Here is our list of the best management games.
Management games are activities to improve time management and team management skills. Examples include time squared, the mayo jar lesson, round-table, and swift sap. These activities aim to enhance skills that can help you manage employees.
These challenges are a type of professional development activity and are similar to leadership games and activities for leaders. The purpose of these activities is to build management skills and train good managers. These exercises sometimes appear as part of management training courses.
This list includes:
- online management games
- management games for students
- management games for employees
- management training games
- games for management teams
Let’s get started!
List of management games
Management games can help improve the skills of both managers and employees. Being on time and managing tasks correctly is necessary to enhance employees’ productivity and keep operations running smoothly.
Management training games will keep the fun alive while improving your team’s time-management and task-management skills. Here is our list of some games for management teams.
1. The Big Picture Challenge
The Big Picture Challenge is a management and team building game. This game is also an engaging icebreaker game. To play the challenge, divide participants into teams. Each team can have four to eight members. Each team will get a sheet of paper, and each teammate must draw a small segment of the big picture.
All members will coordinate their outlines and colors to create the finished piece. This activity is excellent in terms of management because it targets teamwork, coordination, and time management.
2. Time Squared
Time Squared is among the best management games for employees.
For this activity, you will print out three pages with 24 squares for every participant. Next, tell participants that each square represents one hour of the day. You will start by handing out the first page and asking the employees to fill it with their routine tasks aside from work.
For example, players can fill six to eight squares to represent the time spent sleeping and three blocks for eating.
You will then hand out the second page and ask the participants to fill it with their non-working time. For example, they can fill the boxes with the time spent during coffee breaks, chatting, or making phone calls.
Finally, ask participants to summarize the content of the first and second pages on a third page. The participants can use different colors to fill in the information. Once the information is filled in, the members can mark the empty squares as productive time. This activity allows the participants to view how they spend their time and what they need to change to manage themselves better.
Here is a list of time management tips.
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3. What I Did Yesterday
This management game requires your team to create two lists. In the first list, players will mention ten things they did at work the previous day.
In the second list, participants will name five things they want to improve for their next performance review. When you have everyone’s list, you can review the answers, compare both lists, and create connections between them.
You can discuss these answers with the rest of the group and conclude how you can manage your work, tasks, and time better.
4. $86,400
To play this game, you will tell your teammates that, hypothetically, they have $86,400 to spend within a day. The participants must choose carefully because the leftover money will be lost. The members must write down exactly how much money they spend and what they will spend it on.
Next, you will discuss the answers. The money, in this case, represents the time we have each day. We have 86,400 seconds each day, and we cannot get them back once they are gone. This activity will have you and your team schedule their day and tasks more effectively so they can manage their time better. Managers can also play this game with their teams to help employees better utilize their workflows and create a healthy work-life balance.
5. The Mayo Jar Lesson
For this game, you will have to bring some items beforehand. According to the number of members on your team, you will have to arrange mayo jars, golf balls, pebbles, and sand. You will give these items to each member separately.
You will ask the participants to start putting the objects inside the jar, so they all fit. Then, each member will get two minutes to think of a way to put the objects in the jar. You will discuss the solution with the team when the time is up.
The only correct way to put all the objects in the jar is by putting the golf balls in at the beginning, followed by the pebbles. Then, you will put it in the sand at the end. If you put the sand in first, then there will be no space for the golf balls.
Once the exercise concludes, you will explain what each of these items represents. The golf balls are the priority tasks that we need to complete first. The pebbles represent the other useful tasks that fall into a different category. Finally, the sand is non-urgent tasks.
The arrangement of materials teaches managers that priority tasks must be done first to make room for less critical tasks, and we do not have to waste time on unnecessary tasks. For example, if we add the sand first, then we can see that there will be no room left to put in the golf balls. Through this game, the managers will learn how to manage the tasks to avoid any inconvenience later efficiently.
6. The Blind Polygon
In this management game for employees, a leader will be the group’s coordinator, and the rest of the team will receive a rope and blindfolds. Then, the team will stand in a line and put their blindfolds on.
With the rope in both hands, the team members will start arranging themselves in a particular shape. The shape they will form will be given by the leader. To make this activity work, the team members must coordinate with each other, and the leader will manage them accordingly. This game teaches the leaders how to manage and direct and guides the team members to work together and manage themselves so they can carry out their tasks efficiently.
7. Situations
Situations is a fun game you can play anywhere, and it does not require any additional material other than what you already have in your office. Before starting, one member will be appointed to oversee the game. That member will provide the other participants with different scenarios.
All participants will write down solutions to the different scenarios. Therefore, it is better to make the participants work in teams.
Examples of situations are:
- You had the deadline for the task by tonight, but you forgot. As a manager, how will you make your team work for the project at the last minute?
- Your client is unhappy with your work. What will you do?
- One of the team members is always late and does not complete work on time. How will you make them realize their mistake without leaving a bad reputation for the other employees?
You can give a limited time to each team to think of the solution and present it. The team with the best ideas will get more points.
8. Round Table
To play Round Table, you will divide the team into groups. In this game, you will have a series of tasks to perform. As the teams progress through the game, the members will shift positions.
You will start the game by arranging several round tables in a large room.
Then, you will form teams and assign different tables to different tasks. Each team will have a table that serves as their starting point, and they will solve tasks.
Examples of tasks are:
- Eat a dish
- Stack the plastic cups in the form of a pyramid.
- Blow air in the balloons.
- Flip the bottle and make it stand straight.
