Simple and Fun: this Community Building Game Helps to Unify a Group

I love games and since I am a community builder, there is little I enjoy more than community building games!

Here is a game you can play with your group that will begin to unify the members by giving the group a shared identity. The objective of naming your team is to capture who you are as a body. This is an effective and simple way to engage in the community building process.

Name your Team!

Get together and decide what to call yourself. This will be easier to do after you have met for some time, or if you have come together for a specific purpose. This will encourage the members to become aware of themselves as a group – their identity, goals, camaraderie. It calls on the imagination and it carries forward a sense of who they are as a group. Use consensus to make the final decision.

In my little family, we called ourselves “Team Gosselin” and one summer, when a friend and a niece joined us on a camping trip, they became a part of Team Gosselin. It made them feel a part of everything, welcomed and engaged. It also ensured there was no pairing, no “us” and “them” in our cabin, nobody who didn’t belong. And it made the adventures we shared (like when the VW van broke down on the highway on the way to Cape Breton) a lot more fun.

In university residence, the five of us who lived on the top floor of the Annex came to think of ourselves as “Annexers”. When friends and family came to visit on the weekends, we dubbed them “honorary Annexers”.

I love naming the team. It’s a habit for me now, one that makes all team members smile, though it isn’t always me who comes up with the name.

Try naming a group you’re a part of and let us know in the comments how this changed the dynamics of the group.

Photo Credit: Bre