If you showed up to your company’s team building day and your boss asked you to put a flaming cotton bud into your mouth, you might think you were dreaming or on a hidden camera show.
That’s exactly the situation many employees at a Chinese company found themselves in recently.
Leaders believed that the exercise would inspire employees to confront their fears, raise their confidence, and build the resilience and determination to achieve their goals.
Luckily, the activity didn’t result in any fire extinguishers or ambulances needed. However, the company is now facing a social media backlash and legal troubles after word of the stunt spread.
It’s easy to roll our eyes, shake our heads, and chuckle “what where they thinking?”
But many leaders might have more in common with these organizers than they’d like to admit.
While (thankfully) not every company forces their employees to swallow open flames, many leaders put their team members into uncomfortable situations when trying to make team building more exciting.
Here are common myths that lead to risky team building, and better solutions.
Myth #1: Team building should push folks completely out of their comfort zones
The best team building experiences challenge teams to break down barriers, but some leaders push too far.
There is a fine line between stepping outside the box and stepping on coworker’s boundaries.
Leaders may not demand daredevil acts like fire eating, but they can unintentionally create discomfort with overly intimate icebreakers or high-pressure performance tasks.
At tembuilding.com events, we employ a “red light, yellow light, green light” framework for icebreakers to ensure psychological safety.
Red light questions, like “What’s your deepest regret?” are off-limits, while yellow light questions, such as “What’s a skill you don’t have but would love to learn?” require more thought but remain safe. Green light questions, like “What’s your favorite movie snack?” are light, fun, and universally accessible.
Don’t Do This: Tell-all sharing circles, surprise karaoke or talent shares, spontaneous public speaking, truth-or-dare-style icebreakers, forced compliments
Do This Instead: Separate the personal and the challenging, and keep risks neutral. For example, making the group draw a doodle with their non-dominant hand and voting on the funniest.
Myth #2: In team building, the opposite of lame is dangerous
Team building often gets a bad reputation for being awkward or uninspiring, which leads many companies to overcompensate with activities that feel intense or stressful.
High-adrenaline experiences may sound like a bold way to shake things up, but they can alienate team members who are not on board with the “go big or go home” mindset. Not to mention, these kinds of activities are often highly athletic and exclusionary of team members with physical limitations.
Exciting does not have to mean extreme. Activities can be memorable and enjoyable just by breaking up the typical work routine and giving coworkers the opportunity to learn something new about the world or each other.
Don’t Do This: Bungee jumping challenges, fire-walking workshops, survival skills bootcamp, competitive trivia with penalties
Do This Instead: Interesting workshops and DIY classes, put new and personalized spins on traditional team games.
Like:
“Trivia, but Make It Weird”: Themes like “Guess that Meme” or “Which animal is this sound?”
“Team Bingo”: Create bingo cards with fun workplace-related prompts that uncover surprising facts about coworkers. For example “roasts their own coffee” or “has a podcast” or “world record holder”
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Myth #3: We need to completely disrupt and reinvent team building
In an effort to avoid done-to-death activities like trust falls or the spaghetti tower, many leaders overcorrect by going bold.
For example, I once heard an anecdote about a boss who had his employees dress up in tuxedos, took them to the mall, gave them each $100, and had them race around shopping.
While, the evening was certainly memorable and sharing that unique experience bonded the coworkers, they were not working towards any kind of collective outcome, hardly interacted during the outing, and had no other takeaway besides a funny story.
Flashy does not automatically translate into effective, and the pressure to constantly innovate can lead to overlooking what really matters: creating opportunities for your team to connect, communicate, and align around shared goals.
Remember that true impact comes from intentionality, not from novelty. And, just because your employees have answered icebreaker questions hundreds of times, does not mean that lively, insightful discussions can’t arise from picking the right prompt.
Don’t Do This: Cash grab booth, team costume flash mob, celebrity look-alike meet-and-greet: fun and different but completely irrelevant to team goals.
Do This Instead: Soundtrack Swap: Share favorite songs, build a team playlist, and discuss why those tracks are meaningful. Photo Caption Contest: Bring funny photos, and teams compete to create the best captions. DIY Vision Boards: Create individual or team vision boards for professional and personal goals.
Myth #4: Team building is mostly about optics
Team building is a way to boost morale and motivate employees, and some leaders interpret that to mean that team building should be a grand metaphor for traits they’d like their team to adopt.
These organizers gravitate toward grand activities or clever metaphors—rock climbing to symbolize overcoming obstacles, or ziplining to respresent taking leaps of faith and trusting your team—without considering whether these events resonate with the team.
The result? Employees smile politely through the day but walk away feeling like the experience was more about a company photo op than genuine connection.
True team building should be less about conveying a message to your team and more about the but the quality of the conversations and interactions they have with each other.
Don’t Do This: Corporate tug-of-war, chopping wood for “strength”, survival skills workshop, staged group photoshoot, extravagant parties
Do This Instead: Community mural design, custom trivia night, office scavenger hunt, team lunches
Myth #5: It’s best to pick a big activity that has instant results
Leaders often expect a single, big team building event to create lasting change, hoping that one day will transform their team dynamics completely. But team building is not a quick fix, it is a long game.
The science of change shows that small, sustained, consistent efforts tend to be more effective in reaching goals than big, immediate gestures.
In terms of team building, simple activities like trivia or murder mysteries, paired with regular meetings, icebreakers, and group chats, are likelier to result in stronger team connections than a single, extreme excursion like a survival ropes course.
In part, this occurs because the dynamics in these former activities are easier to replicate in everyday work situations.
While extreme activities might have a more visible and immediate impact, those results tend to fade fast, especially when teammates leave and new ones arrive.
But, when team building activities nurture culture and connection, members carry that momentum long after the event ends. When team building helps participants know each other on a human level, teammates continue to reach out, communicate, and care about each other. Then, when new team members join the group, they benefit from the resulting sense of belonging, openness, supportiveness, and collaboration– even before they experience a team event.
Don’t Do This: One-time team retreat, spending the whole budget on one event
Do This Instead: Team “shoutout” Slack channel, team volunteer days, cross-department lunches, team yoga or meditation breaks, monthly icebreaker sessions
Conclusion
It’s easy to laugh at outrageous team-building fails like fire-eating stunts, but these flashy missteps are often rooted in the same well-meaning but misguided attempts many leaders make
True team building isn’t about grand spectacle; it’s about thoughtful, consistent efforts that foster genuine connections and collaboration. By focusing on activities that nurture team morale, communication, and support—without pushing employees too far outside their comfort zones—we can create environments where collaboration thrives and everyone feels valued.
