Is Team Building Worthwhile?

Team building has become a staple of corporate life. From rope courses in the woods to virtual happy hours, organisations across the globe spend billions annually trying to forge closer bonds among employees. But is it truly effective, or just an elaborate distraction from deeper organisational problems? The answer, it turns out, depends on how you define “team building” and what outcomes you expect from it.

The Case Against Team Building

Carlos Valdes-Dapena, a veteran in organisational development with over 25 years of experience — including 17 years at Mars Inc. — is unequivocal in his criticism. “Most corporate team building is a waste of time and money,” he writes, based on extensive research into team effectiveness [1].

The problem, he argues, lies not with the concept of team cohesion but with how it is typically pursued. Elaborate offsite events — like a London retreat where executives were trained in the Maori haka — do little more than foster “embarrassment and cynicism” [2]. Even well-meaning exercises, such as musical collaborations with orchestras or high-ropes courses, may create temporary emotional bonds, but these rarely translate into sustained workplace collaboration.

“Quality collaboration does not begin with relationships and trust; it starts with a focus on individual motivation,” he says [3]. His research at Mars revealed that employees were most productive when working autonomously on clearly defined tasks. In fact, the high performance of individuals often discouraged collaboration. “Collaboration was perceived as messy,” he explains. “It diluted accountability and offered few tangible rewards” [4].

His solution? A framework that connects collaboration directly to business outcomes. Teams were encouraged to ask two questions: Why is collaboration essential to achieving results? And which specific tasks require collaboration to succeed? When applied to the Mars Petcare China team, this framework helped boost growth by 33%, with one brand alone growing by 60% [5].

This structured, result-driven approach is a far cry from trust falls and karaoke nights. And therein lies the argument: team building, as it’s typically understood, doesn’t work. Not because teams don’t need to build relationships, but because they’re being led through superficial and ineffective rituals.

Team Building as Distraction

Liz Ryan, a former Fortune 500 HR executive and leadership coach, takes this criticism further. In her article The Ugly Truth About Team Building, she writes: “Team-building exercises are pointless and even insulting. They suggest that if only your team members spent more time doing silly things…they would work more effectively together the rest of the time” [6].

For Ryan, ineffective teams don’t need icebreaker games, they need honest conversations about strategy, conflict, and culture. Team dysfunction is not a people problem, she insists; it’s a leadership problem. “No one ever hired a consultant to put on a team-building workshop when there were no problems!” [7]

She lists common “energy blockers” that inhibit team performance: unclear strategy, unaddressed conflict, bureaucracy, role confusion, and lack of praise or experimentation [8]. Until these structural and cultural issues are addressed, no amount of mini-golf will create genuine cohesion.

Team-building exercises, she argues, become a way for weak leaders to avoid difficult conversations. “If you have to take your team off-site to play games because you can’t stand to talk about what’s really happening in your office, what does that say about you as a leader?” [9]

The Defence

Despite these criticisms, it would be premature to write off team building altogether. When done thoughtfully and with purpose, team building can have profound and measurable effects.

According to Teamland, 79% of employees believe that team-building activities strengthen workplace relationships, leading to happier and more productive teams [10]. A sense of belonging is also a major factor in retention — 54% of workers say they stayed in a job longer because they felt emotionally connected to the team [11].

Engagement isn’t just a soft metric. Gallup data shows that engaged employees boost productivity by 14%, increase sales by 18%, and can raise profits by as much as 23% [12]. These figures suggest that fostering strong team connections is more than just a superficial exercise; it’s a strategic imperative.

Moreover, team building doesn’t always have to be forced fun. Harvard Business Review highlights that social time — outside structured work — accounts for over 50% of positive changes in communication patterns within teams [13]. Whether it’s a shared lunch or a Slack channel dedicated to non-work chat, these moments build rapport that facilitates smoother collaboration.

Remote work has only made this more crucial. With employees increasingly distributed, the risk of isolation grows. Gallup notes that isolation can cut productivity by over 20% [14], while research shows that remote teams who engage in structured team-building can outperform their in-office counterparts [15].

The Trust Debate

At the heart of the team-building debate lies a crucial question: does trust lead to effective teamwork, or does teamwork build trust?

Valdes-Dapena suggests the latter. In his experience, trust is a “byproduct of dedicated people striving together” [16]. His framework doesn’t begin with trust-building exercises but with alignment on goals and clear role expectations. Once people are working effectively together, trust follows.

Leadership coach Lance Salyers, however, disagrees. In an article in Forbes, he argues that dismissing trust as secondary is “misguided.” He believes that effective teamwork depends on “a shared sense of mission and a feeling of camaraderie,” which are impossible without trust [17].

True teamwork, he writes, “unites more than their collective efforts: it unites them” [18]. Without trust, people withhold information, protect turf, and undermine others — behaviours that stifle innovation and collaboration.

Salyers points to military units and sports teams, where bonds of trust are forged through shared adversity and open vulnerability. He cites Patrick Lencioni’s The Advantage, which emphasises vulnerability as the foundation of trust: “When everyone on a team knows no one is going to hide their weaknesses, they develop a deep and uncommon sense of trust” [19].

Rather than dismissing traditional team-building efforts outright, Salyers calls for deeper, more intentional forms of team development. “Yes, it’s true: the expensive offsites and goofy games fail. But proving the former are largely useless isn’t the same as proving the latter to be unnecessary” [20].

The Middle Ground

Perhaps the real takeaway is not whether team building is worthwhile in theory, but whether it is being done meaningfully in practice.

Team building that feels artificial, forced, or disconnected from the daily work of the team often backfires. But when embedded in real organisational challenges — with clear objectives, open communication, and honest reflection — it becomes a powerful tool for cohesion.

Managers, then, should stop thinking of team building as an event and start viewing it as an ongoing process. It’s not about zip lines or trust falls. It’s about aligning people around shared goals, encouraging open dialogue, and creating psychological safety — where people feel comfortable expressing ideas, taking risks, and admitting mistakes.

There’s evidence this works. One study found that companies investing in management training, rather than gimmicky retreats, exceed their goals by 15% [21]. Strong organisational culture, rooted in meaningful connection and open communication, correlates with lower turnover, higher engagement, and better performance [22].

How to Embed Team Building

To embed team building into the fabric of everyday work culture, organisations must foster environments where psychological safety, shared accountability, and interpersonal learning are ongoing priorities. Statistics show only 33% of remote companies implement even basic team-building measures such as virtual coffee breaks or spontaneous check-ins [23].

This is a missed opportunity.

With 41% of remote workers struggling to feel connected to company culture, consistent and low-effort rituals of connection can yield outsized benefits [24]. Likewise, initiatives that support inclusion, feedback, and transparency, like regular one-to-ones or team retrospectives, can be just as effective, if not more so, than extravagant away days. These methods allow team building to evolve into a culture of trust and collaboration, rather than remain a calendar event.

The Verdict

So, is team building worthwhile? The answer is a cautious yes, but only if we redefine what it means.

Superficial bonding activities may offer momentary levity, but they rarely create the trust or cohesion that teams need. Instead, organisations should focus on purposeful, goal-oriented team development that’s grounded in psychological safety, aligned incentives, and open communication.

As Carlos Valdes-Dapena demonstrated at Mars, when people understand why collaboration matters and what requires it, they buy in. And as Lance Salyers warns, if that collaboration isn’t built on trust, it will quickly crumble under pressure.

Effective team building isn’t about entertainment; it’s about enabling people to do their best work — together.