My guess is if you’re reading this article then you’re looking for an edge to get out of an escape room as fast as possible. Even better if you’re competing with other team(s) then you want to win 1^st place! Here’s another escape room cheat from our series that should help.

My business partner and I have been running BustoutColorado, Colordo’s only mobile escape room, for almost 4 years now. The vast majority of our clients are business teams and there are clear patterns for success in the escape room, which coincidentally translate nicely into the business world.

This escape room cheat focuses on not overthinking the escape room and analogously how it applies to not overthinking challenges in the work environment. Our goal is for teams to have FUN, but also offer food for thought to participants when they return to their desks after the escape room event.

To start off, if you don’t understand the concept of an escape room and how they work then please see one of our other articles on this website’s Articles page for an overview. Assuming you know how they work then let’s move on.

In any quality escape room you and the team will get stuck at some point. What fun is it if there’s no challenge? So assume you will get stuck, maybe more than once. At this point you’re all likely going to likely get frustrated or anxious as the clock counts down.  This is a critical moment for the team. Some teams double down on “working harder” or just try random crazy solutions and overthinking sets in.

Here’s our advice:

• Don’t let yourself or your team get triggered – BREATH! Slow down for a moment to regroup. If you don’t breath then the fight or flight part of our brain starts to take over and productive ideas slow way down. Get everyone together and hit the PAUSE button.
• Our culture equates “doing” with progress and success, which is false. As your team is paused think at what you’re overlooking. What things stand out. Here’s a secret – most escape room solutions come when you put two or three things that stand out together. So, what stands out that could be combined SIMPLY.
• Most escape rooms have lots of false leads to create noise and waste your time. Be logical, noise is typically something that looks interesting but is a needle in a haystack, e.g. lots of books or magazines, be smart about what you spend time on
• Last, don’t be afraid to verbalize that you (maybe the team too) is lost. No one wants to be seen as needing help but sometimes it’s the smartest move and keeps the team from getting frustrated and entering the overthinking. Be vulnerable.

So how do these apply to business – come visit our escape room in Colorado and find out! Here’s some teasers:

• Have you ever gotten triggered by someone or something at work. BREATH and pull back.
• When you’re stuck on a problem how often do you stop and go for a walk to regroup and get new ideas. How long does it take to realize you’re stuck in the first place?
• Have you ever found yourself wasting time chasing random ideas, unproductive email threads, flashy quick fixes that turn out to be a waste of time? Stop and strategize.
• Do you homework on a problem, try your best solutions, if nothing works don’t be afraid to ask a mentor for help explaining to them what you’ve already tried.

We hope this escape room cheat was useful but more importantly we hope you’ll apply it to your work context as well – BustoutColorado Escape Team

Is there an optimal set of personality types for a team entering an escape room? We believe so and we’re convinced this translates directly into the business context as well. If you’ve already read our article on Escape Room Strategy – Team Communications then you can skip the next few paragraphs in Italics. Otherwise read on ….

Being owners of BustoutColorado, Colorado’s only mobile escape room, weve seen a large rise in their popularity. We’ve also seen an increase in business teams using these facilities for their team building events and training. Team building and the fun fast pace of an escape room is a great match. We personally monitor each team in the escape room and we’ve noticed clear patterns for success. Specifically, these highly collaborative teams have several common team skills which contribute to their success both in the escape room and, as we find when talking with them after the event, also back in the office.

These patterns are so prevalent for the successful teams that we will be sharing these best practices (escape room cheats) in the hopes they will improve your chances in an escape room, but more importantly in the office context as well.

So, let’s start with a simple explanation of an escape room for those that are not familiar. If you already know the context for an escape room then you can skip this section. Most escape rooms are a large area where a team can work together to solve puzzles with the goal of exiting the escape room before time runs out. Typically, each escape room has a theme, for example our mobile escape room is a 1960’s themed prison including a warden’s area, real jail cell, and stainless steel toilet. Teams work together to find clues, piece together information, solve puzzles, and ultimately deduce the sequence that allows them to unlock the door and exit the room.

So how does team personality type predict success? As we observe the teams that struggle within an escape room we find a common cause can be the personality makeup of the team. Imagine a team of all motivators and persuaders. They’re great at motivating the team to take the hill but they’re not very good with the details and the rigor needed to solve the puzzles. Conversely a team of highly detailed and rigorous folks tend to get bogged down in information and details; usually they enter some form of analysis paralysis.

While we cannot promise success, we believe that the following personality makeup for a team will definitely increase the chances of success. I would challenge the reader to see how this parallels a successful team in the work environment. Moreover, if a team is missing one type can someone play the role?

Note these are loosely grouped by personality types outlined in profile tools such as DiSC, Meyers-Briggs, or Proscan. They are in no particular order as all are important.

