Magic Team Building Is The One Nobody Tries To Get Out Of

Team building has a bad enough reputation that people now dread the calendar invite. Magic team building works differently, because your people learn to do the magic themselves.

The Trouble With Most Team-Building Activities

Alison Green spent a decade collecting workplace complaints for her advice column, and the team-building stories she published in Slate are rough reading. A facilitator opened one session by having a struggling team go around the room saying what they disliked about each other. People cried. One company ran mandatory tai chi three mornings a week, and the employee whose medical condition kept him out was told to sit and watch, then spent weeks explaining himself to coworkers. Another boss booked canyoning for two staff he knew were afraid of heights and enclosed spaces.

The activities differ. The failure is always the same. Each one asks for a narrow kind of participation, usually physical or emotionally exposing, and then leaves out whoever cannot or will not supply it.

A Magic Workshop Puts Your Team On The Performing Side

Our magic team building workshop sends a working magician to your group to teach them magic.

The magician performs first so the room sees what good looks like. Then the teaching starts, with a curated set of effects chosen so each one demonstrates a specific principle about attention or perception. Your people learn the sleight of hand, the misdirection, and the mentalism techniques behind what looks like mind reading. They practice in pairs, get corrected, and try again. The session ends with your team performing for each other.

That closing round is the team building. Standing up and doing something in front of colleagues carries genuine stakes, and getting through it together is the part people still bring up months later.

What everybody works out along the way is that the secret is the easy part. The difficulty is holding a group’s attention, reading the person in front of you, and carrying on when something goes wrong. Those are the same skills your team uses in a pitch, on a client call, and in a hard conversation with a colleague.

Everybody Can Do It, Which Is The Point

Learning a sleight happens sitting down, with your hands, at whatever pace you want. Nobody needs to be fit. Nobody confesses anything. Nobody is the punchline. The colleague with no coordination and the colleague who dreads group activities learn the same effect and both get the same moment when it works on somebody.

The programs run from an hour after dinner to a half day, and Kostya Kimlat teaches the keynote version for larger rooms. Every magician on the Orlando roster can run a session, and they all work Orlando rooms year-round. If you would rather see the performing side first, our magicians are at Christner’s on Saturday nights.

Tell us your date, your group size, and what you want the session to do on the booking page, and we’ll build the workshop around your team.