Team-Building Puzzle Activities

By teaching teams to consider all ideas, communicate and negotiate, puzzle activities improve a team’s ability to make decisions and solve problems when faced with complex challenges.

When a problem needs to be solved, there are often different ways of looking at it. As everyone has different methods of working through a challenge, it often takes consideration of everyone’s ideas to reach a solution.

While other team-building activities work on building a strong relationship within the team and allowing members to get to know each other, team-building puzzle activities are ideal for a team that has been together for some time. They help to build problem solving skills that will allow them to work more efficiently on projects and day to day issues in the workplace or classroom, and encourage the consideration of different thinking styles to get to the bottom of complex challenges.

Benefits of Team-Building Puzzle Activities

Engaging your team in puzzle activities comes with many benefits:

Increase team communication. By allowing each person to have input into the puzzle, team members learn to work together and acknowledge all ideas put forward. One person may think that they have the answer, but considering all possible solutions will lead the team to call on others’ opinion when dealing with complex issues in the future.
Encourage collaboration. Bonding over a puzzle and getting excited about finding the solution helps to teach the team to seek help from others when dealing with real life situations. Realising how well they work together with a common goal leads to better productivity and ability to overcome obstacles much quicker than they could alone.
Uncover hidden skills. While a team may recognise each of their skills individually in their usual roles, engaging in puzzle activities can highlight certain strengths and skills of each person. While previously overlooked, these skills can be used to the team’s advantage in future projects or activities.
Improve problem solving ability. Puzzle activities require skills such as creativity, analytical thinking, negotiation, and thinking outside the box. Even if a team member is not as experienced in these areas, they can learn to be resourceful with a challenging task in front of them. They can also observe how others think and act and learn from their behaviour.