• Detailed and thorough – An escape room is specifically designed to throw a lot of information at each person. Teams that have someone who can triage the information, find the useful clues, and organize them have a much greater chance of escaping. Without the attention to detail then an important clue can be found but forgotten.
• Team player – As mentioned there’s a lot of information to be processed. There is a set of people that enjoy being part of a team and working towards a common goal. If this group is tasked well then they can divide and conquer to parse through a lot of information in order to find the nuggets to be shared with the team.
• Strategist – Like Mike Tyson said, “Everyone goes in with a plan until they get punched in the face”. At some point almost all teams hit a wall and their plan goes out the window. At this pint the team is doomed without someone that can recognize the issue, step back to strategize, regroup everyone, and then move forward in a new direction.
• Motivator – Any team without a healthy dose of energy usually burns out, gets discouraged and loses the drive to do their best. Successful teams need someone that can energize the team, lead the celebration for interim successes, and have empathy to help any struggling individual.

It’s interesting to note that these types are completely agnostic of age and title. Any team that thinks age or title will help them to be successful is flat wrong.

If you’ve made it this far in the article well done! Beyond an escape room I challenge you to think how this applies to your work environment. Without a well-balanced team where everyone plays their role (and is appreciated BTW) then success in the workplace becomes a battle against death by a thousand cuts.

At Bustout Colorado, Colorado’s only mobile escape room, we’ve gotten a good amount of feedback on our “Escape Room Strategy” series, frankly it proves our theory that smart leaders are using escape rooms for more than just a fun team outing. One common theme in the feedback is a question around the need for leadership, specifically is there a style of leadership that enhances the performance of the team? Based on the hundreds of teams we’ve observed we can confirm there is a style and it should surprise no one that it closely mirrors successful business leadership. Compare how these leadership styles match what you’ve experienced at work.

To keep this article from becoming a leadership tome I’m breaking the discussion into four leadership types, from worst to best performing.

Leaderless – It will surprise no one that the worst performing team in an escape room is a team where no one takes on the leader function or the leader is weak. In this scenario the team either succeeds or fails based on individual talents and random luck of discovery. Teams tend to fall into group think and stay blocked when they hit a significant challenge. It’s rough to watch as teams like this struggle.

Execution Based Leadership – It’s common to see one or possibly two people on the team step into an authoritative role. Interestingly it’s not always the person with the highest title, rather usually someone passionate about “beating the best time”, competitive and a strong personality. In this mode, the leader will set the goals, orchestrate most activities, call timeout when the team is stuck, act as the central locus of information, and motivate folks when needed. In the escape room as in business, this model works but is highly dependent on the leader’s skills, her/his ability to forego mistakes, and team’s willingness to buy in to their leadership.

Situational and Servant Model Leadership – Typically without any overt discussion someone will step into the leadership role when the time is correct. Depending on the situation they will praise, strategize, and motivate the team.  While this list isn’t comprehensive here are some examples:

• Ensure everyone is on the same page without making anyone feel inadequate. This is usually done via strategic questions vs direct statements. This increases buy-in from the team
• Exemplify high standards, ethics, and setting a model for everyone
• While solving puzzles they will monitor team members for engagement or possible issues
• Usually the first person to praise individual accomplishments and celebrate team successes, they enjoy seeing their team succeed above the pride of their own accomplishments
• They do not directly point out failures rather they ask indirect questions to get back on track
• Watching the team for progress and course correcting at strategic moments
• Empower team members to “run with it” when they have a good idea or success
• Talk about their own mistakes first before anyone else’s

No lead necessary – while the previous leadership type does show the best results we would be deficient if we didn’t list one last type. Occasionally ( 1 in ~30) we see a team that has gone through the forming–storming-norming-performing (see link here) steps of team development. The lead has done some masterful work building the team into a highly skilled machine. These teams work together incredibly well, playing to each other’s strengths, calling in help when needed, drawing energy from each other, and enjoying each other. No leader is required and it’s a beautiful sequence to watch.

Think back to the original question, how close do these leadership styles mirror your work experience?

As owners of a Colorado-based mobile escape room our passion is to bring the escape room experience into a corporate setting where we’re able to observe teams as they endeavor to escape. Beyond being a mobile escape room our unique value add is the post event discussion. We will typically spend at least an hour decompressing the energy around the successful moments and reflections on the inevitable stumbles. These facilitated discussions nearly always uncover multiple opportunities for growth. If you’re local to Colorado then BustoutColorado would love to provide you with these facilitated discussions. If you’re not local to Colorado then I would strongly encourage you to find an escape room venue that is proficient in these discussions. You can find a list of qualified companies here.

I can’t stress enough that you should look for someone trained in facilitation to maximize the experience, however we recognize that might not be possible due to location and/or cost challenges. Therefore, we would like to share some simple, yet powerful suggestions for someone that might be doing a self-facilitation.  Prior to reading the rest of this article I would encourage you to read this helpful article by Tyler Hayden and Andrew Gipson.  Their article does an excellent job of explaining the steps to create a self-facilitated experience. With their permissions, we have then extended the concept of the facilitated discussion within this article so that it might provide additional support for the self-facilitator.

