Get To Know You Bingo A Fun Team Activity

I have been asked to come up with 1 or 2 “fun” teambuilding, getting-to-know-you exercises for a group of ~30 people. Of the participants, 14 (4 men and 10 women) are part of a multi-disciplinary healthcare group and the remainder are spouses/partners who will be accompanying the work team members on a weekend retreat. The teambuilding exercise(s) will take place after dinner on a Friday evening (~8:00 p.m.), and should last ~45 minutes. There will have been a speaker during dinner. According to the team leader, communication within the work group is good, and they are a functional, strong unit. She is looking for exercises that will encourage sharing from a personal standpoint (i.e., not work-related), but one of the challenges is that some of the participants know each other well, and others will have met for the first time that evening; thus, they will be coming at “sharing” from different perspectives. She emphasized several times that the exercises should be fun. Also, in a post-dinner environment, I’m assuming that there will have been some measure of alcohol consumption by the time the exercise(s) begin. Any suggestions??

The Team Doc Says…

One of the most fun (and successful) activities I did with a group of business people as a “get to know you” exercise was based on the simple game of bingo. Since your activity is after dinner, your guests will have had time to chat and get to know each other a bit. That means at least on the surface most of them will have found out some tidbit about pretty much anyone. You can use this information for the bingo game — but of course you will know it in advance.

Just create bingo cards that have the informational tidbits on them and have everyone play. Call out names that match the items on the bingo card. People will have to match the name to the item on the card. Here’s an example (image below).

Keep in mind that this is “your” activity, so you can make the bingo card as big (or small) as you want. You’ll also need to know which name goes with which item ahead of time so you can verify the winner. Try it! It’s a fun (and informative) activity.

Best regards,

Denise O’Berry
aka “Team Doc”