How to Pick the Right Game to Play with Colleagues
Did you know you can use games to boost employee engagement, soft skills, and success? Discover how to choose a fun game to play with colleagues–and why it’s good to play at work!
***Watch the video or continue reading below.***
It’s Worth Making Time for Games
I hope I convinced you in my last video that there’s solid scientific evidence that playing games at work is actually a great use of your time—to help you learn and grow uniquely human skills that can future-proof your career.
But I know in talking with you that some of you are like, “Well, we have remote workers,” or “We just have a small team,” or “We have a huge team.” Is there a game for us?
Yes, there is a game for you. There’s a game for virtually every situation, thanks to game designers (like me, and many other better game designers than I).
There Are Great Games for Any Situation
If you have a remote team, play a video game. Or play a card or a board game over video conferencing. If you’re fortunate enough to be physically co-located with people, then grab a board or a card game. I’m especially fond of these because they literally bring us together.
Lots of these games are for two to four people, but there are games for lots of people. What if people aren’t competitive? Well, then you might check out this great game (points to a box on the shelf) and games like it. This is Forbidden Island. It’s a cooperative game where everyone’s playing against the rising tide. So if you have someone who’s not into competition, there are cooperative games for you.
There are games about communication, strategy games; games that are highly competitive, games that are less competitive. If you have a big group of people and you need to work on communication and team building, then I highly recommend this awesome game: Codenames.
Pick a Game & Play with Your Colleagues
I’m here at Guardian Games in Portland. Maybe you have a great local game store like this one, where you can find countless games you might play.
In our upcoming book, All Work & Some Play: Future-Proof Your Career through Games, we make many specific suggestions for games. And of course, you’ll have other suggestions, as well.
Games are great at teaching communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking—skills that are less likely to be replaced by artificial intelligence in the years ahead.
What games do you recommend?
I’d love to read your comments and questions and suggestions below this video. Thanks for watching.
Want to learn more? Check out our new book All Work & Some Play: Future-Proof Your Career through Games, now officially available on Amazon!