No Need to Break a Sweat with These Team Building Exercises

While the term "team bonding" might conjure images of trust falls and ropes courses, rest assured that team building activities in San Francisco can be relaxing and low-key while still providing all the benefits of their physically demanding counterparts. With our array of arts, crafts, and cooking workshops, every member of your company can tap into their creativity and share the process of discovery and creation with one another - without breaking a sweat!

The benefits of mindfulness are well-documented. When workers are tuned into a mindful state of being, you'll see increases in cooperation, productivity, and general wellbeing throughout the office. There are plenty of corporate team building activities that cultivate a sense of tranquility among workers, which can translate to a more enjoyable and healthy working environment. 

Burnout can be a big problem, but quick team building activities that only take up a few hours of time can do wonders for rejuvenating every member of your team. The Bay Area is a global hub of creativity, so why not tap into that and select an activity that will leave your team feeling inspired and energized? Here are some ideas for Bay Area experiences to consider:

Express your personality with flower arranging

Team building games often involve sharing about ourselves through storytelling and revealing little unusual facts about ourselves. Going to a class where everyone learns how to arrange flowers together provides an opportunity for different styles of expression. You can gain new understandings of one another's personalities by seeing how your bouquets look, even with no words spoken among you. 

There are likely to be words spoken, though! Bay Area floristry classes are a great ice-breaker for meaningful conversations between colleagues. Doing activities with your hands makes it easier for conversations to flow naturally. 

Make your own DIY coffee mugs for work at pottery classes

If you're looking for teamwork games that will be sure to be memorable, book a San Francisco pottery class! Doing tactile activities is a wonderful way to heal both the mind and body from being on screens a lot, as so many of us are. Interacting with clay is a balm for this modern-day affliction. It is cool, smooth, soft, gooey, and it just feels great to sink your hands into.

Pottery classes make excellent team building activities in their own right, but if you want to raise the stakes, there are easy ways to turn them into fun group games. Perhaps have everyone make a coffee mug, and then vote at the end for which one is their favorite, with the winner, of course, getting bragging rights indefinitely. Or, you could wait until everyone's coffee mugs are finished, and then follow up the workshop with a "white elephant"-style giveaway, where everyone winds up with a different mug than the one they made. 

All of our Bay Area pottery classes are held on-site at pottery studios run by local ceramicists. In the pottery studio environment, surrounded by fresh clay, glazes in different colors, and vessels in various stages of creation, everyone on your team will be able to absorb the creative energy and get revitalized by it. 

As with all of our Bay Area workshops, pottery making classes are totally beginner-friendly. Our teachers will introduce you to the basics and make sure everyone feels comfortable and up-to-speed before demonstrating and teaching you how to make your projects. 

Get in touch with nature at terrarium classes

There's no denying the therapeutic quality of nature. But did you know you could get your team engaged with nature without having to embark on outdoor team building activities such as hiking, rappelling, or ropes courses? With our terrarium making workshops, everyone focuses on a little slice of nature that they design themselves. Using succulents, rocks, sand, and other elements, participants create miniature natural worlds that are both attractive and soothing to look at. 

If you're interested in adding an aspect of team building games to this activity, consider signing up for a DIY terrarium class with an added spin of having everyone get a crystal that matches their Zodiac sign to put in it. This fun, hands-on class opens the door for people to share about their Zodiac signs and their personalities in general. 

Bay Area candle making classes are lit! 

You've probably heard the term, "burning the candle at both ends." If you're nodding in recognition while you read this, knowing that you and your whole team are feeling the burnout hard, flip things around by booking into a DIY candles workshop. You'll get to play chemist by mixing different materials, such as soy wax and scented oils, together to create a completed candle. 

In a scented candle workshop from Mountain View Candle Company, everyone can choose different scents to make a completely custom candle. Learning which different scents everyone prefers is a unique and different type of get-to-know-you style team bonding, and opens the door for lots of fun conversations. 

At the end of class, everyone will have homemade candles to keep. Especially if your team works fully remote or in a hybrid style, giving everyone the chance to make DIY candles to add some ambiance and aromatherapy to their home offices is a thoughtful added bonus of this team building activity. 

Keeping it creative for Bay Area team building activities

There are two ways to break a sweat with team building activities. One is to do a physical challenge where everyone exerts themselves. The other is to make everyone nervous by putting them on the spot with questions about themselves. Our Bay Area arts, crafts, and cooking workshops thankfully provide another option. With tons of beginner-friendly creative hobbies to explore, our classes give you a way to reward and strengthen your team without going through the forced motions of many corporate team building activities. 

Because our classes give you the chance to make beautiful and functional objects - whether it's a painting, a piece of handmade pottery, or a unique floral arrangement - everyone will be able to take something home so they can remember the team bonding and how much fun they had. Looking for even more creative team building activities in the Bay Area? Take a look at these fun possibilities!