What is a leadership activity?

A leadership activity is anything that helps members of your management team develop leadership skills, such as:

• Active listening
• Coaching
• Communication
• Creative problem-solving
• Empathy
• Persuasion
• Positive thinking
• Project planning
• Reliability
• Strategic thinking
• Time management

No single leadership activity will transform your managers. Instead, activities are designed to affect change gradually. Whenever your team completes an activity, they can gain new insights and slightly hone their skills. The effects add up, contributing to management development.

9 fun leadership activity ideas

The following leadership activity ideas can serve as a starting point for developing exercises, games and events that foster your team’s leadership skills. You can adapt them to suit your workplace or use them as inspiration for coming up with your own ideas.

1. Survive against the odds

Follow these steps to engage your team in a leadership exercise that requires collaboration and critical thinking:

• Break your group into two teams.
• Describe a survival scenario, such as being stranded on a desert island or lost in the mountains. Use as much imagery as possible to set the scene.
• Ask each team to come up with five essential items that they would want to have with them and five things they could use from the natural environment to help them survive.
• Give the teams 10 to 15 minutes to discuss.
• Bring the group back together and have each team share their items and explain why they chose them.
• Have the other team provide constructive criticism about the plan.

2. Build something

Help the management team understand the meaning of hands-on with this leadership activity that relies on problem-solving and teamwork:

• Break the management team into small groups of two or three.
• Give them a simple LEGO set or another construction set.
• Provide them with a picture of what to build but not the actual instructions.
• Have them assemble the set to the best of their ability.
• To add the competitive element of leadership games, have the teams race to see who can complete their structure correctly the fastest.

3. Speed coaching

Each member of your management team has unique strengths. Speed leadership coaching encourages members to discuss challenges with each other, so they can benefit from everyone’s knowledge and abilities. To do it:

• Create two rows of chairs facing each other.
• Divide your management team into Group A and Group B.
• Have each group form a single file line.
• Ask them to think of a management challenge they’ve been facing.
• Have Group A sit on one side and Group B on the other.
• Give Group A 30 seconds to tell Group B about their challenge.
• Give Group B two minutes to provide advice on how to address it.
• Switch roles, having Group B share with Group A.
• Tell Group B members to move down one chair and start the process again, continuing until every member of Group A has talked to every member of Group B.

4. Learn from leaders you admire

Have each member of your management team write down three leaders they admire. The leaders can be from politics, major companies or even other managers at your organization. Ask each team member to read their list and identify why they admire their chosen leaders. List the reasons on a whiteboard or blackboard. At the end, read the list and then point out which characteristics reflect some of the best leadership qualities of a manager.

5. Answer icebreaker questions

Icebreaker activities can allow people to relax at the start of a training session, but they can also be a leadership activity on their own. Good icebreaker questions let your management team think creatively and build listening and communication skills. Plus, they can use these questions to kick off their own team meetings in the future. Here are five questions to try:

• If you were in the Olympics, what sport would you compete in?
• If you could see one movie again for the first time, what would it be and why did you pick it?
• If you could only reread one book during your lifetime, what would it be or why?
• What advice would you give your 12-year-old self if you could talk to them?
• What would you do if you weren’t allowed to use your smartphone for one week?

6. Reframe feedback

This leadership exercise gives your team a chance to develop an important leadership skill: giving feedback in a constructive and motivating way.

• Break your team into groups of two to three people.
• Give each group a different list of imagined pieces of written feedback.
• Have the groups identify which ones are constructive feedback.
• Tell the groups to rewrite all feedback that isn’t constructive.
• Bring everyone back together and have the teams share their lists.
• Discuss their decisions as a group.

7. Freeze

If you’re looking for a leadership game that does not seem like a leadership activity, the Freeze improv game is a great option. This game encourages creative thinking, collaboration and teamwork in an entertaining format. Here’s how you play:

• Two people get up in front of the group.
• They have 30 seconds to talk and come up with a scene to act out.
• The first two players begin performing the scene.
• At any time, any audience member can shout “Freeze!” When they do, both performers must freeze in their current positions.
• The person who yelled freeze gets up and takes the place of one of the performers.
• Then, they start an entirely new scene.
• The other player must go along with it.
• The game can continue for as long as time allows or until players start struggling to come up with new ideas.

8. Hold a competitive charity drive

Turn a company-wide charity drive into leadership games by tracking which department or work team gets the most donations. To keep things fair, determine the winner by average donations per team member rather than by the total number of donations. Personally challenge all members of your management team to encourage participation in the drive as much as possible. This will allow them to practice skills such as setting strategic goals, project planning and motivating employees.

9. Imagine what-ifs

Challenge your team to come up with creative solutions to real-life management problems with what-if scenarios:

• Break the management team up into small groups.
• Present a complex situation that describes a leadership challenge with more than one possible solution.
• Give the teams 10 minutes to determine how they would solve it.
• Have each team share their ideas.
• Encourage the other teams to constructively point out risks or flaws in the plan.
• Ask the presenting teams to consider the feedback and decide how they would overcome the challenge or if they wish to revise their plan.