7 Exciting Games to Improve Communication and Teamwork in Your Remote Team

Good communication is essential to the success of any team, whether they’re remote or co-located, and playing games can be an effective way to improve communication among team members. From collaborative word games to virtual escape rooms, there are plenty of options for teams looking to improve their virtual collaboration skills.

Communication games are also a great way to get teams used to collaborating online. Teams can use an online collaboration tool like Mural or Miro to work together in real-time.

Here are seven great games that you can use to improve communication on your remote team.

1. One-Syllable Mystery

As part of games for communication skills, this one’s great for teams to enhance communication, get familiar with individual communication styles and hone their observation and listening skills.

How to play:

• Form small teams and appoint a representative each who will share clues 
• Based on the mystery image/text on the card, each representative will try to get their team to guess what’s shown on the card. 
• The hitch on this is that the representative sharing the clues can only use one-syllable words to describe what’s on the card. 
• While one team’s representative tries to describe the term, opposing team members need to observe, listen and try to catch the clue giver using multi-syllable words.

For a remote team, instead of cards, the facilitator should private message the representative on each team what their mystery is.

2. Back to Back Drawing

Another one on the list of games for communication skills is the drawing game. This one is all about active listening and accurate interpretation to get a ‘clear picture’ through effective communication between both sets of players. 

How to play:

• Create two distinct groups among the team members. One will be the “Listener” and the other will be ‘Speakers’’
• Get the Speakers to describe an image that the Listeners need to draw – the only hitch being that these listeners cannot speak or ask for any clarification.
• If the team is together in a room, the two partners should sit back to back.

This can be adjusted for a remote team by having the listeners draw on a piece of paper at home, or by using a group board on Mural.

For more strategies on fostering effective communication, see my post about Tactfully Navigating Difficult Conversations.

3. Shuffled Storyboards

This storytelling game is all about intensive interaction within teams and creative ideation for the stories they plot and that in turn helps improve communication. 

How to play:

• Create groups among team members and share cards that have random series of related images.
• Under five minutes or less, each team needs to connect the given images in a logical sequence that creates a story.
• Teammates will have to communicate and explain the reasoning behind the choice for each image that creates the entire story
• Finally, all teams present their stories to the rest of the group.

Modifying this for a remote team is quite simple – each team works together in separate breakout rooms in your web conferencing platform, and then comes together at the end in the main room to discuss and present their stories. The facilitator can share the random series of related images via file transfer or in a collaboration tool like Mural.

4. Survive it!

This one makes a challenging addition to the list of games for communication skills. The game encourages teams to don their thinking caps, collaborate and solve problems together, helping to improve communication among team members.

How to play:

• Brief team members about a scenario where they are deserted on an island. 
• Share a group of objects you have arranged for pre-hand, and ask them to rank the objects based on their utility for survival until a rescue team comes.
• All team members should arrive at a common consensus on the rank position and the reasoning behind it. 

This is another game that’s easy to modify for remote teams with an online collaboration tool and would make an excellent practice session for learning how to collaborate online.

5. Another Way to Say

Another Way to Say is a game that challenges players to think of synonyms and alternate ways to say common phrases. A single player starts the round by saying a phrase. The other players volunteer similar sayings until out of options.

For example, if the starting sentence is “the end of the work day,” suggestions might include “quitting time,” “time to punch the clock,” “happy hour,” “overtime,” after-hours,” “rush hour,” “commute home,” and so on.

The exercise can either be a last-person standing competition where the player who continues to contribute longest wins the round, or players can work together to think up phrases. The point of the game is to show how many different ways there can be to express a thought.

Players are welcome to try to coin new phrases and use descriptive language, however the group can also challenge creative answers.

6. Tree or Bob Ross?

Tree or Bob Ross? is a game where players figure out objects by asking a series of questions. Each round, a thinker decides on a random object, and guessers try to figure out the object by asking this or that style questions. The first question in every game is always, “is it more like a tree or Bob Ross?” The thinker must decide which category is closest and answer accordingly. For example, if the object was a pumpkin, then the answer would be tree. If the object was a wood nutcracker, then the thinker would use their best judgment when responding.

The game continues until players guess the answer or are too stumped to continue.

This game helps team members to learn to think creatively and to be specific in their language (since they can only ask a specific style of question.)

7. Translate the Emoji

Guess the Emoji is one of the easiest virtual communication games. Players send messages to each other using strings of emojis, and other players must decode those messages. The first player or team to figure out the phrase wins a point.

For example:

👃👍👩‍🎤👻 = Smells Like Teen Spirit

You can give the game a theme, such as songs, movie titles, or famous phrases, or leave prompts open-ended.

These seven games can improve communication on your remote team by engaging members in creative problem-solving and thinking exercises. From Survive it! to Translate the Emoji, each game offers a unique way for teams to collaborate online while learning how to express their ideas clearly.

These activities will help improve communication among team members and ultimately result in greater success as they work together remotely. So give one or more of these games a try today and start seeing better results from your remote team conversations!

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