Picture this: you and your team are called in to solve a mystery no one else can crack. You’re locked in a room and you have 60 minutes to find freedom. The only way out is to perform a series of puzzles, tasks, and brain challenges. You and your team must work together in fine-tuned synchronicity to escape before time expires.

Maybe that’s a little dramatic, but the Marketing Consultants at SnapRetail really did have to work together to break free from a locked room. We split into two groups and spent time at Escape Room in Pittsburgh.

Escape Room is a fully-immersive game where “only problem solving, creativity, and resourcefulness will set you free.” Sounds a lot like life!

And like work, too.

What I learned is that when you throw six girls in a room, strong personalities come out.  We have a natural leader, a practical person keeping us on track, a few who are great at following steps, and someone going rogue looking at their own thing. At any given time, we all rotated through these roles.

The best part about working in a team in Escape Room is that everyone has different skills to contribute to the success of the team. What you miss, someone else will notice. When you’re getting frustrated, someone else steps in and refocuses on the task in a different way.

It also helps to have someone who is very tall.

The purpose of this field trip was to enhance our team building skills to make us an even better group for our customers.

Going through Escape Room is kind of like working on the Marketing Consultant team at SnapRetail. We know each other’s personalities and when to step up when someone needs a hand. It’s great to work with people who understand both our strengths and weaknesses.

It’s through activities like Escape Room that allow our natural abilities to shine through. It’s also where we learn about the other people we work with.  A machine doesn’t run when gears are working in opposition; similarly, our team works best when we know how we all react in a certain situation.

Because of this experience, I have a deeper understanding of what my co-workers bring to the table, which allows us to work better together. Funny enough, it also showed me what I offer to the group. Escape Room allowed me to feel like a necessary asset. It really made me see that I’m just as important as the tall person on the team.

While it wasn’t as dire to solve the mystery as I made it seem, spending time at Escape Room was invaluable. It was a fantastic opportunity to learn more about our unique skills, elevate our team building and show off a little.

And for anyone wondering, I won’t tell you if we escaped or not. Ask your Marketing Consultant about it next time you talk to us!