Team building
An energiser is a short activity that resets attention in a room, usually in two to five minutes. The good ones do a second job: they surface something true about how the group works together. Below are fifteen we actually run, with timings, group sizes, the debrief question for each, and an honest note on where they go wrong.
Most energiser lists name a game and assert that it builds trust. It doesn't, on its own. Sixty seconds of clapping raises the heart rate, which is fine if that is what the room needs. What turns it into learning is the ten seconds afterwards, when someone asks about what just happened. An activity without a debrief is a game, which is why facilitation is a skill rather than a script.
| Energiser | Group size | Time | What it surfaces |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shake-out countdown | Any | 2 min | Nothing. Pure attention reset |
| Count to twenty | 6 to 15 | 5 min | Who fills silence, who waits |
| Silent line-up | 10 to 60 | 3 min | How the group self-organises without words |
| Stand up if | Any | 4 min | Shared experience people think is theirs alone |
| Word-at-a-time story | 5 to 30 | 4 min | Who needs to control the outcome |
| Common ground | 6 to 40 | 4 min | How fast a group settles for the generic |
| Rock paper scissors championship | 20+ | 4 min | How quickly people commit to a side |
| One-word check-in | 3 to 30 | 2 min | The room's real state before you start |
| Chat waterfall (remote) | Any | 3 min | Opinions before the first answer anchors them |
Everyone stands. Count down from eight while shaking your right hand eight times, then the left hand, right foot, left foot. Repeat from seven, then six, down to one, faster and less dignified each round. Ninety seconds, any size. Tapping the count on the table works just as well seated, and you say so in the instruction, not afterwards.
Reveals: nothing, and that is fine. Some energisers are just blood flow. Ask afterwards: "one to ten, where is your attention now?"
Standing circle, or seated round a table. Pass a single clap to your neighbour by turning towards them and clapping. They pass it on. Once it flows, add one rule: a double clap sends it back the other way. Two to four minutes, up to about twenty-five people.
Reveals: how the group handles a small public mistake. Watch who apologises, who laughs, and who blames whoever broke the chain. Ask afterwards: "we dropped that six times and nothing happened. What happens here when someone drops something real?" A light way into psychological safety.
You read out statements and people stand, or raise a hand if standing is awkward. Start harmless: "stand up if you have had three coffees today." Then move to work: "stand up if you have been in a meeting this week where you did not say what you thought." Three minutes, any size.
Reveals: how much of what people assume is a private failing is the room's shared experience. Ask afterwards: "which one surprised you, and what does it mean that so many of us stood?" Keep every statement about work. Ask about family, money or health and you have stopped running an energiser.
Pairs. Each draws the other's face in thirty seconds without lifting the pen and without looking at the paper. Then hold them up. Two minutes, any size, needs paper.
Reveals: the group's relationship with being visibly bad at something. Perfectionists cover their page. Ask afterwards: "in the first five seconds, did you plan or did you start?" That question opens up more about how the team meets new work than an hour of discussion.
The group counts aloud to twenty. Anyone can say the next number, in any order. No pointing, no rhythm, no going round the circle. If two people speak at once, restart at one. Five minutes, best with six to fifteen; split larger groups.
Reveals: who fills silence and who waits, within ninety seconds. The group cannot get past twelve until the fast talkers deliberately hold back. Ask afterwards: "what did you change to get past twelve?" You have just taught active listening without using the phrase.
Circles of five or six. Build a story one word per person, going round. Run it once loose, then again with a constraint: it must reach an ending within sixty seconds. Four minutes.
Reveals: control. Some people try to steer the whole plot with a single word, and everyone hears them doing it. Ask afterwards: "when did you let go of the ending you had in your head?"
The group arranges itself into a single line by some criterion, without speaking: distance travelled to get here, years in the industry, birthday by month. Three minutes, scales to sixty.
Reveals: how a group invents a protocol under constraint. Someone starts holding up fingers, and within twenty seconds everyone is. Ask afterwards: "who invented the system we all used, and how did the rest of us find out?" A conversation about influence, not lines.
Borrowed from improv. Pairs plan an imaginary team offsite. In round one every sentence must begin "yes, but". In round two, "yes, and". Sixty seconds each, any size.
Reveals: the volume in the room changes audibly between rounds, and everyone notices without being told. Ask afterwards: "which round sounded more like our last planning meeting?" Expect a pause, then honesty.
