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Team Building & Retreats tips
Published on
June 23, 2025
19 Proven Intern Team-Building Activities for a Successful Onboarding
You’ve spent months recruiting top talent, wrote the perfect job descriptions, and selected the brightest candidates for your internship program. Yet, when these new interns join their first team meeting, many remain silent, despite having innovative ideas that could drive your company’s success.
This is a common challenge for company leaders. According to Gallup, only 12% of employees strongly agree that their organization does a great job of onboarding new team members, which includes interns. Without effective team-building activities, many interns struggle to integrate, leaving them feeling disconnected and undervalued. Furthermore, recent research by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) has shown that employee turnover can be as much as 50% in the first 18 months of employment. The stakes are high: a lack of engaging activities and support for interns can lead to missed opportunities for both the interns and the company.
By hosting internship activities, such as team-building games, fun and educational exercises, and even virtual team-building activities for remote teams, you not only encourage participants to communicate and collaborate, but you also motivate interns to contribute their best ideas.
Intern team building focuses on building a cohesive team, boosting morale, and ensuring that new employees feel valued and supported. These efforts encourage interns to bond, develop critical thinking, and align with company goals.
Learn to transform nervous newcomers into confident team members ready to contribute to the company’s success. The right internship event ideas encourage collaboration and help support interns as they adapt to the corporate world, ultimately strengthening your culture and team morale.
19 Best Intern Team Building Activities for Intern Success
1. The Skills Marketplace
The Skills Marketplace invites each intern to create a “skills booth” where they showcase a unique ability, hobby, or area of knowledge they’re passionate about, not limited to professional skills. Stations are set up around the meeting space, and interns prepare a mini-presentation or demonstration. Team members rotate through each booth, ask questions, and discover unexpected connections, encouraging team bonding and mutual respect.
Step-by-step:
Assign each intern a station and 15 minutes to prepare a mini-presentation or demonstration of their chosen skill.
Have team members rotate through the booths, engaging with each intern and asking questions.
Facilitate a group discussion to highlight connections and encourage ongoing conversation.
Required materials: Tables or spaces for booths, presentation materials (optional: props, posters, handouts).
Why this works for interns: You're immediately positioning them as contributors rather than just learners. They get to share something they're confident about, which builds their comfort level for future professional contributions.
Implementation tip: Encourage team members to identify specific ways they could collaborate with each intern based on their showcased skills. This creates immediate project opportunities and professional relationships.
2. The Challenge Chain
On a Challenge Chain, divide the group into mixed teams of interns and seasoned employees, then present a sequence of interconnected challenges: a creative task, an analytical problem, and a strategic question. Each challenge builds on the previous one, requiring teams to integrate different thinking styles and problem-solving skills, promoting teamwork and critical thinking.
Step-by-step:
Form mixed teams and present the first creative challenge (e.g., design a product improvement).
Progress to the analytical and then strategic challenges, ensuring each builds on the previous solution.
Conclude with team presentations on their integrated solutions.
Required materials: Challenge prompts, flip charts or whiteboards, and markers.
Why this works for interns: You're demonstrating that successful teams need diverse thinking styles. Interns see how their academic training translates to workplace problem-solving, while team members appreciate fresh perspectives on familiar challenges.
Variation for virtual teams: Use breakout rooms for each challenge phase, then bring everyone together to share solutions. Create shared documents where teams can build on each other's ideas in real-time.
3. The Mentorship Speed Dating
For the Mentorship Speed Dating, set up a rotation where interns and team members spend 10 minutes in pairs, focusing on specific topics like career development, company culture, or skill building. Both parties come prepared with questions and insights, fostering mutual respect and encouraging communication.
Step-by-step:
Arrange seating for paired rotations and assign topics for each round.
Facilitate 10-minute conversations per pair, then rotate to the next team member.
Provide conversation starters to guide discussions.
Why this works for interns: You're establishing them as valuable contributors to the mentorship relationship, not just passive recipients of advice. This builds confidence and creates multiple professional relationships simultaneously.
