building also gives you a chance to peel back the layers and discover more about what makes your employees tick. It can be hard to visualize employees and colleagues as real people with full lives when you deal with them exclusively at work. When working virtually, it’s even harder. Team-building games give you the perfect opportunity to encourage your employees to open up and reveal more about themselves.
17 Team Building Activities For Introverts
Struggling to assemble an engaging schedule of team building activities? When it comes to team building for introverts, you’ll need to get creative and think outside the box. To help you get started, here are 18 effective activities you can try to bring quiet colleagues out of their shells.
1. Start with a Single Icebreaker Question
Icebreaker questions are one of the best ways to get people talking during a team-building session. When your virtual team next gathers, break out the icebreakers but stick to a single question. Introverts may struggle to engage in an icebreaker game that goes on and on. By keeping it short and sweet, you shouldn’t have any trouble inspiring introverts to offer up an answer.
2. Collaboration Canvas
One of the best ways to facilitate team bonding is to make your sessions as collaborative as possible. Encouraging creativity is also effective, so combine the two with a collaboration canvas. Take an art team activity template to get started, then task teams to work together as they let their artistic talents run wild. You can challenge them with a drawing prompt, or let them draw what they wish.
3. Play a Game of Human Bingo
A quirky take on classic bingo, this game involves a little preparation. You’ll need to create a unique bingo card that lists personality traits and attributes that people are likely to have. Who on your team is a vegan? Who’s had their appendix removed? Who’s rubbed shoulders with a famous person? Use tidbits like this instead of numbers to fill your bingo cards and then distribute them. You can then ask your team to mingle online for around 15 minutes, ticking off items on their card as they find a match.
4. Caption Contest
Word-based games are always going to go down well with introverts who have a problem with public speaking. To play this, simply pull together a stack of images from the web and ask your team to come up with the best possible caption. Ideally, these images should be fairly funny to inspire the most ludicrous captions possible. Once everyone has shared their captions, launch a poll to find out everyone’s favorite.
5. Random Question
To play this, you’ll need to come up with a selection of questions first. Then, assign each question a number and ask each person to pick a number, then send them the corresponding question. Once you’ve assigned a question to everyone, give your team a few minutes to jot down a response, before asking everyone to read out their reply in turn.
6. Guided Home Tour
Remote work can be isolating. To help everyone feel connected, task your employees to reveal the spaces they work in via a guided tour. Encourage participation from introverts by asking moderators to kick-start the tour section of a team-building event.
7. Team Quiz
Quizzes are one of the most popular team building activities around. They can be used to cap off a quarterly review or break up a longer all-hands meeting. As well as bringing some friendly competition to proceedings, they’re ideal for encouraging colleagues to work together.
8. Things in Common
An incredibly effective team bonding exercise, this game makes it easy for employees to discover which colleagues they have shared interests with. It can be a little tricky to play in larger groups, so divide your team into pockets of three or four people first. Then, give them a few minutes to interact as they attempt to identify three things they share in common.
9. Would You Rather
‘Would you rather’ questions are handy at establishing common ground. Throw one in at random intervals or rally off a long list of questions. When you use an interactive poll for answers, introverts have no excuse for not participating.
10. Yes or No Trivia
The less talking an introvert has to do, the more comfortable they’ll feel. If you’re planning a game of virtual team trivia, make it awkwardness-free for introverts by adapting it to a yes-or-no format.
11. Hangman
A classroom classic, a game of hangman will bring some familiarity to your online meetings. This wave of nostalgia can help introverts open up, especially if you’ve assigned them to a team.
12. Virtual Group Seminars
Promote a culture of learning within your organization with a remote work seminar. To avoid introverts getting lost in a crowd, divide seminar attendees into small groups and host multiple events. A smaller group will make introverts feel more comfortable and more inclined to speak up.
13. Guess That Baby Photo
Before your online get-together, ask everyone to send in a photo of them as a baby. With an entire gallery assembled, you can then display them to your team and ask them to guess which photo belongs to whom. Participants can send in their answers privately, or you can use an online poll for guesses in real time. Here’s a ”guess that baby” template.
14. Movie Lunch Break
Let your team bond over a love for the silver screen with a movie lunch break. If you’re only hosting one of these every month or so, you can treat everyone to an extended lunch break. Alternatively, choose shorter content like the latest episode of everyone’s favorite television show.
15. Five Finger Showdown
A twist on Never Have I Ever, this game is perfect for getting employees to reveal more information about themselves. To play, draw up a list of common life experiences, ask everyone to outstretch their fingers and thumbs, and then reel off each prompt one at a time. If someone has experienced something on this list, they’ll have to put a single finger down.
16. Virtual Happy Hours
One of the easiest ways to bring introverts out of their shell is to host a virtual team happy hour. Schedule one for the end of the working week or merge one into an annual Christmas party.
17. Remote Cook-Off Challenge
An introverted employee may be a wizard in the kitchen. Use a food fun team activity template as the basis for a remote cook-off challenge, or host an online cooking class to break the ice instead.
How To Make Your Team Building Activities More Enjoyable for Introverts
Worried your team building activities aren’t appealing to introverts? Try out some of these basic tips to increase the odds of shy employees opening up.
Work in Small Groups
Team bonding in larger groups rarely works. When you divide a team into smaller groups, you’re making life easier for introverts.
Provide Recharge Time
Long meetings can prove overwhelming. Make sure there’s plenty of time for rest and recharging in your meeting agenda to ensure introverts have the energy they need to engage with their peers.
Virtual Coffee Chats
Even an introvert needs to socialize. Make space for social interaction by hosting regular virtual coffee mornings where employees can connect.
Online Team-Building Games
Taking team building online can actually help introverts engage more with their colleagues. Without having to deal with a big group or face-to-face interaction, introverts can thrive when tasked with the challenge of virtual team-building games, such as our 30-minute team building games, or online games for remote employees.
Asynchronous Brainstorming
Brainstorming sessions can be useful for coming up with fresh ideas, but they’re not always practical for remote teams working online. With asynchronous brainstorming, everyone’s free to go at their own pace. Although they’re technically working collaboratively, introverts don’t have to worry about establishing themselves in a small group or finding the confidence to offer up their own ideas.
Personal Development Workshops
Inspire introverts with the tools and confidence they need to become more sure of themselves with personal development workshops. Explore workshop topics like essential skills for your industry sector, critical thinking, or mindfulness.
Virtual Book Club
Introverts with a love for literature will relish the opportunity to engage with others about their favorite novels. A virtual book club is perfect for getting shyer members of your team to communicate their ideas in a relaxed, non-business setting.
Inspire Introverts with Gloww
If you’re eager to turn timid introverts into confident communicators, you’ll need the right tools. With a meeting and engagement platform like Gloww for online interactive presentation, you have the perfect addition to your arsenal. Loaded with ready-made templates, this user-friendly platform lets you create captivating sessions in no time at all. You can add interactive elements aplenty, from polls and surveys to immersive games to test their gray matter. Whether you’re planning a team-building session for a remote team or simply want platform features for spicing up regular meetings, Gloww’s on hand to help.
Want to see what Gloww can do for you? Get started today or explore our pricing tiers to discover our advanced features and perks for premium users. Need to speak to someone about Gloww? Get in touch with the team and we’d be happy to reply.
