How Trivia Can Be Used for Team Building

Probably the most valid question I am asked when people learn what I do is, “how is live trivia a team building activity?” To understand the answer, let’s look at both items on their own:

Team Building
According to the source of all knowledge (Wikipedia) team building is defined as “a wide range of activities…designed for improving team performance. Team building is an important factor in any environment, its focus is to specialize in bringing out the best in a team to ensure self development, positive communication, leadership skills and the ability to work closely together as a team to problem solve.”

Live Trivia
When done in a certain way, live trivia events break a larger group down into smaller teams, who then compete against each other towards the goal of “winning.” When questions are asked, participants must collaborate as a team to determine a final answer, utilizing communication, leadership and time management skills in the process.

Sounds the same, doesn’t it? Employing customized trivia questions in an overall competitive environment only enhances the impact of these skills, which when delivered in a fun and enjoyable manner only enhances the positive group experience.

Having created and hosted well over 300 live trivia events, I can say with certainty that teams are never playing trivia for prizes- they simply want to win. However, there can only be one winning team in a trivia team building activity- does this present a problem if the goal of the event is to foster unity of the entire group? Not at all.

The group has just partaken in a highly energized and enjoyable group experience, which they will all remember- just because teams didn’t “win” doesn’t mean they didn’t have fun, or utilize the important team building skills that the event is designed to develop. Don’t forget: the competition may be intense, but it is entirely good-natured and friendly. Besides, having one winning team gloating in the office the next day only gets people fired up to win the next trivia event!

There are many other reasons I’ve discovered which make live trivia an ideal corporate team building activity, but I will save them for future posts. In the meantime, do you agree or disagree? If so, tell me why!