Follow-up strategy: After the activity, facilitate formal mentorship pairings based on natural connections that emerged during the speed dating rounds.
4. The Innovation Incubator
For the Innovation Incubator, present mixed teams with a real organizational challenge and guide them through a structured innovation process. Teams move from problem definition (with context from experienced employees), to open ideation (encouraging fresh intern input), to collaborative solution development, demonstrating how diverse perspectives enhance problem-solving.
Step-by-step:
Share the challenge and have experienced team members provide context and constraints.
Facilitate ideation sessions where interns contribute ideas freely.
Guide teams in combining perspectives to develop potential solutions.
Required materials: Challenge brief, whiteboards or flip charts, markers.
Why this works for interns: You're showing them their fresh perspective has genuine value while teaching them how to collaborate with experienced professionals. They learn to balance innovation with practical constraints.
Business impact: You might solve real organizational challenges while building team relationships. Several companies have implemented solutions that emerged from these intern integration sessions.
5. The Culture Translation Workshop
At a Culture Translation Workshop, interns and long-term employees collaborate to create a “culture guide” explaining the organization’s unwritten rules, traditions, and communication styles. Small groups tackle different aspects of company culture, producing practical guides that help new team members integrate smoothly.
Step-by-step:
Divide participants into small, mixed groups and assign each a culture aspect (e.g., meeting etiquette).
Groups discuss, ask clarifying questions, and create practical guides with examples.
Share guides with the broader team for feedback and discussion.
Required materials: Paper, pens, digital templates for guides.
Why this works for interns: You're making invisible cultural elements visible and giving interns agency in understanding and shaping their integration experience. They become culture interpreters rather than passive culture recipients.
Long-term value: The guides your teams create become valuable onboarding resources for future intern cohorts and new employees.
6. The Project Archaeology Dig
For the Project Archaeology Dig, teams “excavate” a completed project by reviewing artifacts like proposals, meeting notes, and deliverables. Their goal is to reconstruct the project journey, identify key decisions, and extract lessons about collaboration and problem-solving, giving interns real-world insight into professional project management.
Step-by-step:
Provide teams with project artifacts and background information.
Guide teams to analyze materials and map out the project’s decision points and challenges.
Have each team present their findings and lessons learned.
Why this works for interns: You're giving them behind-the-scenes access to professional project development without the pressure of real-time performance. They learn how teams navigate challenges and make decisions collaboratively.
Skill development bonus: Interns develop analytical skills while learning about your organization's project management approaches and team dynamics.
7. The Reverse Mentoring Lab
For the Reverse Mentoring Lab, each intern is paired with a team member for a flipped mentorship experience. Interns teach about new technologies, methodologies, or trends from their academic experience, preparing mini-workshops. Afterward, pairs discuss how this knowledge could be applied to current projects, encouraging enjoyable activities and knowledge exchange.
Step-by-step:
Pair interns with team members and assign topics for mini-workshops.
Allow 30 minutes for interns to prepare and deliver their sessions.
Facilitate discussions on applying new knowledge to organizational challenges.
Why this works for interns: You're positioning them as experts and teachers, which builds confidence and demonstrates their value to the organization. Team members gain fresh knowledge while seeing interns as capable professionals.
Implementation insight: Choose topics where interns genuinely have more current knowledge than team members. This ensures authentic expertise sharing rather than forced role reversal.
8. The Communication Style Decoder
This activity helps interns and team members identify and adapt to different communication preferences, focusing on real workplace situations such as asking for help, presenting ideas, and providing feedback. Teams start with a communication style assessment, then practice adapting to various styles through scenario-based exercises, receiving real-time coaching to improve listening skills and professional communication.
Step-by-step:
Have each participant complete a communication style assessment and share their preferences.
Facilitate scenario-based role plays where teams adapt their communication styles to different situations.
Provide real-time coaching and feedback to reinforce effective communication.
Required materials: Communication style assessments, scenario cards, and feedback forms.