Once the team members are done, they will move on to the next one and keep going until one of the teams finishes. Then, the fastest team will be the winner.
9. Back-to-Back Drawing
For this management training game, you will make two participants sit with their backs against each other. You will hand one participant a piece of paper and a pencil. Next, you will give the other participant a simple word to describe, for example, a car, hat, or flower. The described must help their partner draw the image by giving clear instructions.
The team members will have a limited time to draw the shape, and the participant that draws will also guess it.
This activity can help you manage complex tasks better by targeting your listening and communication skills and providing practice in giving instructions.
10. Birthday Line-up
You can play this game by asking your teammates to line up in the order of their birthdays without speaking. After that, the teams can only use gestures and non-verbal forms of communication to guide each other and give hints.
This activity will help you remember your coworkers’ birthdays and understand how you can use non-verbal communication to keep the workplace efficient. Managers can also gain a better insight into the personalities of their employees. If the company agrees, managers can celebrate coworkers’ birthdays to create a better relationships among employees.
11. Frostbite
The scenario in this game is that a group of people is lost in a snowy area. An elected leader is suffering from frostbite while everyone else has snow blindness.
These participants will have a blindfold while the leader guides them through the game. The leader will tell the team how to build a shelter by giving instructions only. The shelter, in this case, will be a tent. You will have tents prepared beforehand. The blindfolded participants will have to put together those tents as instructed by the leader. You can also repeat this activity with different groups to select a winner.
The winner can be selected based on the time it took and how neatly they put together the tent.
12. Escape Rooms
Escape rooms have become the new norm in office management games. You can select a physical or a virtual escape room for your team. It is best to book an escape room since professionals design these rooms to give you the best experience possible.
The participants will work in teams in an escape room to look for clues and items to unlock doors or cabinets. Once you have gone through a room, you will move on to the next one and the one after that until you have reached the end. This game is highly engaging and allows management teams to focus on their teamwork and problem-solving skills by managing the tasks on time.
Here is a list of DIY escape room ideas.
13. Swift Swap
You will divide the participants into two teams for the Swift Swap game. The first team will observe an area carefully and note where everything is kept. The team members will turn around while the other team changes five to ten things in the surroundings. The first team will then turn back around and figure out what changed.
To make the game more challenging, you can add a time limit. For example, you can give the first team ten minutes maximum to tell the difference in the setting.
If the participants are working remotely, then you can hold a Zoom meeting instead of being physically present in the room to observe, and the first team can carefully look at their teammates’ backgrounds. Then, the second team can change anything they want and let the first team observe the surroundings.
Make sure that if you hide something, it should still be in plain sight. Once the first team is done, the second team can take their turn observing the surroundings. You can do this for a few turns until you have a clear winner.
This game is excellent for managers because they need to be alert about the condition and progress of their team.
14. Morning Coffee
You cannot effectively manage employees or handle tasks at your workplace unless you have a good relationship with your coworkers. Morning Coffee is an icebreaker activity best suited for smaller groups.
You can hold a session of morning coffee for four to six folks at a time. This group will divide into pairs. All participants will spend ten minutes having coffee and chatting with their teammates. When time is up, the participants will change places and talk to a new peer. The participants will repeat this process until they have spoken to all the group members.
In the online version of this activity, six participants will form a group and join a Zoom session. The members will then divide into breakout rooms and have a conversation for the same time. Once the time is up, the participants will talk in a breakout room with another group member.
Such online management games also help build strong relationships with coworkers.
Check out more morning meeting ideas.
15. Goodie Bag Skits
Goodie Bag Skits is one of the best management games for students. This game forces the participants to focus on their team building, communication, and problem-solving skills. Problem-solving is a major element of management and is necessary for students.
To play this game, you will divide the participants into teams of four to eight members. Next, you will bring out a pre-prepared goodie bag of random objects. Each team will take turns selecting their bag after looking at its contents. The teams will then develop a three- to five-minute skit using all those items.
When all the teams have performed, you will choose a winner by allowing the audience to vote for the best performance.
16. Role Exchanging
It can be challenging to effectively and efficiently manage tasks around the office. When you overestimate or underestimate work, then the management of tasks can also suffer. Playing a fun roleplaying game is the perfect way to improve.
To play the Role Exchanging game, you will prepare a jar filled with the names of all participants. Each participant will take turns picking out a name and exchange roles with the name they draw from the jar.
If a participant picks out their name, they can put it back inside and have another go. When all the participants have their roles, they will spend the day working as that person and performing the tasks they have for that day. This motivational game can help you improve your management skills and give you an insight into what other employees deal with daily.
17. The Minefield
The Minefield is a highly engaging and fun management game that works on team building and active listening. However, it would be best to have a large area, such as a parking lot, to play this game. You will prepare the area by enclosing it using tapes. Also, make sure to mark the starting and ending points. Next, you will place five to seven everyday objects at a distance from each other. You will also place sheets of paper that will act as ‘mines.’
You will further divide the group of participants. A few members will stand inside the enclosed area, and the rest will be outside. The participants inside will put on blindfolds, and the ones outside will act as their guides. The members will help the blindfolded members navigate the area by giving instructions. The participants inside will have to pick up all the objects and reach the end while avoiding the mines.
Conclusion
Management games for teams are necessary to improve productivity and performance at the workplace. Apart from enhancing skills, these games give a great time to the participants by involving them in engaging activities.
Management games include activities focusing on key areas of improving employees, like time management, team management, and leadership.
Next, check out these lists of management tips and tips for first time managers.
