Virtual Team Building Activities
Suppose you discover yourself in the same situation as Tom Hanks. In that case, collaborating on a do-it-yourself project with a friend like Wilson the ball, it is important to pay attention and improve your ability to communicate with others. Games that facilitate online conversation have the potential to serve as a channel between you and the world in general.
There is no restriction over the number of ways wherein one may communicate if one combines inventiveness and technological advancement effectively. We provide you with 15 of these interesting digital communication games that might be wonderful communication workouts for teams who are geographically separated from one another.
What are referred to as online communication games?
Generally, online communication games are being played on virtual communication networks to engage personnel who work remotely. These may also be performed with various twists at the workplace or in hybrid work environments. These competitions have as their primary objective the cultivation and enhancement of communication among team members who are dispersed across many places. It is possible to select from a wide variety of free and paid icebreaker games, online games for virtual teams, and other options, considering your team’s composition and the specifics of your area of business.
Why are online communication games beneficial to the workplace?
When working in distant environments, it is not uncommon to feel excluded or isolated; thus, playing online communication games is a fantastic approach to help bridge such gaps. The following are some of the advantages:
- Opens up lines of contact amongst teams, allowing them to keep abreast of each other’s goings-on.
- Encourages a sense of cohesiveness among the team as well as allegiance to the firm
- Contributes to the reduction of stress levels and the enhancement of productiveness
- Develops a wide range of interpersonal skills, including creative planning, working together with others, active listening, and more
10 Best Online communication Games for Your Remote Employees
Two Truths & a Lie
Two truths and a lie is another digital recreation of one of the traditional board games played over the telephone. This particular activity is great for breaking the ice and making it easier for team members to socialize while also having a good laugh.
How this game is played:
- Each team player must provide three enigmatic details about themselves, the one that must be a lie while the other two must be true.
- The other members need to get in touch with their inner Sherlock Holmes to determine which one of them is not true.
Everyone in the group gets to act as Sherlock Holmes and uncover the truth, and it does not require any special equipment or props, so it is a good time for people of all ages and sizes of groups.
Virtual Ice Breaker
The use of simple yet entertaining virtual icebreakers is a great method to ease into the discussion, particularly during the opening rounds of meetings or gatherings. You can produce many different get-to-know-you-better lists, each containing questions that need immediate thought and concise responses. There is a wide variety of options available because of the availability of over one hundred distinct types of interactive virtual icebreakers.
How is this game played?
- Divide everyone into two major teams, and have each team pick a member who will act as a communicator between the teams.
- Each member will try to figure out how to convince the other side to guess what is depicted on the card depending on the mysterious image or phrase that is printed on the card.
- The trick here is that the person providing the clues is restricted to using only words of a single syllable while describing the information on the card.
- Members of the opposing team must watch, listen, and hope to capture the clue provider using multi-syllable terms while the member of one side attempts to define the phrase.
We appreciate that the game’s straightforward and flexible selection of questions may be adapted to suit any situation.
Back-to-Back Drawing
Back-to-back Drawing is yet another innovative option available inside the selection of online communication games. A sketching exercise serves as the primary focus of the game, which mostly needs players to sit facing one another but with their backs to one another. When playing in an online or remote setting, participants in each pair have the choice to mute their videos and focus on the game at hand.
How this game is played:
- One participant will tell the story or provide a narrative while describing a finished painting that the other participant is holding.
- The second player in the duo is tasked with drawing an image that is as accurate as possible to the one described by the first player without posing any questions.
- Once everyone is finished, both participants may switch on their videos and examine the two images side by side. After the game, the two participants will place the pictures next to one another and analyze their similarities and differences.
Verbal communication only, no visual elements allowed, although channeling your inner Monet is required for this one. Presenting your “pieces of art” is a terrific opportunity to break the ice while having a good laugh with your other collaborators.
Minute Vacation
On the list of games for online communication, the “3-Minute Vacation Game” stands out as an entertaining and useful option. The necessity of engaged listening is emphasized throughout the game, in which participants act as either talkers or listeners and then exchange their insights.
How this game is played:
The selected talker gets three minutes to describe their ideal vacation in detail, but they are not allowed to reveal the destination of their trip.
