Corporate game show questions: how to unite your team, not divide it

Picture the finale of a company event. On stage stand the CEO and an intern who has been with the company for a month. The host reads out the question: "How many tonnes of steel did our factory use in 2005?". The CEO is silent. The intern stares at the floor. The room goes quiet – and it's not a good silence.

One question is all it takes for a game show to start dividing people instead of bringing them together. A bad set of questions pins people to their seats. It makes them feel stupid. It can also bring to the surface divisions, cliques and hierarchies that nobody talks about day to day.

Our experience points to one thing. What decides whether a game show succeeds isn't the lighting or the set. It's the questions.

A corporate game show isn't there to test knowledge. Its job is to make the room laugh together, with nobody afraid of getting an answer wrong. Below we describe how to write those questions.

Bringing people together matters more than showing off knowledge

The most common mistake organisers make is treating a game show like an exam. When the questions are difficult or specialist, one person who "knows everything" plays. The rest of the team stands by and waits for it to end.

If most of the room has no idea what a question is about, the team has just been divided. A test atmosphere is good for neither fun nor team building.

Four types of questions that work

A mix works best. Different types of questions keep the pace up and give a chance to people with different knowledge and different lengths of service.

1. Company questions that don't exclude anyone

Every client wants questions about their company. It's a good idea, but it's easy to slip up.

• Bad question: "What was the company's revenue in Q2 2019?". Only the board and finance know this. Everyone else feels out of the loop.
• Bad question: "Who in the IT department has ginger cats?". It's an in-joke. It amuses five people and leaves fifty on the sidelines, especially new starters.
• Good Millionaire Quiz-style question: "According to the office survey, what annoys us most in the kitchen?" A) No milk for coffee B) Yet another dirty mug in the sink C) A broken coffee machine D) Food disappearing from the fridge. The question is light-hearted and concerns everyone. Nobody knows the correct answer, so everyone guesses on equal terms.
• Good true/false question: "True or false: our company's first logo was drawn on a napkin". Company history served up as an anecdote. It's a fifty-fifty chance, so people are happy to take a guess.

2. Pop culture as common ground

If the team is very diverse in age, length of service and interests, look for what everyone knows. Pop culture and shared memories work best here.

• Music questions. This is the safest format and the one that generates the most energy. Recognising the intro of a hit from the 80s, 90s or 2000s doesn't require knowledge, just memory. That's what our Name That Tune game show is built on. The finance director and a junior developer react the same way to the first bars of AC/DC.
• Films and TV series. Cult quotes (e.g. from the Polish comedy "Kiler-ów 2-óch"), characters from popular series such as "The Office", or recognising stills.
• Light general knowledge. "Which car brand's logo shows three ellipses?" or "Finish the advertising slogan…" with a line everyone in the room knows.

3. Survey questions: the power of Family Feud

This is our favourite type when it comes to team building. In this format there are no wrong answers, only less popular ones. A Family Feud-style game show doesn't ask about facts, but about opinions and associations. Before the event we can run an anonymous survey among your employees.

Example survey questions:

• "What do you do when the boss isn't looking?"
• "The most common excuse for skipping a meeting?"
• "The best thing about working from home is…?"
• "Where in the office is the best place to hide and work in peace?"

At the event, teams don't guess facts. They guess what their colleagues answered. The room laughs at its own habits and small office sins. Few formats bring people together so quickly.

4. Questions that sneak in HR and marketing goals

Want employees to remember the company's new values or health and safety rules? Instead of a lecture, make it a game. A Themed Olympics or Millionaire Quiz lets you build a game show entirely around your own materials, presented in a lighter way than in training.

Instead of a slide saying "Our 4 values are: innovation, team, customer, courage", ask a Millionaire Quiz-style question: "Which of our values is about being willing to make mistakes and learn from them?" A) Innovation B) Team C) Courage D) Customer.

The team has to think and discuss it for a moment. In ten seconds the host adds what that value means in practice. The information sticks, because it was part of the game.

A tip for HR and sales teams

Game shows also work well for onboarding and training. Instead of a product knowledge test, run a product Olympics. Instead of a health and safety test, run a Millionaire Quiz about health and safety. People are more willing to learn in a game than in a test.

How to engage the audience at the tables

Don't focus only on the ten people on stage. The questions also have to work for those sitting at the tables.

• Quiet engagement. With general knowledge questions, as in Name That Tune, people start humming and guessing at their tables of their own accord.
• Group engagement. In Family Feud, the team on stage often confers with the audience, and the audience shouts out suggestions.
• Engagement built into the rules. In Millionaire Quiz there's the "ask the audience" lifeline. Then the whole room plays and feels responsible for their colleague on stage.

How to match the format to your goal and questions

There's no single best game show. You choose the format based on your goal and the questions you want to ask.

• Goal: energy, breaking the ice, bringing different generations together. Format: Name That Tune. Questions: song intros. Simple, emotional, stress-free.
• Goal: lots of laughter and getting to know each other better. Format: Family Feud. Questions: light survey questions based on a poll of employees.
• Goal: a spectacle, hot-seat excitement, passing on knowledge about the company. Format: Millionaire Quiz. Questions: closed A, B, C, D. They combine general knowledge with company questions well.
• Goal: fair competition and testing general knowledge. Format: 1 of 10. Questions: short, factual, from a range of fields. You need a host who keeps the pace up.
• Goal: full personalisation, training, onboarding, product roll-out. Format: Themed Olympics. Questions: based entirely on your own materials.

Five topics best left alone

Before you send off the list of questions, check it for safety. Skip questions about:

• Politics, religion and personal beliefs. It's obvious, but worth repeating. Nothing kills the atmosphere faster.
• Employees' private lives. "Who in department X got married recently?", "How many children does the director have?". It intrudes on privacy and is simply awkward.
• Salaries and finances. "Which department made the biggest profit?", "How big is the quarterly bonus?". It's a topic that easily offends someone.
• In-jokes. If most of the room won't understand the question, it's a bad question. It builds inner circles instead of shared fun.
• Specialist knowledge, unless that's the goal. Complex IT processes or legal nuances. A team-building party isn't a competence test.

The questions are the team-building script

Lights, buzzers and music create the atmosphere. But it's the questions that decide whether a game show brings people together or pulls them apart.

Good questions turn competition into fun. Bad ones create stress and awkwardness. When you're choosing a company to run your game show, don't just ask about the stage. Ask how they'll help you write questions that bring your team together. For us, that's the most important part of the job.

Let's talk about the questions for your game show

We don't just bring the equipment. We'll help you choose the format, from a relaxed Family Feud to a Themed Olympics based on your own materials, and write questions tailored to your team. Get in touch and tell us how many people will be in the room and what atmosphere you're after.