Why this works for interns: You're explicitly teaching professional communication skills while helping team members understand how to communicate effectively with new colleagues who may have different style preferences.
Practical application: Create communication "cheat sheets" that help interns understand how to approach different team members based on their communication preferences.
9. The Success Story Remix
Mixed teams analyze past successful projects or initiatives, then reimagine how they would approach similar challenges today using new technologies and methodologies. Interns contribute fresh perspectives, while experienced employees provide organizational context, resulting in updated strategies that blend innovation with proven practices.
Step-by-step:
Distribute case studies of past organizational successes to each team.
Teams identify key success factors and redesign approaches using current tools and knowledge.
Present remixed strategies to the group for discussion.
Required materials: Case study documents, presentation materials, whiteboards, or flip charts.
Why this works for interns: You're showing them organizational history while valuing their contemporary knowledge. They learn about your company's capabilities while contributing to strategic thinking.
Strategic value: You might identify opportunities to revisit successful initiatives with updated approaches, creating real business value from the team-building exercise.
10. The Cross-Functional Mystery
Teams tackle a complex scenario that requires expertise from multiple departments, allowing interns to experience how cross-functional collaboration solves real business challenges. Interns rotate between departmental roles, learn different approaches, and adapt strategies as new information emerges.
Step-by-step:
Assign roles representing different departments to team members and interns.
Present a multi-phase business scenario, introducing new complications in each round.
Guide teams to collaborate and adapt their strategies throughout the exercise.
Required materials: Scenario briefs, role cards, and update sheets for scenario developments.
Why this works for interns: You're providing a comprehensive view of organizational complexity while showing them how their role fits into broader business objectives. They develop systems thinking and cross-functional collaboration skills.
Learning acceleration: Interns gain months of organizational understanding in a single activity, preparing them to contribute more effectively to real projects.
11. The Innovation Time Machine
Teams solve a current organizational challenge by first using only tools and methods from the 1990s, then progressing through the decades to modern solutions. This activity highlights how business practices evolve and encourages appreciation for both innovation and established methods.
Step-by-step:
Present a current challenge and instruct teams to develop solutions using 1990s resources.
Advance through additional rounds, allowing teams to add new technologies and approaches from each subsequent decade.
Teams present their final, modernized solutions and discuss the evolution process.
Required materials: Challenge briefs, decade-specific resource guidelines, and presentation materials.
Why this works for interns: You're teaching business history while encouraging creative problem-solving. Interns learn to appreciate organizational experience while contributing innovative thinking.
Insight generation: Teams often discover that some "old-fashioned" approaches have advantages over current methods, leading to hybrid solutions that combine the best of different eras.
12. The Stakeholder Perspective Carousel
Teams analyze an organizational challenge from the viewpoints of different stakeholders (e.g., customers, employees, regulators). By rotating through stations, interns and team members articulate each group’s priorities and concerns, learning the complexity of professional decision-making.
Step-by-step:
Set up stations for each stakeholder group and assign teams to rotate through them.
At each station, teams discuss and document the stakeholders’ perspective on the challenge.
Teams share their insights, highlighting the need to balance competing interests.
Required materials: Scenario briefs, stakeholder cards, and note-taking materials.
Why this works for interns: You're developing their strategic thinking while showing them how to consider multiple perspectives in professional situations. They learn that good solutions address diverse stakeholder needs.
Decision-making skill development: Interns practice the analytical thinking they'll need for senior roles while learning to navigate organizational complexity.
13. The Collaboration Laboratory
Teams experiment with different collaboration methods (e.g., hierarchy, consensus, agile) on the same challenge to discover what works best for their group dynamics. Each team documents their process and outcomes, then shares lessons learned about effective teamwork and mutual respect.
Step-by-step:
Assign each team a different collaboration approach to solve the same problem.
Teams work through the challenge, documenting their process and results.
Facilitate a group discussion where teams compare experiences and identify effective practices.
