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Team Building Exercise – The Maze

The Maze Team Building Exercise is one of the most powerful exercises available. It highlights what atmosphere and culture exists in the team. Once this is highlighted, you can make the necessary adjustments.

Benefits of this Team Building Exercise

It creates an opportunity to evaluate the team culture and how it supports as well as how it limits individual initiative.
Participants learn what types of supportive behaviors are necessary in order for the entire team to be successful.
Team members gain an understanding of taking risks and making mistakes “on purpose”
Participants learn that change is an event over which they have little control.
People understand how their fear of rejection and making mistakes can cost the company money.
Participants see clearly how improved support, trust, energy and accountability can directly improve the bottom line.

Number of Participants

5 to 25

Materials Needed

Masking tape and a written replica of the maze on an A4 paper.

Set-up

Stick masking tape on the floor in the form of a grid…this represent The Maze. The blocks should be 9 X 6 and each block should be more or less 30cm by 30cm (12 Inches X 12 Inches…big enough for one person to step into).
Draw two replicas of the maze on two separate sheets of A4 paper
On the replicas on the A4 paper, mark certain blocks as “hot”. These “hot spots” should form a route through the maze. You may have two “entrances” to the maze, but one should be a dead end and the other should lead through to the other side.
One side of the maze should be the starting point and the other side the end point.

This is what the maze look like:

Position yourself on the “end” part of the maze, because you will have to monitor their steps.
Have participants gather around the maze so you can explain the objective and ground rules.
Number the participants from 1 to 25 and ask them to remember their number.

Objective of this Team Building Exercise

The objective of this team building exercise is for the team to find a path through the maze. In the process, they have to successfully get all the team members from one end of the maze to the other within the time and financial constraints.

They have $15 million with which to complete the exercise.
They have to find the path (which you determine beforehand) through the maze before their money runs out.
Each minute will costs them $1 million.
Obviously, if they complete the task in less than 15 minutes, they make a profit. If they don’t, they will owe money.
The team will receive two “free” additional minutes to plan. So, in essence, they will have 17 minutes to complete the task.

Ground Rules

Some squares are “hot” and “some are “not”.
They have to find the route through the maze by trial and error.
Person number one starts by stepping on one of the six squares at the entrance of the maze. If it beeps (a sound you make every time you see them stepping on an un-marked square – remember, you have a replica of the maze with the marked route in your hands), person number one needs to step out of the maze.
Then person number 2 chooses another square. If it beeps again, they have to move out. If it doesn’t beep, it means that the square is “hot” and they can progress to the next square.
And so everyone gets a chance until they reach a beeping square and then move out of the maze.
When someone move out of the maze after they have stepped on a beeping square, they have to retrace their steps exactly as they came in…they are not aloud to just step of the maze on the side.
When the team gets to person number 25, they start at person number 1 again.
There can only be one person on the maze at any given time
There are no penalties for stepping on a beeping square as they go forward. However, if they step on a beeping square as they retrace their steps, they will be penalized with $1million…i.e. they need to be accountable for their mistakes.
They also lose $500 000 if they step on a beeping square going forward for the second time. They know by previous experience that it’s a beeping square. This simulates the idea that it is fine to make mistakes, but we should learn from them. It is NOT fine to make the same mistake a second and a third time.
Movement on the maze is only from one adjacent square to another (i.e. forward, backward and sideways). No jumping squares like in checkers.
The team can talk while they strategize. But after person number 1 has put his or her feet in the maze, there can be no talking until they team building exercise is finished. They can still communicate though, just not verbally…funny sounds and hmms, count as talking as well
If someone does talk, they lose $½ million.
They can’t mark any squares or route with physical objects like pens and so on. In other words, no Hansel and Gretel.
Nobody is aloud to write down the route as they carry on…i.e. no pens and paper. Everyone needs to take accountability for remembering the squares.

Tips For The facilitator

If you can, flipchart the rules.
Position yourself at the one end of the maze. I usually sit on a chair.
Have the replica of the maze with the route available.
Be very strict with the penalties. Especially talking. This simulates the “real life” environment.
Emphasize that the rule that they DON’T get penalized for stepping on a beeping square the first time…only if they step on one for a second and third time.
Keep time and call out the time every 2 minutes.
If your time is restricted, you may want to penalize them with minutes instead of dollars.

Debriefing the Learning of this Team Building Exercise.

The following questions are useful during the debrief of this team building exercise. These are just guidelines. Feel free to add your own.

What did you learn?
How did you feel when you’ve stepped on a beeping square?
What was the support like from your team when you made a mistake…especially if a mistake was made near the end?
How accountable were you as a team towards individual mistakes?
Where did “fear of failure” cost you money.

Typically, people go into the maze and waste a lot of time waiting for people to show them where to step. They want to make sure that if they step on a beeping square, they can say, “Well YOU told me to do so, so don’t blame me now”. It’s bit of covering their behinds.

Now the interesting thing is that if they DO step on a beeping square after a long hesitation, they usually turn around, step carelessly, without any support, on beeping squares, and lose money in the process.

The fact of the matter is that they don’t get penalized for stepping on a beeping square the first time. And this is where the power of this team building exercise is. They want to avoid that beep, that “mistake”, that rejection from the rest so much, that they will waste time (and money in this instance) to avoid it, although they know that the mistake don’t cost them money.

But when they can lose money (stepping on being squares going backwards), they don’t care.

How could you be more productive, by being more supportive?
How well did you execute your plan?
What happened when things didn’t go according to you plan? (Remember, they can’t talk and regroup during the exercise)
What behaviors did you see during the team building exercise that you often see in your working environment?
What do you need to change to become more effective at work?

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