Team Building Activity: Are You Puzzled?

What's the point?

This exercise requires cooperation, strategy, and project management. It cannot be completed by just one person, although various employees may spend more time on it than others. The goal is to complete a project using something from everyone, and to celebrate the accomplishment without having to identify the "best" contributor.

What you'll need:

A puzzle made up of enough pieces that you can equally divide among all employees in a particular department. Each employee should have no more than 10 pieces.

What to do: 

Announce that the team will be assembling a puzzle together over the course of a period of time that you select. (I recommend your first puzzle take no longer than two weeks to complete.)

Distribute baggies or envelopes with an equal number of puzzle pieces to employees.

Establish a place where the puzzle is to be assembled, perhaps a table in a break room or workroom.

Tell employees that they are to contribute to the puzzle one time per day. Contributing can be as simple as laying one of their pieces on the table, or spending a couple of minutes trying to fit together pieces that are there. They can only contribute one piece a day each (or whatever works to get the puzzle done in the time period you have established.)

Throughout the time period (for our example, two weeks) you should begin to see the puzzle come together. At first, there will just be loose pieces on the table. However, as the supply grows, there may be some attempts to fit pieces together.

Be sure to encourage along the way and establish some type of reward the whole team can enjoy once the puzzle is completed (i.e. lunch brought in.)

You may wish to frame the puzzle and hang it in the room when it is done.

If you try this at your workplace, please let us know how it went!