I've sat in on dozens of team development sessions over the years.
The facilitator is great. The content is solid. Everyone's engaged.
People leave energized, talking about how they're going to communicate differently, make better decisions together, show up more authentically.
Then two weeks later, Sarah still won't speak up in meetings. The sales and marketing teams are still at each other's throats. Nobody wants to make a decision because nobody wants to be wrong.
Here's what nobody tells you: The training isn't the problem. The lack of practice is.
You can teach someone about psychological safety in an hour. But you can't make them feel it without repetition.
It's not a question of if we need training or team building (the answer is a clear "yes").
The real question is: "How do we give our team enough reps for the training to actually stick?"
When your team navigates a game together, something interesting happens.
The bold choice someone makes in a game can actually help them start making bolder choices in real meetings.
The patience they practice when the plan falls apart in the game? That patience shows up when a project goes sideways.
The way they learn to listen to each other at the table? That becomes how they actively listen in every conversation after.
Psychologists call it "bleed" when what happens in play seeps into real life.
And here's the best part: when your plan goes sideways, nobody gets fired. When your strategy fails, you just try a different one. When you take a risk that doesn't work out, everyone laughs and keeps playing.
Your team gets to practice the hard stuff—making decisions under pressure, speaking up when it matters, trusting each other when things go wrong—in an environment where failure costs nothing.
So when the real stakes hit, they can rely on the muscle memory built while playing.
Your workshop taught them what good collaboration looks like. Play gives them the reps to make it reflexive.
Most companies do training or team building.
The magic happens when you do both.
