TEAM BUILDING AND ESCAPE ROOMS

Companies book escape rooms to improve critical thinking and to help their workers bond. Work teams need to be sharp in order to face any obstacle they encounter with trust and confidence. They have to think and act fast, as if they were and special ops team covering each other's backs. They shouldn't behave as a flock of vultures stealing someone else's food.

You can take your team to a restaurant, make someone give a one-hour-long speech and, then, go out and have some drinks until the night is over. But you could also throw them into an environment that will make them use their brains.

It's only sixty minutes left before a nuclear war starts along with the destruction of the whole world unless your team marches forward to battle and manages to find the deactivation codes for the nuclear missiles. Living such an uncommon situation, the brainstorming process will get started and ideas will flow.

Escape rooms have become the go-to venue for companies that look for team-building events. They have turned out to be an an original and fun way to improve your team's performance.

Escape rooms are filled with thrilling themes and stories that make players use their critical thinking and problem-solving skills in order to escape from the room or to accomplish their mission.

Each game and environment create several opportunities for players to develop their leadership skills, set up action plans and assign tasks that have to be carried out simultaneously depending on each one's strengths and weaknesses. It's important to seek the perfect balance between being a leader and following orders. If there are too many leaders, they'll fight over power and make the decision-making process nearly impossible. However, if everybody expects to receive orders, there might not be an effective task assignment and the team's morale will drop, which will make facing obstacles a much harder process. 

Being trapped inside of a game will make players work in teams and, most importantly, talk with each other. Since players need to split into teams, it's essential that they share all the data and things they find. Everyone must know the things that the team has discovered because you never know who is going to solve the puzzle. All ideas should be taken into consideration and even the shyest person should be listened to.

In spite of being logical and using their critical thinking, escape rooms demand players to think outside of the box.

It doesn't matter whether you are creating a cure for the zombie virus, robbing Madrid's Central Bank, fleeing from prison, escaping from the Zodiac Killer or avoiding a nuclear war, the unparalleled pace of escape rooms will test the players' problem-solving skills and give them a chance to bond with each other in a fun environment. Besides, reaching a common goal will make them trust themselves and the others.

If they accomplish their objectives, the activity will end with the victory, a satisfying sense of accomplishment and a new feeling of camaraderie, but remember: “Winning is only half of it. Having fun is the other half.”

If you want your team and colleagues to experience a fun and effective team-building activity that will make them bond with each other, be sure to take them to an escape room.

Por M. Miñana Capón