Stop Talking and Draw. Together.
I didn’t realize just how many actionable ideas were out there that tap into creativity, collaboration, and communication through drawing. Whether you’re looking to simply introduce some variety or have an outcome in mind, here are 10 activities to try.
Icebreakers and Intros
1. Squiggle Birds
as described by Marijn van der Zee, based on the Gamestorming activity.
Stretch your visual drawing muscles. This is a fun exercise to get people ready to draw. After doing this exercise, participants will realize they can draw to convey their ideas. (5 mins.)
Draw scribbles on a paper, then add dots, triangles, and straight lines for legs and feet…
2. Draw your “Share”
If you have ‘get to know you questions’ as a icebreaker, next time have people draw their answers.
Ask a question such as ‘what’s one thing people probably don’t know about you?’ Give people time to draw, then go around the group, having one person share their answer at a time.
3. Collaborative Face Drawing
This is a nice group activity from Fun Retrospectives that helps with name recognition.
Interact as a group with each person looking at another, adding one facial feature to the drawing of that person’s face. Switch papers until everyone has contributed one feature to every other person’s drawing.
Trust and Team Building
4. Back to Back Drawing (aka Blind Draw)
Back-to-back drawing, as described by Teampedia, is a partner activity that can be used for group members: to experience receiving directions without non-verbal cues, to develop trust between group members, as a warm up, or to build communication and collaboration. (15–20 mins)
Participants pair up back to back, one person describes their drawing to the other who must reproduce it based on what they understand.
5. Collaborative Masterpiece Drawing
This is a version of a well-known group drawing activity. Use it as a simple icebreaker or for reflection on teamwork and collaboration. (20–30 mins.)
Teams take turns adding one line at a time to a drawing. Play 2+ rounds using many rule variations.
6. Iterative Team Drawing
A fun team activity from Dov Tsal that will get them out of their comfort zones, will tap into their creativity, and generate insights about the value of teamwork.
(20–30 mins.)
Draw your best reproduction of a statue/toy (in the middle of the table) — once by yourself, once as a team with certain constraints!
7. Draw Toast
An extremely popular group activity created by Dave Gray that can spark valuable discussions on differences in perspective, level of detail, different but correct points of view. (10–25 mins.)
Ask people to draw how to make toast!
8. Group Duct Tape Game
This game from Group Dynamix promotes communication and collaboration. (20 mins.)
Draw a large smiley face [or something else] using a marker controlled by the entire team.
Result-driven Activities
9. Drawing Together
A Liberating Structures group activity that will reveal insights and paths forward through nonverbal expression (40 mins.)
Using only 5 visual symbols for components, participants tell a story about a challenge they face, or a common challenge.
10. Drawing the Status Quo
A great exercise from Ferdinand Veldmans for gathering data during a retrospective if you’d like to focus on how the overall experience feels for your team members. (30–40 mins.)
Reflect individually and then as a group on the status quo, then spend 20 minutes as a group drawing a picture describing the situation and reflecting the group’s feelings.
What have you tried?
If you have different (or better!) drawing activities, let us know! You’re welcome to join our 3,000+ agile changemaker Slack community where we share what works and discuss innovation, agile, lean, and improvement cycles.
