In today’s rapidly changing business landscape, executive team building activities are no longer just a nice-to-have—they’re essential for creating a positive company culture and maintaining organizational health.
When employees engage in meaningful team building exercises, the effects cascade throughout the entire company. Yet many organizations still struggle to implement effective leadership team development.
In this article, we’ll explore why executive team building activities matter and offer practical programs and events to strengthen your leadership team.
Why Executive Team Building Matters
Before diving into specific activities, let’s discuss why executive team building activities help foster the psychological safety and collaborative leadership that drives organizational success.
In a recent episode of our Team Building Saves the World podcast—How Leadership Culture Shapes Success—leadership development expert and workplace culture consultant Haley Grayless, MSOD, shared some powerful insights on this topic:
“Psychological safety is when a team feels like they can appear vulnerable, bring their full selves to work, take risks, be innovative, ask questions, without fear of retaliation or humiliation. The leaders have to show psychological safety and encourage people to take risks.”
The Ripple Effect of Executive Teamwork
The reason Haley and many leadership development experts emphasize executive team building activities is the ripple effect. When executives collaborate effectively, communicate openly, and resolve conflicts constructively, these positive behaviors cascade down.
Conversely, dysfunctional executive teams can create dysfunctional and toxic work environments.
According to Haley, “Toxicity is like nuclear poison. It spreads—not just to the people directly affected, but to everyone they touch.” This metaphor perfectly captures why executive team building is so important—leadership behaviors set the tone for the entire organization.
The Cost of Poor Leadership Team Dynamics
The cost of poor executive teamwork impacts several aspects of each person’s personal and professional life. It can translate to:
- Decreased productivity across the organization
- Higher turnover rates (and associated replacement costs)
- Reduced innovation and risk-taking
- Damaged company reputation
- Lower financial performance
- Stress and higher rates of employee burnout
Haley talked a bit about her experience in a toxic work environment:
“I went through probably seven months of such extreme anxiety that my hair was falling out. People would literally comment and say, ‘You’re not acting like yourself these days. Your sunshine is gone.’ It was just a terrible time.”
Overcoming Executive Resistance to Change
Many senior leaders believe they don’t need team development, viewing it as something for lower-level employees. Others may fear vulnerability or appearing less than perfect in front of colleagues.
“Some CEOs have been doing things the same way for 30 or 40 years… that doesn’t mean they’ve been doing it right,” Haley notes.
This resistance to change can be a major obstacle, and implementing executive team building activities is a fantastic way to start overcoming it.
Effective senior management team building activities must acknowledge these concerns while demonstrating the concrete business benefits of stronger leadership connections.
Once you start implementing team building for senior management, though, it can be easier for them to move past the resistance, embrace new ways of doing things, and benefit from continuous change.
Our Favorite Executive Team Building Activities
Now that we’ve discussed why team building activities for executives are so important, let’s explore specific events designed to strengthen senior leadership teams.
Sure, it often comes down to who’s running the event and how they do it, but picking the right activity matters too.
Here are some executive team building ideas that can help address common challenges faced at the top of an organization.
1. Belbin Team Roles Assessment and Workshop
The Belbin Team Building Questionnaire helps executives understand their natural roles and how they complement each other. Based on Dr. Meredith Belbin’s research, this science-based assessment identifies distinct behavioral patterns that emerge when leaders collaborate.
“True self-awareness isn’t just knowing your emotions—it’s understanding their effect on others,” Haley emphasizes. “Most people think they’re self-aware. But research shows only 10 to 15 percent actually are.”
The Belbin assessment promotes exactly this kind of deeper self-awareness and emotional intelligence through two powerful workshop options:
Team DNA
Team DNA reveals the behavioral clusters each person brings to the leadership team. Knowing their individual and collective Team DNA helps team members understand their key strengths and weaknesses, which can translate to better decisions and less workplace friction.
By understanding their collective Team DNA, senior leaders can:
- Recognize each person’s key strengths and natural contributions
- Foster a people-oriented leadership approach
- Identify potential blind spots in team composition
- Make better decisions with less workplace friction
- Leverage complementary skills across the executive team
Leadership DNA
Leadership DNA specifically helps measure the impact, strengths, and weaknesses of those working as leaders or managers. This workshop allows executives to develop genuine self-awareness by:
- Uncovering their dominant leadership patterns
- Understanding how others perceive their leadership approach
- Identifying strategies to maximize strengths and offset weaknesses
- Building more effective relationships across the organization
Here’s how the process works:
- Participants complete online profiles prior to the event. Each one can also invite co-workers to share peer feedback.
- An accredited Belbin Team Facilitator analyzes the profiles to create detailed team reports. These offer insights into your team as a whole, as well as any specific sub-teams or working relationships you choose.
