Walking on Fire, Rope Exercises, and Collective Intelligence

Team-building sessions have become a yearly ritual in many organizations. They create moments of energy and camaraderie, but they rarely address the deeper conditions that drive sustained team performance.

Several years ago, we were invited to propose a team-building session for the finance function of a large telecommunications company. According to the leaders, the team was struggling with serious integrity, performance, and ethical issues. Some staff were under investigation, morale was low, and the proposed solution was a two-day team-building retreat to “motivate employees.”

I asked how a team-building session would address problems of that magnitude. The response was candid: “We need time to relax and not think about the office for two days.” When I shared my doubts, a supervisor replied, “You can add whatever else you think we can do, but we don’t want to spend all the time in the classroom.” We were not selected for the assignment. It later became clear that ours may simply have been a “third proposal” — the extra bid sometimes requested to satisfy procurement rules rather than to seek the best solution.

A second experience was different. This time, it was the operations department of a large financial institution. The leader was clear that he wanted his team to bond and return more cohesive. We spoke with other leaders, carried out a proper discovery process, clarified expectations, and agreed measures of success. There was still the familiar request not to spend “most of the time in the classroom,” but this time there was enough seriousness about outcomes for the engagement to make sense.

These experiences, along with others we have participated in — including our own in-house team-building sessions — have led me to a difficult conclusion: the return on team-building sessions is often minimal. Teams go away, play games, share drinks, listen to motivational speeches, receive branded T-shirts, and return with new slogans. But very often, little changes in how the team actually works.

How exactly a toxic work culture is transformed through soccer, cocktails, and inspirational quotations is a study yet to be written. Team-building activities may generate warmth, but warmth is not the same as effectiveness. Camaraderie is valuable, but it should not be confused with coordination, trust, or performance.

Adam Grant makes a similar point. Icebreakers and ropes courses may build camaraderie, but meta-analyses suggest they do not necessarily improve team performance. What matters more is whether people understand that they need one another to succeed in an important mission. That insight gets us closer to the real issue. Strong teams are not held together by fun alone; they are held together by shared purpose, mutual dependence, and habits of constructive collaboration.

If the real goal is to tap into the collective intelligence of a team, then the more useful body of work is not the literature on away-days and bonding rituals. It is the research of scholars such as J. Richard Hackman, Anita Woolley, and Amy Edmondson, who show that team effectiveness depends far more on the conditions leaders create than on the activities teams perform together.

Hackman’s research emphasizes that effective teams need a real team with clear boundaries, a compelling direction, an enabling structure, a supportive context, and coaching at the right moments. Edmondson’s work on psychological safety shows that people contribute more when they believe they can speak up with ideas, questions, concerns, and mistakes without fear of humiliation or punishment. In practice, this means leaders matter most not when they dominate discussion, but when they create the conditions for others to think, contribute, challenge, and learn together.

Leaders who build strong teams do a few simple but demanding things well. They clarify purpose. They create space for dissent. They distribute airtime. They ask better questions. They reward candor. They make it safer to admit error and easier to offer feedback. Those are not glamorous interventions. They do not produce dramatic photographs for the annual report. But they are the everyday disciplines that turn a group of employees into a real team.

Out-of-office team-building sessions still have their place. They can refresh people, create informal connection, and provide a break from routine. But if the true intention is to improve cohesion, judgment, and execution, then leaders must do more than organize games. They must build the social and structural conditions that allow collective intelligence to emerge.

Teams can play soccer. There is room for retreats, wellness, and shared experiences. But we should not confuse the appearance of fun with the hard work of building team effectiveness.

If you are planning your next off-site, start by asking a different question: What conditions do my people need to do their best thinking together — and what will I, as a leader, do differently to make that possible? Then design any team-building around those answers, not the other way around.