But there's more to team building than just a recent fad. Yeah, we get it, team building is the means by which a business can motivate and create a team spirit among it's participants. But you could do that, just as badly, by simply asking everyone to stand and sing the company song, first thing in the morning. There are any number of great benefits to come out of a team building exercise, but it's got to be done right.
Break The Normal Structures
It goes without saying, that building a cohesive team is of primary importance for any business.The problem is that too many leaders make the whole effort an exercise in sucking all the fun out of any activity. Far from building teams, it just re-enforces a status quo, whereby everyone behaves according to rank or station. So your manager still wants to manage everything and your boss still wants to play boss, which absolutely defeats the purpose of the event in the first place. Another point is that organizing a team building exercise needn't be a huge or expensive endeavor. Even a simple round of drinks, a couple of games of ping pong or a game of monopoly can all have the same result.
Everyone Counts
The author and management expert Ken Blanchard came up with the phrase, "“None of us is as smart as all of us”, which really sums up in a nutshell the purpose of working together during a team building event. And it also describes the process of constructing a game around the theme of escape rooms. By locking up a group of people together, we are forcing them to work as one coherent unit towards a common goal. Each member is free to contribute in their own manner. So someone who's more spatially aware, will find those visual puzzles to solve. Someone who's more logically minded will be drawn towards those clues that require use of those tiny grey cells, as Inspector Poirot might say. But at the end of the day, they all need to combine those efforts and results to move forwards.
Improve Company Morale
Today, management has become a science, falling somewhere between behavioral studies and group psychology. Both the benefits and the negatives can be quantified and studied. On the whole, the general aim is to find the best team building experience, that'll improve the cohesion of those employed as well as keeping an eye on the cost of the adventure. (Yes, it would be great to all go on an Everest climbing expedition as a team building exercise, but the sheer financial costs might break most businesses). As you can imagine, any improvement in team cohesion is going to lead to an improvement in overall morale. On a common sense level, we could simply say that practice makes perfect, in that the more the team works together, the more in tune they'll become with each other. If, as a team, they need to figure out how to escape a zombie invasion or find all the clues to open a door, then team building will help improve communication skills and their overall performance as a single unit. This translates to making better, happier and more productive employees.
Work Together Under Pressure
So what does escape room team building have to offer? Well, we see a number of benefits as to why team building and escape rooms are a perfect fit. For a start, escape room team building will definitely improve both problem solving skills and the creativity that goes hand in hand with finding solutions. How do these five balls with numbers relate to the flashing light? What is the correlation between these cryptic signs and the diagram on the locked door? It's all about making the connections, about lateral thinking and also, that oh so rare quality....common sense! Because each individual member of the team is forced to learn new ways of seeing and consider new ideas, the whole team can learn and benefit from new ways of thinking. To bring things back to the sphere of business, in today's market place, thinking outside the box is of paramount importance if any business wishes to grow, as opposed to simply standing still.
Escape Room Team Building Empowers Everyone
Another important consideration with team building escape rooms is that each individual team member is forced to confront their own problems within the context of the room. They then need to look for solutions both as individuals and as a group. In fact, it's because so many of the clues are connected to the big picture, team players must interact with each other and communicate clearly and precisely their own findings, ideas and plans. In so doing, these games allow everyone to shine. Even the most timid worker in the office environment can freely express themselves and contribute in a meaningful manner towards the whole teams eventual outcome.
Communication Is Key
We presently live in an age where the vast majority of communications appear to be carried out electronically, whether by email, social media or video conferencing. Unfortunately, non of these mediums can replace the face to face interactions that you'll come across in the escape room environment. Also business tends to have a formality about it. But having a social interaction, with the added stress of watching the clock tick down the minutes, can really open up communication channels no one knew existed. So not only does it encourage frank and pertinent questions and answers, it also encourages active listening. (You'd be amazed as to how many employees constantly complain that their voices are not heard in the day to day office environment). Of course, each team member also has to maintain a cool head under pressure and yet still should be able to communicate in a civilized and respectful manner.
Conclusion: Escape Room Team Building
Finally we should mention that participating in an escape room team building exercise will help everyone to get to know one another better. Though the experience is still "work" orientated, the structure of the games means that there's also an informality to the whole affair. All players can let their hair down a little and enjoy themselves. And nothing brings a group of individuals closer together than a shared struggle on the road to victory. Now lets all stand and sing the company song!
