Over the past decade, escape room games have taken the US by storm. As of August 2019, there were over 2,300 different escape room facilities throughout America, many of which house more than one game per location.
You’ve probably heard of friends doing escape rooms for birthdays and bachelor parties, and you might have even tried a couple yourself. But did you know that room escape games are also one of the best team-building activities you can find?
Before you plan your next corporate outing, read on to find out why.
1. Identify Each Others’ Strengths
Everyone has hidden strengths they don’t get the chance to express in the workplace. Your front desk receptionist might be excellent at supervising and delegation, and your salesperson could secretly be a wizard with spatial reasoning.
Escape rooms give you a chance to uncover these hidden strengths in a team environment. Once you’re aware of them, you can give people a chance to grow in their positions and take on new responsibilities.
2. Work Under Pressure
People’s true natures come out when they’re under pressure. The ability to keep cool during times of stress is shared by 90% of top-performers in business, making this an important skill to practice.
In an escape room, the pressure is a time limit (often 60 minutes). Is your team level-headed enough to stay focused while the clock counts down?
3. Improve Communication
If you want to get yourselves out of the room before time runs out, you’ll need to talk to each other.
Without clear communication, you can find yourselves re-doing puzzles that were already completed, missing important info that should be combined, or skipping puzzles altogether. There’s no space for cliques in an escape room—everyone must interact as one team to succeed.
4. Exercise Humility
Humility is an incredibly important leadership skill in all types of businesses. When we take our egos out of the equation, we make room for real change and improvements.
When you get stuck on a problem at work, you’re faced with two choices. You can stick it out and try to solve it yourself, even if the wasted time is detrimental to your team. Or, you can swallow your pride and ask someone else for help.
Escape rooms are full of opportunities to exercise your “humble muscles”. Everyone is suited for different types of puzzles, and having someone look at one from a different angle could be all you need to solve it. If your team needs some practice with task delegation and asking for help, an escape room could be the team-building outing you need.
5. Blow Off Steam
After all the stress that corporate life can bring, sometimes your team needs to blow off some steam. Escape room games do just that by dropping you right into the middle of another world that’s untouched by business concerns.
Instead of spending another afternoon dealing with client issues and filing paperwork, why not try investigating the secrets of a mysterious mansion or finding the culprit behind an art heist?
Try Some Escape Room Games for Your Next Corporate Team-Building Event
It’s time to move beyond team-building icebreaker games and awkward social mixers. Whether you’re looking to improve your teamwork and leadership skills or just looking for a fun afternoon, escape room games are one of the best corporate outings you can find.
Looking for more insight into the world of business and marketing? Make sure to check out the rest of our site.