15 Best Executive Team Building Activities

Team building activities improve collaboration within teams. They can also increase motivation and nurture soft skills like communication and creative thinking.

Executives might feel that these activities are better suited for junior staff. However, upper management can also benefit from team building, especially if the activities are targeted specifically for them.

Executive team-building activities will help participants work towards exerting the right kind of authority.

These help improve active listening, decision-making, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills, which will eventually let them earn more trust and respect from other employees.

Book a demo with us to explore exciting and collaborative virtual and in-person activities that make any team-building session unforgettable. 

Let’s explore ideas for the right team-building activities for senior executives, from executive team-building retreats to culinary lessons.

1. Virtual Clue Murder Mystery

Playing a murder mystery game online is perhaps one of the best executive team-building games. It is fun and exciting and helps attendees practice important skills.

The senior leadership team will need teamwork to sift through clues and case files to beat this murder mystery game. This will help them improve their communication, collaboration, and critical thinking skills.

Senior managers deal with the challenges of high-stakes, high-pressure situations in the company on a daily basis.

Fortunately, this team-building activity takes place in a more relaxed environment. However, solving a murder can certainly build skills that they can apply in their daily lives in the company.

2. Remote Managing Workshop

In the age of remote work, senior leaders will need to find the right balance between too much and too little management.

To do this, they will learn to combine traditional leadership skills with new ones, such as online communication and supervising remote teams.

This can help them improve their team’s productivity. They can even build mutual trust and better understand mental health as they understand how each employee works from home.

They can set up virtual team-building activities to engage their own team members and boost employee morale.

The team-building workshop can even teach team leaders and other senior executives how to use certain apps, like Canva and Zoom.

3. Virtual Code Break

Executives constantly have to deal with complex challenges. Virtual Code Break requires teamwork and problem-solving skills to beat brain teasers and other mental exercises.

Some problems require more creative strategies to answer as well.

These can help senior executives be better equipped to handle real-world problems.

4. C-Suite Team Retreat

The senior leadership team goes through some stressful situations. As such, executive team-building retreats can be the best medicine for them. It gives the C-suite time to relax and unwind away from the office.

These retreats can be partnered with other executive team-building activities and games. For one, they can receive leadership training, discuss challenges, and exchange tips.

In addition to offering advice and getting support, attendees can also use the time to socialize and strengthen relationships with the leaders of different departments.

5. Culinary Team Building

Whether it refers to booking a class or inviting a culinary enthusiast into the office, cooking is actually a pretty common team-building activity for senior leadership teams. After all, food brings people together.

During culinary team building, executives can learn a new skill and recipes while improving collaboration, communication, and creativity.

After cooking, participants can sit down together and enjoy what they made. A dish’s success can have a positive impact on interactions, further improving team dynamics.

6. Strategic Board Game Night

Playing strategic board games is a fun way to focus on practicing strategic planning and decision-making skills.

It can also encourage teamwork as executives come up with strategies to beat the game or other teams. It can result in better communication as well.

If your company has a remote or hybrid setup, you can look for virtual problem-solving team-building activities that can work for everyone, even online.

Even if your team does not win, watching what everyone else is doing in this team-building game still exercises your mind as you process why they won.

7. Virtual Friendly Feud Social

Executives will break into smaller groups and compete against one another in answering Family Feud-style survey questions about human nature and culture.

To make this executive team-building activity spark more meaningful conversations, each round of questions can be followed by a group discussion.

This allows the senior management team to discuss and analyze the survey questions and answers more deeply. Doing so can help them connect with the game on a more personal level since they can apply it to the business.

If a question about company efficiency arises, the team can analyze how efficient their company is and what steps they can take to improve internal processes.

This type of virtual friendly feud social can encourage open dialogue in an informal setting. It helps strengthen relationships too.

8. Domino Effect Challenge

Rube Goldberg machines are chain reaction-type machines designed to perform simple tasks, like popping a balloon, in an indirect and more complicated way.

The domino effect challenge is essentially the building of a Rube Goldberg machine. However, since this is a team-building event, attendees will be divided into teams.

Each small group will be tasked with building one part of the machine. When the time is up, everyone will need to come together to assemble their sections to create a fully-functioning free-standing device.

Team members will need to make decisions on the spot on how to connect parts or tweak them so they work smoothly and make the whole machine a success.

This team-building activity helps leaders of various departments practice clear communication, teamwork, collaboration, and quick-thinking skills.

9. Innovation Workshop

An innovation workshop involves various activities — such as brainstorming, playing games, and making prototypes.

The goal is to encourage out-of-the-box thinking so participants will learn to explore newer and more creative strategies and ideas.

When they share their ideas with the rest of the team, others can help build on them.

Some activities to try in this workshop include mind mapping, role reversal, future scenario planning, and idea pitching.

Depending on the specific activity participants decide on, it may be possible to do it virtually as well.

10. Virtual Social Shuffle

Senior executives often work under a lot of pressure, which can compromise their interpersonal relationships with employees and other leaders.

A virtual social shuffle helps you form new strong bonds and stay connected with your fellow executives, which can also eventually help move your organization forward.

