Creating a space for people to gather is one of the most rewarding tasks you can accomplish, whether during daily meetings or larger conferences. But that fulfillment can quickly dwindle if your audience doesn’t enjoy your conference, says Sean Granger, General Manager of Granny Mouse Country House & Spa. .
If you want to deliver an outstanding event experience, you need to incorporate conference activities that will help with engagement and interaction and have attendees gain lots of value from it and not be wasteful to your budget.
The Granny Mouse team has some great ideas to break the ice and get the conference started on a constructive and fun note.
1. Charades in 30 Seconds: Build team spirit
With team charades, teams compete against one another building the base for cheering on and working together. This activity expands teamwork skills onto projects and working relationships. Divide all the participants into two teams and each team member gets to act out a word which is provided to them on a card. The team members need to guess the correct word in a time of 30 seconds. Each team gets a chance and the team with the most points wins the game.
2. Two truths and a lie: Get to know your team
Two truths and a lie requires participants to be creative while also bringing out facts about their life and personality. The game allows the team to have fun, discuss one another’s stories, and get to know each other. One by one, team members announce three facts about themselves. Two of the facts or stories need to be true, and one needs to be a lie. Team members discuss which one is a lie. Once the team agrees on which fact is a lie, they reveal their answer to the speaker. If they are correct, each player wins a point. An example could be my favourite sport is horse riding, I love pineapple on my pizza and I love spiders.
3. Lateral-thinking puzzles: Solve problems together
Lateral-thinking problems require teams to ask creative questions to solve a mystery. They’re a great game to kick start creative sessions or meetings with a team because they require active listening and teamwork to solve the puzzle.
The puzzles are shared as scenarios with strange situations.
To play, one team member needs to come prepared with a puzzle mystery to share with the team. A team member tells a lateral-thinking puzzle question or scenario. Team members ask questions to solve the mystery. Their questions can only be answered with “yes,” “no,” or “not relevant”. Team members ask questions until they solve the mystery. It’s a little like playing Cluedo.
4. Giant Lawn Games
Another option for socializing, that will get people out of their seats and into the fresh air, are lawn games, such as Jenga. As much as it’s an individual game, with no teams up against each other, it is loads of fun and keeps the staff entertained for hours.
How it works – there are a total of 54 blocks. The first layer is 3 blocks laid side to side, followed by another 3 that are turned 90 degrees and placed on top of the previous row. And this continues until the tower is 18 layers tall. The aim is to remove a block at a time, making sure the entire tower doesn’t fall over. Another idea, is once the conference is done for the day, grab a beverage of choice and sit around in a more social environment and enjoy a fun game of Lawn Jenga.
After playing games to make your team comfortable, it’s time to take that momentum and apply it to a productive meeting.