- We integrate observations from the data into our presentation components, interactive sessions, and team challenge activities. The goal is always to effectively apply these insights in real-world settings.
At the end of the event, you’ll also have the option to discuss and agree upon targeted follow-up strategies and post-program milestones. These reviews can be either self-driven or externally facilitated.
2. Leadership Stories
The Leadership Stories exercise takes executive team building to the next level with an engaging, gamified approach. This activity turns leadership development into a collaborative experience with a healthy dose of friendly competition.
This event leverages the proven effectiveness of game-based approaches to engage even the busiest, most distracted leaders. Here’s how it works:
- Your group will divide into smaller, competing teams for the event.
- Each team selects a board game-style character to represent them as they play.
- Teams progress through the game by tackling business challenge scenarios and deciding on the best possible approaches.
- Points are earned by making optimal leadership decisions for each situation.
“Almost every time, managers rate the culture more positively than individual contributors. They’re often out of touch,” Haley observes. This activity counteracts that tendency by requiring executives to:
- Read between the lines in complex scenarios for clues to deeper meaning
- Visualize the context of each business challenge scenario
- Apply their experience and work together, weighing various options
- Collaborate and negotiate to come to a consensus on the best course of action
The best part? Most people get so wrapped up in the fun of the game that they don’t even realize they’re learning new skills and strengthening existing ones until it’s all said and done.
3. Beat the Box
Beat the Box is one of our favorite collaborative team building games, and it’s a fantastic choice for senior management professionals. It features a mind-bending series of escape room-style challenges designed to bring out the best in any team.
Every aspect of this team building challenge has been designed to leverage the benefits of gamification. It’s engaging and fun, perfect for getting leadership professionals excited to participate.
With Beat the Box, there are no lengthy introductions—here’s how we catapult players into the game:
- We’ll start with a short, thrilling video to explain how the game works and get everyone hyped for upcoming challenges.
- Your group will divide into smaller working teams.
- Teams will tackle four different escape room-style challenges, which have to be solved in sequence as each one raises the bar a little higher.
- Each team works to discover the mystery slogan with the power to stop the clock and claim victory.
The only way for teams to succeed is through smooth teamwork and cooperation. Each of the four challenges highlights the power of combining individual skill sets to achieve the greatest possible outcome.
As your leaders and team members engage in this friendly competition, they begin to find new ways to tackle problems, which can help overcome toxic work environments.
As Haley puts it, “Instead of the pendulum swing between aggression and avoidance, what we really need is curious confrontation—assertiveness that’s clear and kind, gentle and direct.”
4. Just Roll With It
The Just Roll With It Skateboard Build combines team development with corporate social responsibility. Leaders will join forces with their teams to assemble, design, and decorate skateboards and helmets.
These skateboards and helmets are then gifted to local children’s charities, where they’ll be used as a tool for educating, empowering, and encouraging the communities they serve.
Each person must harness their creativity, work against the clock, and showcase their teamwork skills in this exhilarating and collaborative event. Here’s how it works:
- Your group will divide into smaller teams to rally together and compete.
- Each team will harness the creative genius of its members to assemble and decorate vibrant skateboards and helmets with plenty of artistic flair.
- Once these tasks are complete, teams get to show off their fingerboarding skills and share their knowledge in a series of fun activities before the winners are announced.
Don’t worry—we’ve included engaging team building challenges to ensure everyone feels comfortable participating, regardless of their confidence in their artistic talents. It’s all about keeping the enthusiasm sky-high!
In the podcast, Haley discussed her passion for getting her hands dirty and asking questions like: “What can I do to actually make things better and be the change I wish to see in the world?”
Like all of our charity events, Just Roll With It is designed to foster this mindset. After all, corporate volunteering offers benefits like:
- Improved soft skills (e.g., problem solving, teamwork, communication, etc.)
- Better health and wellbeing
- Enhanced employee engagement
- Higher productivity throughout the organization
- Increased investor and consumer interest
Often, discussing these benefits with your executive teams is the best way to get them engaged and excited—after all, it’s hard to argue with activities that benefit your bottom line and people at all levels of the organization.
Ready To Embrace the Power of Executive Team Building?
Activities like these lay the foundation for organizational success, and there’s no time like the present to adopt them!
Maybe you’ve noticed toxic tendencies or complacency in your workplace, or perhaps you’re simply taking a holistic approach. In either case, your organization is sure to benefit from regular executive team building activities, as Haley notes:
“I tell clients, ‘If you don’t address this now, you’re just waiting for systems to implode.’”
By investing in team building activities, you can demonstrate a commitment to leadership excellence that cascades throughout your company. In other words, your leaders become the change they want to see in the organization.
If you’re ready to transform your executive team, contact us today to explore custom solutions tailored to your organization’s unique goals and challenges.