Required materials: Challenge briefs, collaboration method guidelines, and process documentation templates.
Why this works for interns: You're explicitly teaching collaboration skills while helping them understand that different situations require different approaches. They learn to be intentional about how they work with others.
Team development: Your existing team members also benefit from experimenting with new collaboration approaches, potentially improving their ongoing project work.
14. The Future Scenario Planning
Mixed teams develop strategies for hypothetical future industry challenges, combining interns’ knowledge of emerging trends with team members’ understanding of organizational capabilities. This activity encourages critical thinking and helps everyone prepare for future careers.
Step-by-step:
Present teams with realistic future scenarios based on industry trends.
Teams collaborate to develop comprehensive response strategies, incorporating both new and established knowledge.
Each team presents its scenario plan and receives feedback.
Required materials: Scenario briefs, trend reports, and planning templates.
Why this works for interns: You're positioning them as strategic thinkers while teaching them about organizational planning processes. They learn to balance innovation with practical implementation considerations.
Strategic planning value: The scenarios and responses teams develop often provide valuable input for actual organizational strategic planning processes.
15. The Problem-Solution Marketplace
For the Problem-Solution Marketplace, interns present current workplace challenges at “problem booths,” while interns and colleagues rotate to offer creative solutions. After initial discussions, mixed teams form to develop actionable solutions, promoting team bonding and problem-solving skills.
Step-by-step:
Set up problem booths where team members describe their challenges.
Interns and colleagues rotate through the booths, asking questions and suggesting ideas.
Form mixed teams to focus on developing and presenting actionable solutions for each challenge.
Why this works for interns: You're immediately involving them in solving real organizational problems while showing them the types of challenges they'll encounter in their professional development. They see direct applications for their skills and knowledge.
Business impact: You're likely to generate implementable solutions to actual workplace challenges while building relationships between interns and team members who share professional interests.
16. The Skills Integration Challenge
In the Skills Integration Challenge, teams tackle multi-phase scenarios that require combining diverse skills—data analysis, creative thinking, technical implementation, and communication. Both interns and experienced employees must contribute, demonstrating how academic learning and professional experience integrate for team success.
Step-by-step:
Design a scenario with multiple phases, each requiring different skill sets.
Teams identify and combine their members’ relevant skills to solve each phase.
Present final solutions, reflecting on how diverse skills contributed to success.
Required materials: Scenario briefs, task instructions for each phase, and presentation materials.
Why this works for interns: You're demonstrating that their academic preparation has real professional value while showing them what additional skills they need to develop. They experience successful collaboration with experienced professionals.
Skill development insight: Both interns and team members often discover capabilities they didn't know they had, leading to new collaboration opportunities in actual work projects.
17. The Organizational Impact Mapping
This Organizational Impact Mapping activity helps interns and team members visualize how various organizational roles contribute to overall business success, clarifying each person’s place in the larger ecosystem. Teams analyze organizational charts, project examples, and success metrics, mapping out both direct and indirect pathways of impact. By creating visual representations, participants see how individual contributions aggregate into team, departmental, and organizational achievements, reinforcing the value of every role.
Step-by-step:
Provide teams with organizational charts, project examples, and relevant success metrics.
Guide teams to map how different roles and functions contribute to specific business outcomes.
Have teams create visual diagrams that illustrate the connections and present their findings.
Required materials: Organizational charts, project documentation, success metrics data, large paper or whiteboards, markers.
Why this works for interns: You're helping them understand the significance of their contributions while teaching them to think systemically about organizational success. They develop an appreciation for how different roles support each other.
18. The Innovation Implementation Bridge
This Innovation Implementation Bridge activity challenges teams to turn creative ideas into actionable plans by considering real-world constraints, resources, and stakeholder needs. Teams first brainstorm innovative solutions to organizational challenges, then build “implementation bridges” by developing practical plans that address feasibility, resource allocation, timelines, and risk management. This process teaches interns that successful innovation requires both creativity and realistic execution strategies.
