Active Team Building, Amazing Race Activities

March 24, 2020

So you’ve decided to start off your Amazing Race activities for team building with a scintillating opening ceremony where your witty host brings your team up to speed with the game. But then that’s just about the only part of the event that you’re convinced about, and you’re still undecided about what should follow afterwards - not the race kits, nor locations, nor tasks. 

The first thing you should know about Amazing Race activities for team building is that they need to give everyone an equal chance of winning. They shouldn’t be cut out for those with certain expert knowledge or physical abilities. They should be geared towards those who make the best choices when presented with many options.

It’s therefore crucial to make the planning process for the event all-inclusive, and let your team members decide on the ideas and tasks that’ll make up the event. In this article, we present amazing race team building event ideas that your team members will love to choose from. 

Interactions with strangers

Amazing race events give participants a great opportunity to explore a city like never before, and interacting with the members of communities is one of the best ways to do so.  Get your team members to engage with strangers based on various ideas. You might give out points for taking photos with a given number of strangers with an awkward item in hand (kitchen utensils, toiletries, toys, dog treats, for example) or for collecting autographs from a number of random people. In other instances points maybe awarded for taking photographs with a particular set of people e.g firemen, dog catchers, etc.

Voluntary work is also another great way for team members to interact with the community members and explore the city. Points can be awarded for doing good deeds to strangers and helping out at places that care for the needy. Team members can be given a list of supplies they must gather together and deliver to shelter homes or asked to complete various types of voluntary work to assist people in these places.

Beachside Competitions

Golden coastlines are one of the most exhilarating places to hold Amazing Race activities for team building. Teams can revel in the beauty of the coast lines while slogging it out to reach various milestones. You can incorporate beach Olympics, sandcastle sculpting, boat construction, cryptic puzzles, codebreakers, and even trivia. Other exhilarating tasks include creative photo shoots, various construction tasks, eating competitions, and lots more. 

Bar Stops

Of course, an amazing race event doesn’t only have to explore the city completely without stops at bars. You can incorporate various bar locations in the team’s race map. The bars can serve as either checkpoints, where team members have to figure out the fastest route to, or as a location for challenges where team members banter with each other for points. Whichever way you choose, ensure it’s going to help team members groom their collaborative and problem solving skills while they’re having loads of fun. 

Some exciting challenges for bar stops include eating competitions, creative photo contests, cryptic puzzles, bar puzzles, trivia, etc. In the spirit of the fun, team members may be allowed to choose their drinks and food, but make sure no one gets drunk to stupor! Alternatively, team members may be tasked to down certain types and quantities of food and drinks to unlock their next clues.

Investment Contests

Stimulate your team members’ investment acumen with investment-related tasks. You can set up different rules for the investment game. But a great clue for the rules can be taken from the game of monopoly, which most of your team members are most likely already familiar with. You can incorporate a game board similar to that of Monopoly, interactions with strangers, puzzles and riddles, etc. You can even ask them to turn in photos or videos of the properties and items that they can use to convince investors. The games can also include eating competitions that unlock new clues, construction tasks, and object searches. 

For the climax, the team members can be asked to make their way to a location after completing all the challenges. There, their points are counted, and leader board announced for each challenge, before the overall winner is finally announced. 

Search Games

A key component of Amazing Race activities for team building is searching. Give your team members clues to find certain objects around a fixed location. They can be required to find a car parked in a busy area using only superficial clues like a sticker or a flyer on the car. They’ll have to figure out the car without knowing the make, model, or colour of the car. They may also be asked to find certain plans or flowers in a particular location, or even sift through a pile of paperwork to find a particular document. 

Another exciting search game is giving your team members a shopping list to go into a certain shop with. It’s not necessary for them to buy those items. They can simply write down the prices of the items or other relevant information on the product’s label. Make sure you’re clear with the store owners and attendants about the type of information or assistance they give to the team members.

Pet Shopping

To further spice things up, you can take your team members down to the animal world in your Amazing Race activities for team building. Similar to the search and find challenge, you team members can be given a list of pet items to look for in a pet shop. Alternatively, they might only be given clues as to what items they should look for such as the nutritional content of pet foods, the age bracket of the pet, how the items will be stored, as well as other interesting facts about the pet. They can even be asked to do some nerve-wrecking activities like administering injections to an animal, or holding up the animal to inspect it, etc.

Conclusion

The grand finale and celebrations for the winners should be well planned out from the start. Amazing Race activities for team building should be an exhilarating experience from start to finish. The ideas listed above will help ensure that everyone gets boatloads of fun in the game while they reinforce the positive attributes that will help them dispense their duties as team members.