- The listener in the duo is responsible for picking up on key information and using non-verbal cues to show that they are listening to what is being said.
- When the timer goes off, the listener is responsible for providing a brief overview of the ideal vacation and promoting it in the form of a vacation sales presentation.
- At this point, the person doing the talking gets to evaluate how attentive the listener was to the tale.
This is an excellent option for individuals who wish to hone their abilities in pitching ice to an Inuit because it allows them to do so.
Emoji Guessing
It is a game that may get rather addicting. Emojis have, as we all know, simplified the art of communication by reducing it to a series of pictures that are entertaining and captivating. The objective of this game, considered one of the more simple online communication games, is to decipher an emoji string that one player sends to the other players. These might be phrases from popular culture, titles of movies, or names of well-known people, among other things.
How this game is played:
- You should encourage all players to take turns sending one another a string of emoticons or an emoji-based message or phrase.
- The remaining team members need to either make an educated estimate or figure out what these emojis imply.
Because it has a topic applicable to everyone, we will give this one smiley. Understanding a surprise word or sentence will be something almost no one will want to avoid doing, making it a fantastic engagement activity.
Remote Charades
Charades are among the most popular online communication games, and it is the kind of game teams can repeatedly play without becoming bored. You may use a random image generator like RandomWordGenerator.com to compile various themes that can be shown in its virtual avatar. These topics range from popular music and movies to phrases and other things.
How this game is played:
- Use video conferencing to discuss the topics with either the teams as a whole or with individual players
- Before beginning each round of guessing, start a timer.
- After that, players are required to perform an act related to the topic that has been presented so that the remaining team members can identify the proper response.
Although playing something out on screen might not have the same impact as doing so in person, the enjoyment factor is still very much present.
Mad Gab
Mad Gab is a game that makes it onto our list of recommended online communication games since its major focus is on innovative thinking and rapid reactions for efficient conversation. Mad Gab Flashcards is a wonderful resource from which to obtain some entertaining conversation starters.
How this game is played:
- Make use of video conferencing to trade cards that include a sequence of randomly placed phrases that, when read all at once, do not make sense but, upon closer inspection, reveal themselves to be jumbled-up components of a proverb or other common expression.
- You should start a timer and then have the participants try to rearrange the words as soon as possible so that they can make the appropriate phrases in the appropriate order.
We had a lot of fun with how fast the game moves and the thrill of trying to make sense of the nonsense.
Yin and Yang
One of the more exciting and entertaining question-based internet communication games is called Yin and Yang. The key to solving this puzzle is engaging in fruitful conversation by questioning and seeking to understand what is being said.
How this game is played:
- Make a list of things often found together, such as pens and paper, socks and shoes, or the yin and the yang, and give it to the players designated to perform for each group.
- The challenge for the teams is to determine what the complementary pair is based only on the clues that the presenter provides.
It is a straightforward guessing game of the elementary school kind that does not require much more and can be played with minimal preparation or resources.
Can You Hear Me Now?
This traditional game of word association, Pictionary, has been given a modern makeover in the form of an internet communication game. Its purpose is to strengthen teams’ capacities for dependency and collaboration among themselves.
How this game is played:
- Divide the team players into pairs, giving each participant a role on the team; for example, one person could play the Describer, while the other could play the Artist.
- The Describer has three minutes to provide the Artist with an explanation of an item, and all of the instructions must center only on forms and geometrical relations.
- Once the image is finished, you may post it on the screen for the rest of the team to see, and they can try to identify it.
Virtual Scavenger Hunt
This scavenger hunt is equally as interesting and difficult in its digital iteration as it is in the real world. The remote team members face a race against the clock to get all the things that have been called out.
How this game is played:
- Distribute a list of goods, including a cup, a ball, and a pen holder, which your remote players may need to hunt for in their homes or other locations where they are working while playing the game.
- Give them a certain amount of time to collect all of the objects, and then have them share the information onscreen so that the other members of the team may also look at it and determine who got the highest total number correct.
The fact that there is no intercommunication taking on in this situation does not change the fact that we enjoy the sentimental value of a scavenger hunt.