People move and pair with the first person they do not work with daily. One question, ninety seconds each way, then change partners twice. Six minutes. Seated pairs formed by the facilitator work identically for anyone who would rather not move.
Reveals: where the organisation's real gaps are. If everyone drifts to their own team, you have your answer before the exercise starts. Ask afterwards: "what did you learn that you would never have heard inside your own team?"
Threes. Find five things you have in common that are not about work, not visible in the room, and not biologically true of all humans. Four minutes.
Reveals: how quickly a group settles for the generic and stops. The first three come fast; four and five are where the real conversation happens. Ask afterwards: "which took longest, and what did you have to ask to get there?" Pairs well with our icebreaker questions.
Round the room, one word each on how you are arriving. No explanation, no discussion, no follow-up. Two minutes, up to about thirty people.
Reveals: the actual state of the room, which is often not the state your agenda assumes. Ask afterwards: nothing. Just listen. If three people say "swamped", change what you were going to do with the next hour. That is the cheapest improvement most meetings can make.
Everyone finds an opponent. The loser becomes the winner's supporter, chants their name and follows them into the next round, until two crowds face off around two finalists. Four minutes, needs twenty-plus people and a room you can be loud in. Offer a commentator role for anyone not moving.
Reveals: how fast people commit to a cause they had no stake in ten seconds earlier. Ask afterwards: "how loudly were you cheering for the person who knocked you out, and what does that say about how we adopt other people's goals?"
On video, physical energisers mostly die. What travels well online is anything simultaneous, because it removes the turn-taking latency that makes calls exhausting. More in our guide to virtual team building activities.
Ask a question. Everyone types their answer into the chat and does not press enter. Count down from three, everyone sends at once. Three minutes.
Reveals: what people think before the first confident answer anchors the room. Compare a waterfall with a normal verbal round sometime; the spread of opinion is not close. Ask afterwards: "read three answers that are not yours. Which one did you not expect?"
"Find something within reach that describes your week. Sixty seconds." Then one line each, no explanation required. Four minutes for ten people. Allow "nothing to hand": people join from cafes, hot desks and airports.
Reveals: the state of people's week without demanding that anyone be vulnerable to order. Ask afterwards: "whose object did you want to hear more about?"
A shared whiteboard with two axes: how clear the goal is, against how confident you are about the deadline. Everyone places a dot at the same time. Three minutes.
Reveals: divergence that a verbal round would smooth over, instantly and visually. Ask afterwards: "why is there a cluster in the bottom-left corner?" Then stop talking.
An energiser is the smallest unit of experiential learning: a short shared experience, then a question that makes the group look at itself. Same mechanism as a two-day programme, running in four minutes. Which is why the question matters more than the game.
Tour De Force runs this as live, experiential training for teams worldwide — online and in person. Talk to us, or play Gamified learning appsThe Weekly Challenge to see the method in ten minutes.
Questions
A short activity, usually two to five minutes, used to reset attention or shift the mood of a group. Good ones do a second job: they surface something about how the group works, such as who fills silence or how the room handles small mistakes. The reset is the excuse. The insight afterwards is the value.
Two to five minutes for the activity, plus about a minute for one debrief question. Anything beyond ten minutes stops being an energiser and becomes a session in its own right, which needs a different setup and a clearer link to the agenda. If you cannot spare five minutes, skip it rather than rushing it.
An icebreaker is used at the start with a group that does not yet know each other, and its job is to make speaking safe. An energiser is used mid-session with a group that already knows each other, and its job is to restore attention. They overlap, but the timing and the intent are different.
Anything simultaneous rather than turn-based. Silent line-up, stand up if, and the rock paper scissors championship all scale past fifty people because nobody waits for a turn. Avoid round-the-room formats above roughly thirty, where the last person waits ten minutes and stops listening long before their turn arrives.
Use formats that let everyone act at once: a chat waterfall where all answers send on a countdown, dots placed simultaneously on a shared whiteboard, or a sixty-second object hunt. Sequential activities feel twice as slow online. Always offer a camera-off route so nobody has to explain why they are not on screen.
Say the purpose in one sentence, keep the activity short, and make opting out invisible rather than a public announcement. Resistance is usually a reaction to being made to perform, not to the activity. If a whole room resists, that is worth noticing: it usually says something about how safe the group feels.
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