These team-building sessions will have attendees talk about a series of themed discussion topics that will let them learn more about one another both inside and outside their professional lives.

Topics can start with something simple and personal, like hobbies and interests. They can then progress to more serious topics, such as how you maintain work-life balance and how you try to improve employee engagement.

Aside from being a simple social shuffle, you can also engage in a virtual trivia game to test those new bonds. Questions in these trivia games can be about the corporate world, random facts, or trivia about people in the company or leadership team.

11. Masterclass with Industry Leaders

Invite industry leaders to hold a masterclass with the executive team members. Successful experts and executives can share their knowledge and skills that can help your team improve and push your organization forward.

These workshops are also designed specifically for executives. They will learn how to improve employee engagement for greater productivity, and experts can provide more tips on how to make good decisions under pressure.

They can hold discussions and workshops so your leaders can gain valuable insights. Afterward, a question-and-answer portion can further drive home any learnings.

If it is not possible to physically invite an expert, you can organize virtual conferences instead.

12. Industry Trend Analysis Workshop

Leaders will discuss the current and possible future state of their industry in an industry trend analysis workshop.

They will analyze the current state of the industry and then focus on any big changes the business can expect to face moving forward.

Senior management will discuss potential problems and come up with possible solutions. The goal is to position the company for success despite prospective obstacles in the future.

Closely examining trends is similar to checking a map to ensure that the entire organization is moving in the right direction. This allows the leadership team to exercise creativity, collaboration, and communication.

This team-building activity can even improve research and observation skills. In addition to examining trends as a whole and determining how to position the company well, leaders can also examine competitors more closely.

Studying competitors allows them to compare them with the business, allowing them to learn how to improve the business and get ahead of the competition.

13. Corporate Taboo

Tweak the classic game of Taboo to make it about the corporate world to create Corporate Taboo.

Here, each team will try to communicate specific business words or phrases without using words related to those phrases.

This is how a round of Corporate Taboo would go:

1. Each team gets a list of corporate-related words/phrases (such as budget and overtime) to be guessed.
2. Each of those words/phrases is accompanied by other words that players are not allowed to use. For example, taboo words for “budget” could be “money,” “spending,” and “accounting.”
3. One player from each team will describe the list of words to be guessed without mentioning the taboo words. Their team will need to guess what they are trying to describe.
4. If the team guesses the word/phrase, they get a point.

Corporate taboo encourages creativity and communication among team members to get the right answer.

14. Eco-Friendly Team Building

Eco-friendly team-building activities can help the company become more aware of its role in creating a greener and more sustainable organization.

Participants can engage in beach cleanups, tree-planting projects, and other sustainable community projects, whether they initiate their own activities or join existing ones.

These activities help the environment and allow the executive team to work toward a shared goal outside a normal business setting.

In addition, leaders can meet after eco-friendly team-building activities to discuss how they can also make the company more sustainable.

After all, many consumers are also trying to make more sustainable choices, so they are also more likely to support eco-friendly businesses.

15. Senior Management Happy Hour

Happy hours can give executives a break, so they can socialize and connect over non-work topics.

Admittedly, the senior leadership team should still act professionally. However, they do not have to be so uptight and polished, giving them a chance to be more relaxed and vulnerable than normal.

It is even possible to integrate senior management happy hour with regular employees’ happy hour.

Attendees can do activities like bar games, answering trivia questions, and cocktail-making classes.

What are the Benefits of Team Building Activities for Executives?

“The whole is more than just the sum of its parts.”

For the company to be successful, each part must function well. This can only happen if all parts work well together.

Employees are always subject to regular team-building activities to brush up on their teamwork and other soft skills. However, it is similarly important that their leaders know how to improve and maintain good team dynamics.

Executive team-building activities can help with this.

The higher you climb the corporate ladder, the easier it can be to feel disconnected from consumers and regular employees. That can cause a divide in how you think the organization is doing and how it is really doing, so decision-making might be harder than it should be.

So, some benefits of executive team-building activities are:

• Ground leaders to help them learn the right kind of authority to exert.
• Puts the employees and company as a whole into a better perspective, which can improve the decisions that leaders make.
• Executives will be more connected with employees, have better mental health awareness, and know how to boost employee morale.
• Leaders can learn to identify strengths and view various teams in a different light. This allows upper management to think of creative ways to exploit those strengths for the company’s success.
• Establishes a positive work environment, improving productivity.
• A happy employee is a good employee, which can improve customer relationships too. With better customer servicing comes an increase in customer loyalty too.

Key Takeaways on Executive Team Building Activities

Leadership team-building activities ground senior teams in reality, helping them understand what is really happening in the company — from how employees are faring to where the business stands in the industry.

Senior executives learn and improve soft skills like leadership, communication, critical decision-making, and creativity.

From executive retreats to virtual games, there are many team-building tips and ideas that can provide a lighthearted team-building experience while also giving leadership teams a chance to unwind and acquire new skills.

It is ideal to hold these activities (whether quick trivia games or more organized team-building retreats) every few months to consistently strengthen and maintain relationships within the leadership team.

They are all the more important when companies change management so new leaders learn to fill their new roles as soon as possible.

If you are interested in holding an executive team-building activity, contact us at Escapely.