2 activities they won’t hate

Suggest a team-building exercise and employees may groan. However, here are two activities that even your most cynical employees will find valuable:

Winner/Loser. Group your employees in teams of two. Instruct employee A to share a true negative personal or professional experience with Employee B. Employee B then retells the story but focuses on the silver lining, either the positive aspects or the opportunities to come. Then they switch roles.

The goal: To train employees how to reframe negative situations.

This is Better Than That. You will be dividing participants into even teams, so gather at least four objects for each team. Explain to the group that each team must solve a problem using only the objects you have provided them. The objects do not have to be the same for all groups. Problems could be more realistic, such as “Break free from a locked room” or fantastical, such as “Save the Building from an Alien Attack,” but they shouldn’t be too easy. Ask each team to rank the objects—and explain their rankings—based on their usefulness in that scenario.

The goal: To promote creativity in problem solving.

— Adapted from “12 Awesome Team Building Games Your Team Won’t Hate,” Brianna Hansen, Wrike, www.wrike.com.