We're sure that everyone is a little nervous when the time comes round to choosing a team building event. More especially so if you're in charge of making the decision. One factor is that everyone knows that, on the whole, most team building events are pretty expensive affairs. With the advent of the whole team building genre taking place over the last 20 years, it’s no surprise that many businesses have spring up with the express purpose of providing the most exciting adventure for the purposes of team building. White water rafting, mountain climbing, paragliding, and off-roading, all come to mind. Unfortunately, most of these are just cynical exercises in taking money from businesses. The actual amount of team building that is achieved is minimal. Jumping off a cliff may be good for the individual, but it does nothing to bring a group of employees together in a team building exercise.
All the best team building exercises we can think of, (though as an escape room business we may be biased!) is the escape room. This satisfies collaborative needs, is great for communication building, and is perfect for teams to work together towards a common goal. Surely that's what team building is all about.
In order to help you choose, we've made a list of the main factors that make escape room games so important for team building exercises.
Improves Team Spirit and Motivation
It goes without saying that the happier the employee, the better the business will run. Someone who is experiencing great job satisfaction will perform much better in themselves. And along with other satisfied employees, will help the business rise to greater heights. Providing great rewards for their work and at the same time giving them a sense of achievement is exactly what an escape room game provides. It's not just the motivating factors throughout the game, but also that wonderful sense of achievement once it's over.
Escape Room Goals Motivate
When the game begins, the team has in front of them a specific and definite goal which needs to be achieved within the allotted time limit. In order to complete this goal, the whole team will need to focus and motivate each other. With this, they reach their objectives much faster. Once every puzzle or clue is solved, there is an element of recognition, congratulation, and an overall boost in motivation throughout the whole team.
A Great Sense of Achievement
They say that the best feeling in the world is that of the satisfaction, and sense of achievement that comes from completing or overcoming a difficult challenge. If this is done as a team, then there will be a team camaraderie that evolves from this sense of achievement. In turn, this develops into a team cohesion and improves relationships throughout members of the same team. To escape from an escape room is no easy feat. Because it needs physical, sensory, logical, and many other sorts of skills, the game itself allows each member to shine in their own way. Even though everyone is working as one cohesive unit towards the same ending. It's great to listen to the chatter of the team members once the game is over. Everyone is smiling and giving each other high fives.
Improves Communication
One of the most important factors in the escape room game is collaboration. Because there are any number of puzzles and clues needed to find the road forward, it's important that everyone who is discovering different solutions is sharing them with everyone else. Providing this is done quickly and efficiently then the game will move forward at an increasingly rapid pace. All this requires excellent modes of communication. People need to speak clearly and succinctly to explain themselves as quickly as possible. Even the more timid members of the team will come out of their own shells. Keep in mind that in the escape room game, it’s not the loudest voice that matters, simply the one that is correct or has the best idea.
Identifies Employee Strengths
When watching the individual players in an escape room game, we can see where their strengths and weaknesses lie. Because there's a huge number and variation of different types of challenges and puzzles, we can see who is the visual person, the auditory learner, the doer and everything in between. What's great about escape rooms is that they play to the individual strengths of each participant.
Fosters Creativity and Problem-Solving
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to realise that central to any escape room is problem solving. In fact, throughout the whole experience you were going to be faced with the need to think creatively. With the clock ticking down the minutes to the end, you might be surprised how quickly and effectively the players become super creative at solving the many challenges still in front of them. In the work situation, you want exactly the same employees who think creatively when it comes to problems. And having a group of people brainstorming around the same problem, yet thinking on the same wavelength, is going to be a force to be reckoned with within any business.
Develops Task and Time Management Skills
Deadlines of the bane of every industry. The fact that certain tasks have to be completed by certain time add to the everyday pressure that employees feel across all Industries. And what can help considerably is if you have the creative talents to break these tasks into smaller more digestible pieces. Because escape room games have one overarching goal in mind, there are any number of small tasks needed to be achieved in order to reach this goal. In some ways, it could be seen that the escape room is helping players break down tasks into smaller parts that they can solve separately.
Because it's a frantic race against the clock, players must develop time management skills for all the tasks that need doing. Also the team leader needs to learn how to delegate tasks to different members of the group in order to help the whole team become more efficient.
Helps to Realise Natural Team Leaders
All teams need a leader. If you're a business manager, then you're probably looking for someone who can help you lead a team. But picking the right person is a very difficult job and you'll notice that in many cases even HR fails to get it right time and again. We believe there are essentially two types of leaders. Those who have learnt to lead and those who have natural leadership abilities. The former is much more common, but because they do not have an innate ability, they tend to struggle. Because leadership requires more than just a single skill, the natural leader tends to encompass many different skills, and is able to utilise them together to encourage and motivate others.
Playing in an escape room game allows any manager to find a natural leader. With it's high pressure environment and a race against the clock, you'll see very quickly that those with innate leadership abilities will rise to the top. On a different level, escape room games can provide those who have leadership skills, a naturally challenging environment in which they can learn to educate themselves better, in both leadership and managerial skills.
Affordable, But Effective
Traditional team building can be a very expensive exercise. But with escape room games, on a per person basis, it can work out incredibly cheap. Keep in mind that each team should consist of no more than 8 to 10 people.
Improves Decision-Making Capabilities