Step-by-step:
Facilitate a brainstorming session for teams to generate innovative solutions to real challenges.
Guide teams to develop detailed implementation plans, considering resources, timelines, and stakeholder needs.
Have teams present their implementation bridges and discuss potential obstacles and solutions.
Why this works for interns: You're teaching them that innovation without implementation is just brainstorming. They learn to balance creativity with practical business considerations while seeing how their fresh ideas can become organizational reality.
Professional development bonus: This activity mirrors the innovation-to-implementation process they'll encounter throughout their careers, giving them early experience with strategic thinking and project planning.
19. The Legacy Project Design
The Legacy Project Design is an activity where teams are tasked with designing initiatives that could have a lasting positive impact on the organization, blending interns' energy and new perspectives with the experience and knowledge of established team members. Projects might include process improvements, knowledge-sharing systems, community initiatives, or innovation programs. The focus is on sustainability, resource requirements, and long-term value, encouraging teams to create initiatives that could genuinely benefit the workplace for years to come.
Step-by-step:
Present teams with the challenge to design a sustainable, high-impact project or initiative.
Guide teams to consider long-term value, resource needs, and practical implementation strategies.
Teams present their legacy project proposals, focusing on sustainability and organizational benefit.
Why this works for interns: You're positioning them as contributors to your organization's future rather than temporary participants. They experience the satisfaction of strategic thinking while learning about organizational change management.
Organizational impact: Many teams discover that their legacy project designs address real organizational needs, leading to actual implementation and lasting positive change.
Making These Activities Work in Your Organization
You now have 19 proven intern team-building activities, but successful integration into your internship program depends on tailoring them to your context. Factors such as intern cohort size, company culture, and available time will determine which team-building activities and internship event ideas are most effective and how they should be adapted to engage interns and other team members.
For small intern groups (3–8 people), focus on good team-building activities that foster close collaboration and allow each intern to gain real-world experience and build relationships with senior employees. Activities like The Skills Marketplace, Mentorship Speed Dating, and the Reverse Mentoring Lab are ideal because they ensure every participant receives individual attention and opportunities to connect with other employees.
For larger cohorts (15+ people), select team-building games and fun activities that encourage participation across multiple teams while maintaining high engagement. The Challenge Chain, Innovation Incubator, and Cross-Functional Mystery are effective internship activities that allow you to form several groups, ensuring every intern can contribute and learn from other team members.
For remote teams or hybrid environments, prioritize virtual team-building activities that translate seamlessly to digital platforms. The Culture Translation Workshop, Future Scenario Planning, and Problem-Solution Marketplace are excellent choices for remote teams, especially when you use breakout rooms and collaborative digital tools to engage interns. Consider adding elements like virtual tours or online board games to keep the experience dynamic and enjoyable.
By selecting and adapting these team-building activities, you can ensure your internship program provides opportunities for interns to gain insights, build relationships, and contribute to your organization’s success.
Your Next Steps for Intern Integration Excellence
You now have a practical toolkit to elevate your internship program from basic orientation to intern integration. Start by selecting 3–4 intern team-building activities that best fit your team size and company culture, and spread them across the first month to foster ongoing relationship-building and engagement.
Connect these activities to your broader talent development goals. Effective team building not only helps interns gain real-world experience but also uncovers future full-time talent and strengthens your organization’s collaborative capacity.
Exceptional intern integration requires planning, skilled facilitation, and a commitment to treating interns as valued contributors. When you get it right, you’ll see increased intern confidence, stronger team performance, and a more robust leadership pipeline for your company’s future.
TeamOut has a proven track record, having organized over 1,000 corporate retreats and events with a 95% satisfaction rate. If you want an expert event planner to organize your next team-building initiative, contact us today and ensure your next intern cohort transforms from nervous newcomers into confident, contributing team members.
Thomas Mazimann, a French entrepreneur and former international kayaking athlete, transitioned from sports to tech after moving to the U.S. He co-founded TeamOut, revolutionizing team gatherings.
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