Beyond the brainstorm: team building for creative thinking

Too often, creativity is an isolated experience. A genius in a white room has a bolt-of-lightning thought, no collaboration. In real life, teams need community creativity to grow. 

If you focus on team building for creative thinking, you can promote creative self-efficacy, innovation, and business success. Along the way, you’ll boost team confidence.

For more great team building input, check out our articles on:

• the best team building activities for work
• apps and software to help you set up the right team building plan for your team
• activities for current and future leaders

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Mindset matters for team building activities for creative thinking

Researchers Yodchai, Ly, and Tran published a study exploring how a creative mindset impacts business performance, and the results are good. Businesses with workers who think creatively do better than other teams, responding to issues and addressing challenges. 

Creativity doesn’t just mean one “Big Idea” that changes your company either. It includes the ways that a different approach would help you:

• Differentiate your product
• Solve a problem
• Help you operate smoothly

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Creative thinking team building activities

The study shows that creative thinking means fostering at least three qualities in your employees.

1. A growth mindset: Growth mindset is the belief that one’s ability and skill can grow, rather than staying fixed. Creativity is not an innate trait that you are born with or without. And that’s what you have to teach your team. 
2. Self-efficacy: This idea is the feeling that you will be able to accomplish what you set out to do. It’s like confidence, but specifically in your own effectiveness. By helping team members see themselves as effective, you boost their willingness to take risks and try new things.
3. Out-of-the-box ideas: Thinking outside the typical processes is one of the most recognized ways of defining creativity. Activities that really help you build your team’s creative muscles will push them in some way. These activities don’t focus just on the “right” answer but also on new ideas that might prove even more helpful.

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Activities to promote a growth mindset

Gather your team on a virtual platform to try something new together. Workplace teams have played golf or taken retreats together for a long time. Put a twist on having fun with your team by picking something that none of you know how to do yet. Consider:

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• Calligraphy or virtual painting classes
• Virtual cooking lessons
• Basics of a skill key to your clients, like the building blocks of coding languages
• Juggling class
• Photo editing
• Organization or packing effectively

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Aim for something unfamiliar but interesting to the whole team. You and your team can bond over the tasks by taking classes together. You can also use pre-built team building kits to make the process as smooth as possible.

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Activities to promote self-efficacy

Build a ‘dependency web’

In an online collaborative board, create a “dependency web.” Put all the names of the team members on the board in a circle. Have each team member go in order, adding a line between themselves and another team member and typing in what they depend on them for. As the entire web takes shape, people both feel more supported by others and valued for their contributions. It’s a twist on a more traditional compliment or encouragement activity.

Have a share your success day

Have each team member think ahead of time about a time when they thought a project or problem was too difficult but they found a way through. Talk about what mindsets and thoughts helped them to persevere. 

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Activities to promote out-of-the-box ideas

Practice giving advice 

Open a meeting with a virtual team building game of “Good Advice, Bad Advice, Weird Advice.” In this game, one person presents a work scenario that one of your clients or your team itself might encounter. The first player must offer good off-the-cuff advice for addressing the solution. The second player offers bad advice, and the third player aims for the most hair-brained idea possible. 

This activity is a quick way to get your team communicating and laughing a bit. You’ll also remind them that putting yourself in new mindsets can spark a great solution, even with bad advice.

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Find creative solutions

In a joint document, write all the letters of the alphabet, A-Z, one letter per line. At the top of the page, write the current workplace challenge, “How to find new users?” or “How to increase revenue?” or some other big-picture need. Then have all your team members join the document at once. They quickly write potential solutions that begin with each letter of the alphabet. Things like Add new features, Back up our value proposition, Collaborate with other services, etc. Some can be silly, but at least one or two promising ideas might emerge. This leads to open thinking with good ideas discussed seriously. You also can bond over the sillier solutions. 

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Bring creativity to the forefront 

Because creativity is so tied to self-efficacy, creative mindset, and out-of-the-box thinking, here are a few additional activities to try:

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• Some free activities for building your virtual team
• Personality tests for team building
• Positive mindset boosting team building activities

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