Why the Same Team Event Makes Some Shine and Others Hide

From “forced participation” to “the perfect match,” understand your team’s true dynamics

When planning a team-building event, organisers often have several activity briefs spread across the desk, and scroll through a string of lively clips on their phone: people laughing, people running, the room looking full of energy. With too many options and too little time, it is easy to pick the one that “looks the most fun, and other teams have already praised.” On the day itself, the first ten minutes or so already give it away: some people lean in and rush to ask about the rules; others smile, take a half-step back, and end up against the wall.

It is not that those people are less sociable. The same game, placed in different teams, can produce completely opposite reactions. A level of difficulty that is just right for one group may feel too childish for another — or too much about performing in front of others, or too competitive. The energy in the room sometimes belongs only to those already used to speaking up first. The person standing by the wall may not be refusing to take part; it may simply be that what this activity asks of them does not match where they are right now.

This kind of mismatch takes a different shape in different settings. In a company, a team that is already exhausted, with tense relationships across departments, may be sent into a highly competitive contest: the winning group is still high-fiving, while the side that fell behind may be even quieter than before the activity began. In a school, teachers hope students will practise collaboration, but if the rules only reward “finishing fastest,” the ones still speaking in the middle of the room are often the same loud students as always. Colleagues in a social service organisation may need more to be seen, and a moment to catch their breath, yet walk into a session that is too noisy and asks them to perform in public — and some will still stand at the back, smiling.

What psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called “flow” is the state of being fully absorbed in what you are doing. One of the conditions for it is that challenge and skill feel just right for each other: too easy, and people get bored; too hard, or too much about performing in public, and they become anxious. What matters is that this line is felt by each person for themselves — in the same activity, some people enter the state just right, while others are already looking for a way out. This also explains why “other people liked it” cannot be taken directly as “it will suit your team.”

Adult-learning scholar Malcolm Knowles also pointed out that adults are more likely to engage in learning they feel is relevant to them: they need to understand why they are doing this, and how it relates to a problem they are actually facing. If the activity does not connect with what is genuinely troubling this team, then even if the session goes smoothly and there is plenty of laughter, participants may leave remembering only that they “had a go,” while the issue the organiser hoped to address is still waiting outside the venue door.

So for experiential team building to actually work, the starting point is often not choosing a ready-made programme that looks the most lively, but first listening carefully to who you are working with: what this team most needs right now, and what state their energy and relationships are in — then selecting and designing an experience that fits, and adjusting the difficulty and pace as you lead, according to what is happening in the room. Gamification can make it easier for people to open up, but only if the challenge is properly aimed; experienced facilitation also starts with asking the right questions, not by putting the same process over everyone’s head. The realities of companies, schools, and social service organisations are different; you cannot assume the same activity will be just right for everyone.

Getting that match right usually begins with consultation and planning beforehand, then runs through the facilitation, in-the-moment adjustments and reflective debrief on the day, and on to the follow-up afterwards — rather than considering the team’s state only at the point of choosing an activity. To see how this service runs from consultation and planning, through execution, and on to follow-up, you can look at our How we work.

Before choosing the next activity, it is worth getting these three questions clear: This time, are we most trying to aim at what is genuinely troubling this team right now, or at an activity that “looks like a lot of fun”? If you put the same process in front of your team, who would rush in, who might step back to the wall, and why? Is there room to adjust the difficulty, the rules, and the pace according to what happens in the room, rather than locking everything in from the start? Get these three clear, and you are already less likely to choose wrongly. If you would also like to see how the full arrangement runs from consultation and planning, through execution, to follow-up, you can also look at How we work.

Sources

• Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper & Row. https://lccn.loc.gov/89045645

• Knowles, M. S., Holton III, E. F., Robinson, P. A., & Caraccioli, C. (2025). The Adult Learner (10th ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003387671