We present four basic observation points that can be used by anyone to start the facilitated discussion:

Celebration – As the team is working their way through the event be keen to notice how the team celebrates when an interim puzzle is solved or they have a breakthrough.  Typical celebrations will last for 10-20 seconds with loud exuberance by all parties.  Signs to look for:

• Minimal Celebration – If a team does little celebrating and moves quickly to the next puzzle then point out the observation and ask if it parallels work celebrations, often they do.  You can describe a typical celebration and ask why theirs might be muted. Among other reasons this can be caused by a poor culture, a culture of extreme execution focus, or lack of specific personality types such as DiSC I type.
• Lack of participation – If one or more members fail to participate in the celebration then carefully pointing out the fact and ask for opinions on the root cause.
• Excessive celebration – If the team celebrates too much at the cost of getting puzzles solved then dig into why there is  a reduced sense of urgency.

Communications – As noted many times in previous articles, successful communications during the experience is crucial for success. As the experience unfolds notice who’s speaking the most/least, who’s talking but not being heard by the others, who’s communication is having the biggest impact. When the experience is concluded the facilitator can derive questions from these suggestions. If nothing stands out then we have two favorite questions for this area, “Who felt like they were talking but not being heard?” and “<Bob> your communications seemed to always help the team along, what was your strategy for this event?”.

Leadership – We’ve never had a team that didn’t get stuck at some point in the experience. This is where a key skill is needed on the team. As a facilitator watch how the team reacts when they lose momentum and start to flounder. Does someone step up, call timeout, regroup the team and brainstorm? Are there multiple uncoordinated leaders? Does the team get demotivated and loose interest for the rest of the event? Any successful team needs a combination of an emotionally intelligent leader as well as team resilience. During the debrief a good question for this condition might be, “I noticed you got stuck on puzzle X, what technical and leadership skill areas would have helped us unstick sooner”? Note that we don’t make this a personal attack on any de facto leader.

Clue Overload – Any well-designed escape room will contain many props and clues that are distractions. What’s interesting to watch is the amount of emphasis people put on these fake clues.  A well-oiled team will have the ability to sift through the noise and efficiently gather the important clues. Watch closely for a team or team members that focuses too long on the wrong clues. If this happens then a useful debrief question might be, “I noticed you got stuck a bit on X tell me how many distractions this team encounters at work and how are they handled?”. This question usually leads to several ideas for improvements in team productivity.

Being owners of BustoutColorado, Colorado’s only mobile escape room, we’ve seen a large rise in their popularity. We’ve also seen an increase in business teams using these facilities for their team building events and training. Team building and the fun fast pace of an escape room is a great match. We personally monitor each team in the escape room and we’ve noticed clear patterns for success. Specifically, these highly collaborative teams have several common team skills which contribute to their success both in the escape room and, as we find when talking with them after the event, also back in the office.

These patterns are so prevalent for the successful teams that we will be sharing these “escape room cheat” in the hopes they will improve your chances in an escape room, but more importantly in the office context as well.

So, let’s start with a simple explanation of an escape room for those that are not familiar. If you already know the context for an escape room then you can skip this section. Most escape rooms are a large area where a team can work together to solve puzzles with the goal of exiting the escape room before time runs out. Typically, each escape room has a theme, for example our mobile escape room is a 1960’s themed prison including a warden’s area, real jail cell, and stainless steel toilet. Teams work together to find clues, piece together information, solve puzzles, and ultimately deduce the sequence that allows them to unlock the door and exit the room.

One of the most prevalent skills we see from the high performing teams is their ability for everyone to communicate effectively. We’ve coined the phrase “it’s one thing to speak but it’s another thing to be heard”. Even within the chaos of the escape room (and the office context) each member is able to fully listen and communicate information about the clues their seeing and the ideas they have for solving puzzles, in other words getting stuff done! The best practices we see fall into these areas:

• In the escape room, as within a team meeting, there’s an ebb and flow of communication as different people find clues and advocate for ideas. Regardless of title each person is given a space to be fully heard. What one person sees as a clue may trigger an idea with another person. Without this communication skill the clue connection is missed.
• An escape room is designed to provide a blizzard of information, some useful and some not. Like the pile of email people get each work day. Team members able to successfully discard the useless clues and focus communication around the interesting clues are much more successful due to higher quality information.
• Each team member is fully present and listening to the conversations from the other members. There are no exceptions and no one is left out.
• At critical junctures in the event when the team is off track someone will clearly summarize the state of the clues and re-focus the team.
• We see teams that recognize their communications diversity and each member plays to their strengths. For example, some members are very detailed while others are more of the cheerleader. All types are needed and appreciated. Any team with all cheerleaders will have a hard time succeeding.

We hope this escape room cheat was useful but more importantly we hope you’ll apply it to your work context as well.