Imagine yourself at an interactive murder mystery party, whether it’s a boxed game for a cozy group of 12 or one of our events for 50 or 60. What is the common thread that makes these experiences unforgettable? It’s the art of playing make-believe.
Remember the sheer joy and nostalgia of playing make-believe as a child? It wasn’t just a game but a magical bonding experience with your friends and family. You escaped reality and created a world of your own that brought you closer together.
Playing make-believe starts as soon as we get our first diapers. Yet many adults lose this part of the human experience as soon as they become adults.
According to the Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center, even infants and toddlers engage in make-believe play. It notes, “While infants and toddlers develop, they still engage in explorations and experiences that prepare them for pretend play.”
The center encourages parents to support infants in the early stages of play. It says they can do this by giving children a variety of toys, rattles, squeaking toys, or plastic blocks. This helps infants learn that different toys have different purposes, an important first step in make-believe play.
Many adults think playing make-believe is just for kids, but there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.
Having organized over 100 murder mystery parties in the span of 20 years, we’ve witnessed the profound and transformative power of make-believe. It’s like stepping back into our childhoods, where imagination knows no bounds. It is a testament to the potential joy and creativity that lies within all of us, waiting to be unleashed.
A few years ago, we were doing a party at a retirement center for about 50 people. They were doing the Roaring 20s theme. The ladies were dressed to the 9s and talked for weeks about their outfits. They loved seeing their husbands as dapper 1920s gangsters. Near the end of the party, we noticed one woman coming out of the bathroom with tears in her eyes.
I happened to be nearby and asked her if everything was OK. She said they were tears of joy. Her husband was on the other side of the room, talking to other gangsters about robbing a bank.
“He has been in and out of the hospital for the last six months. Tonight is the first time I have seen him laugh in a long, long time.”
The emotional impact of our work hit like a ton of bricks. We realized that we weren’t just a company doing fun parties. Something deeper was going on that allowed people to revisit the joy of playing make-believe.
Companies Discover the Power of Make-Believe
Playing make-believe is powerful. No wonder corporations want to capitalize on it.
Adults coined the term “role-playing” because “playing make-believe” as adults seemed silly. Then, a CEO somewhere discovered the tangible value of role-playing and integrated it into the corporate concept of “teambuilding.” Voila! The role-playing team-building experience was born.
CEOs first experimented with it on their sales teams. The simple exercise of one team member pretending to be a customer and another team member pretending to be a salesperson is called corporate role-playing – but it is really just playing make-believe.
Companies do this because it provides a formal place to get objective feedback on improving their sales techniques. It also enables salespeople to practice asking questions and eliminating objections. And finally, it builds a sense of teamwork and problem-solving. CEOS found it also improved listening and communication skills.
So if it provided all these great results for the sales team, why not the rest of the company? An entire industry was born with companies providing teambuilding activities because companies found out they worked. Why? It turns out teambuilding activities build trust.
In a recent article in Harvard Business Review by Paul J. Zak, he said trust is essential in the workplace. As compared to companies with a low level of trust, employees at high-trust companies report 74% less stress, more energy and 50% higher productivity.
Of course, trust in the workplace is a different topic altogether which I don’t have the space to delve into here. But as a personal opinion, I would submit that anything that can turn your company and its employees into more of a family will go a long way towards creating trust.
We have surveys after our parties, and the CEO’s most common comment is usually something like, “I loved being part of the team but not being the CEO.” Make-believe play allowed them to see their teams on a level playing field in an entirely different light.
Quest Team Building
I believe there are two types of team-building: quest team-building and corporate family team-building. The recent popularity of Escape Rooms is an example of quest team-building – everybody must cooperate to complete the quest, or they will never get out of the room.
Small team obstacle courses, ropes courses, puzzle competitions, and many other activities exist to get their employees to work together toward a common goal. A good event planner can fill an entire weekend into activities where employees compete for fun and prizes.
What does the company get out of it? They can see their employees leaving their comfort zones and cooperating with team members. The CEO hopes that this will carry over to the workplace and he/she will have a more productive and smoother workforce.
While these experiences are a lot of fun, fun is not the real goal. The CEO is trying to teach his team to work together and accomplish a task. Playing make-believe in these activities is a tool to get employees to work together.
Unfortunately, it is not unusual for bad feelings to happen at these events. Since it is a competition, some people take the event to a completely different level, arguing about the rules, the score and the officiating.
We have done these parties at Mystery Mixers, but the competition is much more low key. Since everybody Some people at a At a Mystery Mixers event, most people are keeping up with the clues and trying to solve
Corporate Family Teambuilding
Corporate family-building activities involve not just the staff but also their significant others. A company picnic is a type of corporate family-building activity.
Events that include family members broaden the company’s social network and strengthen employee bonds with each other and the company.
Mystery parties, where all of the guests pretend to be characters, and other events where spouses and significant others are on an equal playing field allow them to feel like they are part of the team. This also leads everyone at such an event to interact with people they have never met.
By including your employees’ families at a company event, you demonstrate to employees that this isn’t just about business; it’s about including loved ones in the circle, too. This instills a sense of belonging, and if increasing overall happiness among employees is one of your goals, this is one way to accomplish it.
Summer picnics and holiday parties are staples of corporate family teambuilding. However, interactions at these events are usually limited to small talk and shop talk. The problem with such events is that inevitably, employees frequently start talking shop. Spouses end up standing around smiling, bored to tears, and anxious for the event to be over.
Adding make-believe activities where employees are forced to not rely on their real identity can help spouses be on an equal playing field with team members. Plus, it will usually help them look forward to the next event instead of feeling like it is another company obligation.
The Upside of Inviting Family Members
The practice of inviting loved ones to celebrations like holiday parties may also have an unexpected benefit. According to Louis Efron, a Fortune 200 human resources executive, it reduces employee relation issues (and possibly employee divorces) that arise when unlimited alcohol, dancing, hotel rooms, and no partners are mixed together.
In a Forbes survey, 23 percent of respondents said they knew someone who has been reprimanded by their employer for employee party behavior, 20 percent reported having had too much to drink and 14 percent knew someone who was fired due to antics at an event. In a Men’s Health magazine survey, 44 percent of the males said they’d had an affair with a co-worker at an office party at least once in their life.
Bringing family members to corporate events certainly cuts down on such behavior.
Of course, not all activities are appropriate for significant others. When the purpose of your corporate event is primarily focused on very specific team-building goals between co-workers, such as building camaraderie, improving creative thinking, or enhancing group problem-solving, then having family present will generally be counterproductive.
Playing Make-Believe Isn’t Just for Kids
Once you have seen the temp at the copier machine pretend to be a rock star or a villain from another planet, it’s hard to think of him as just a temp. You see him as a person, and you probably now have a few things to laugh about with him that you did not have before.
Employers will do almost anything to get their employees to work as a cohesive team that loves coming to work and making the company successful.
Successful business owners know that playing make-believe can be an important tool to accomplish that task.
Have events that are fun just for the sake of having fun. If they include a little make-believe, it will put employees and their significant others on an equal playing field where everybody participates.
No wonder Albert Einstein said that “imagination is more important than knowledge”!
