Murder Mystery Team Building
Some years ago, when I was working in IT, we were informed, one morning, that we all needed to go across to the local hotel rooms as a group for a team building day. Note, it’s not a murder mystery team building exercise! There had been no warning, and it was mandatory regardless of what deadlines or workloads we had. I don’t think anyone was impressed with that.
Nevertheless, we duly marched across the road to the sound of some unimpressed grumbles, entered the hotel and sat down in a conference room to be addressed by a team of very intense but well-meaning organisers. It was my first real experience of a team building session, albeit not a murder mystery team building.
The Set Up: Murder Mystery Team Building
Ok, as I said, it wasn’t quite a murder mystery team building session, but it certainly got us thinking. There were around 50 of us at the time, and we were split into five groups. My group was taken outside for our first exercise: The throwing of furry balls to each other whilst shouting out the name of the person you were throwing to. This took 20 minutes, standing in the car park in the rain. After that, we were blindfolded and had to do the same again.
I’m sure you can imagine that this was largely unsuccessful. But apparently, that wasn’t the point – it was supposed to be forming a mutual bond between team members. Did that include the guy I hit in the face with my rain-sodden furry ball? Probably not.
We can All Learn from Failure!
It was a distinct failure. There was little I could relate to in the way of pictures and articles. In the papers there were things such as: The Euro had just been launched, Glenn Hoddle had been sacked as England Manager, The Midland Metro opened in Birmingham. There was the Solar Eclipse, Harold Shipman, The Rugby World Cup, The London Eye, and Vauxhall launched the Zafira. I can’t remember what articles and pictures I chose, but 3 people thought I was, quote “The woman in accounts.”
Murder Mystery Team Building
There were other exercises that we experienced during the day. Unfortunately, there was a common feeling amongst us all that it had all been a waste of time and money. So, when I moved to the Events Industry, I vowed to set up a murder mystery team building methodology THAT WOULD ACTUALLY WORK. And I am proud to say that the work we do at Inivitation 2 Murder really does make people feel like a productive member of the team.
