5 Bay Area Team Building Ideas to Lower Stress

If you're looking for ways to offset stress in the workplace, our growing range of team building activities in San Francisco provides plenty of opportunities. With hands-on classes taught by local experts, we demystify tons of creative activities from painting to cooking to arranging flowers. The result you can expect is a less stressed, much happier team. 

Our Bay Area workshops are geared towards evoking a sense of tranquility through creative activity. You'll enter welcoming environments with teachers who are passionate to share knowledge about their chosen crafts with you. Even just stepping out of your daily routine of places you typically go and entering a pottery or painting studio can help you slough off some of the stress of the workweek and leave it behind. 

If there's one thing you don't need when embarking on team building exercises for work, it's added pressure about "doing it right." At our Bay Area arts, crafts, and cooking workshops, everyone gets to leave the metrics of their jobs behind and focus on creative exploration. It's not only fun, but it also helps put things into perspective and take the edge off, if teams are feeling stressed. 

Our teachers cater to beginners, so whether it's pottery making, learning how to build a terrarium, or something completely different, you can trust that everyone will feel comfortable and supported in trying out a new activity. If your interest is piqued, check out these unusual team building ideas in the Bay Area, from San Jose to Marin County: 

Sift stress away at baking classes

There's no doubt that bringing baked goodies into the office is bound to perk up everybody's day. But why not turn your colleagues' collective sweet tooth into a fun team bonding activity? We have several baking and desserts classes that give you the chance to learn how to make tantalizing chocolate desserts or even decorate cupcakes with professional-style piping skills. Learn some of the best dessert recipes in the Bay Area and pick up new baking skills - what's not to love?

You can turn our baking classes into team building games by having everyone split into smaller teams and compete in a bake-off. However you structure it, you can be sure that everyone will have fun and feel relaxed. Measuring and mixing ingredients, eagerly anticipating a sweet treat baking in the oven, and adding decorative touches all combine to make for a delightfully stress-free experience. The best part? In the end, you get to eat what you made! Yum. 

Happy hour meets paint party

If you're looking for team building activities in the Bay Area that have the let-loose energy of happy hour or even a party, give paint and sip classes a go. You'll head to a local painting studio and everyone will get set up with their own easel, canvas, and all the painting materials you need. It doesn't matter if nobody has even picked up a brush before, as these fun paint party experiences are super beginner-friendly. A professional teaching artist will lead the class, and show you step-by-step how to make your own versions of the same painting. 

At the end of class, you could improvise teamwork games such as putting all the completed paintings up against a wall and trying to guess whose is whose because they will all look a little bit different depending on the individual style of who made them. 

As you and your colleagues learn how to paint, you'll get to enjoy some wine, bubbly, cocktails, or mocktails - whatever you prefer! Enjoying some beverages and playing with colorful paints is a surefire way to brighten up everyone's week and release stress. 

Arrange bouquets at floristry classes

Flowers, plants, and pretty much all aspects of the natural world do a great job of lowering stress. So, if you're looking for simple team building activities that are guaranteed to release tension among your colleagues, our Bay Area floristry classes are a great choice. Learning how to arrange flowers is a soothing, tranquil activity resulting in a beautiful bouquet that inspires feelings of brightness and happiness. 

Everybody's got a favorite flower, and floristry classes are a great place to launch fun conversations about just what makes peonies or roses so appealing to different members of your team. Team bonding can be as straightforward as having everybody share why they chose to arrange the flowers the way they did, and what they think is attractive about everyone's unique bouquets. 

Make miniature natural worlds

DIY terrarium classes are a great place to get a bit playful. Using various elements such as succulent plants, air plants, rocks, moss, and sand, you can create little miniature worlds that can then live on your desk or in a special corner of your home. 

At our closed terrarium class in Menlo Park, everyone on your team will have the chance to create a self-contained ecosystem. How cool is that? Especially if much of your company's work is done on the computer or online in the virtual world, it can be a refreshing change of pace to incorporate terrarium making into your roster of corporate team building activities. 

You can expect that, while learning how to make a terrarium, your colleagues will tap into a sense of natural relaxation and feel the stress melt away as they interact with beautiful objects from the natural world. 

Get "fired" up at pottery classes

There is nothing quite like squeezing or pounding a pile of clay when it comes to stress-relieving activities. If you think your colleagues could benefit from a bit of tactile therapy, consider signing up for one of our Bay Area pottery classes. They make great, quick team building activities because within just a couple hours you can learn how to make something from scratch. 

Whether you want to explore a pottery wheel class or go old-school by learning hand building, we have classes that will meet your needs. We even have pottery classes that can be customized to meet your particular skill level and interests. 

So there you have it. These ideas for fun classes to try out are not only great for corporate team building activities but simply some of the best Bay Area activities to try out - no matter where you work! Want even more fun ideas for team building activities in the Bay Area? Take a look at these student favorites here.