Forming Teams for a Team Building Event: Captain and Roles

There is a lot of talk about the route, the venue and the logistics of a team building event. There is less about what actually shapes the atmosphere: the way the teams are formed. Two colleagues who never speak end up side by side, a whole department groups together out of habit, a participant wonders what is expected of them. All of these situations can be prepared for.

This article is aimed at HR managers, office managers, event agencies and DMCs. It offers practical pointers for forming teams, choosing a captain, assigning roles and coming up with team names, and at each step it explains what TeamLab allows. TeamLab is QuestRides' team building solution, designed in Marrakech and currently available in that city.

Why team composition matters as much as the route

TeamLab turns a treasure hunt, a clue trail or an orienteering race into a managed group experience. The engine is the same from one format to another, and the route is designed for each format, together with the client. But whatever the format, it is the teams that bring the game to life: they organise themselves, share out the tasks and make decisions together.

A well-formed team lets everyone find their place. A team put together without much thought may reproduce office habits, with the same people speaking up and the same people holding back. Forming teams is therefore a matter of choosing the effect you want to achieve: getting departments to meet, mixing levels of seniority, or, on the contrary, keeping close-knit teams together.

Forming teams: the criteria to set

Define the objective before assigning anyone

Start with the basic question: what do you want to get out of the day? If the aim is to build links between departments, avoid grouping colleagues who already work together every day. If it is to celebrate a collective success, teams by department may make sense. This objective guides everything else, and it is precisely one of the points covered during the online scoping (objectives, participants, format, transfers, meals, ceremony, full stay, budget).

A few simple principles

• Mix departments when the aim is cross-team cohesion.
• Avoid placing a manager with their direct reports if you want conversation to flow freely.
• Balance the profiles: people who are comfortable speaking up, others who are more observant, those who are at ease with technology and those who are less so.
• Think about languages: on the participant side, the mobile game is available in French, English, Arabic and Darija. For an international group, that is an advantage: everyone can follow the game in their own language.

TeamLab handles the creation and composition of teams. Registration is done remotely, which means you can prepare the groups in advance rather than improvise them on the day at the starting point.

The captain: a role of facilitation, not hierarchy

In TeamLab, each team has a captain, and roles are adapted to the team size. The captain is not the boss: they are the person who helps the team keep moving, makes the call when opinions differ and gets everyone talking.

A few tips for choosing one:

• Do not automatically appoint the most senior person. A volunteer captain, or one drawn from a range of profiles, changes the dynamic.
• Let the team agree among themselves when possible, rather than imposing a name.
• Explain the role at the briefing: it is about energising the group, not playing in place of the others.

For agencies and DMCs, this is a useful point to slip into the seminar schedule: a well-introduced captain means a team that gets off to a smooth start.

Assigning roles according to team size

The larger the team, the more important it is to share out roles so that a few people do not end up doing everything while others look on. TeamLab adapts roles to the size of each team. Your role as organiser is to prepare the ground: explain what these roles are for and invite everyone to take one.

Here are some ideas to reflect on for your own preparation, to be refined during scoping:

• who keeps track of the route and checks that the team is moving in the right order;
• who takes care of the photos, since steps are validated by photo;
• who holds the team's team lead phone.

The team lead phone, explained simply

Each team transmits a single position, from its team lead phone. There is never any individual tracking. This is a point to state clearly at the briefing, because it is reassuring. Designate this phone in advance, check that it is properly charged and that its holder is happy to do it.

Team names: a small detail that builds buy-in

A team name may seem trivial. Yet it is often the first collective moment: people laugh, make suggestions and come to an agreement. It builds team spirit before the start. TeamLab includes team names, which you can have participants choose or prepare with the client depending on the atmosphere you are looking for.

• Keep it kind. Avoid names that target a department or an individual.
• Choose short names: they will be read out loud, notably at the final ceremony.
• Consider a common thread if you want a touch of identity: colours, elements, the theme of the seminar.

Teams are followed in the control room, and it is also under their names that they are called up for the trophies, the awards and the ceremony, which takes place in a dedicated venue, never at the finish location of the hunt.

What the organiser sees, and what they do not

Once the teams are formed, the real-time control room lets the organiser monitor team progress, see how long it has been since a team's position changed and which teams are paused or offline. The organiser can run things themselves, without a technician.

The control room offers six interventions: reserve step, timed surprise mission, freeze, slowdown, pause and resume. Before each one, it announces its target, its effect and its duration, and no intervention is applied while a team is moving. As an option, talismans between teams (Frost, Hourglass, Mirage, Aegis) add a strategic dimension.

As for confidentiality, participants register with a first name, with no email address or phone number. There is no individual assessment, no psychological profiling and no ranking of individuals: the game showcases teams, not individuals. This is an important message to share beforehand, especially for an HR audience attentive to these issues.

Finally, the event log and the timeline serve as a basis for the debrief. They make it possible to look back over the day with the teams, for example to talk about how they organised themselves.

Agencies and DMCs: building team composition into your seminar

TeamLab fits into seminars organised by agencies and DMCs. Depending on the access granted, the client can also be autonomous on their quest. Team composition can then be prepared with them, based on their objectives, the list of participants and the chosen format. You will find more details on the TeamLab for agencies page.

In summary

Forming the teams for a team building event takes a bit of method: start from the objective, mix thoughtfully, choose a captain who energises rather than commands, assign roles according to team size and leave room for creativity with team names. The rest, from the real-time control room to the debrief, builds on these first decisions.

To prepare your event, you can discover the TeamLab page or go straight to the online scoping: there you specify your objectives, your participants and your format, and you receive a tailored proposal in the form of a bespoke quote.