How Escape Rooms Improve Communication and Problem-Solving Skills
When you think of an escape room, you probably picture a door that's closed and locked, a few clues, and a timer that's counting down. All of those things add to the excitement of the escape room experience, but there are many things that go on behind the scenes as well. Escape rooms provide entertainment and help to build skills that people can use outside of the escape room and in everyday life as well.
Escape rooms build skills such as communication, leadership and problem-solving. Different puzzles require different skills, and different clues help different people in the group. Escape rooms are great entertainment for friends and family, but can also serve as great corporate team-building activities.
Escape rooms are a fun way to teach a valuable life lesson, and for that reason, they are becoming more popular.
How Do Escape Rooms Keep Players Coming Back?
Escape rooms have become a favourite among entertainment venues because they are a great way to inspire your team or family outside of the escape room.
An Escape Room Is A Game
In essence, escape rooms are interactive games where a group of people can spend about an hour in a themed game with a mission to complete.
Common themes for escape rooms can include solving a mystery, hidden treasure, escaping from a prison, or even preventing a fake disaster. Escape rooms feature a multitude of games, puzzles, clues, and even compartments of information that are hidden and waiting to be discovered.
Escape rooms are one of the most unique forms of entertainment because they inspire the whole group to complete the mission and don't rely on a single person to be successful.
Communication Becomes Key
As you start to engage in an escape room, one of the first things you will notice is how communication becomes key.
Imagine that one player finds a key in one area of the room and another finds a coded message. Without communicating, the puzzle will remain unsolved.
Players will have to verbalize their findings.
Some common verbalizations are:
"I found something here!"
"Does this code go with your clue?"
"Let's try this code."
"Has anyone gone through this pile?"
The natural occurrence of verbal communication helps the team organize their findings.
Communication helps the team avoid redundancy. Most importantly, communication prevents the team from missing an important clue.
Everyone Learns to Listen
In escape rooms, you have to listen to everyone's suggestions because the clues could be the next big thing.
Most of the time, the solutions are brought to light by those players who have been quietly observing while others are occupied with solving other clues.
When you learn to listen to every suggestion, you learn to build stronger collaborations with each other inside and outside the game.
Leadership Develops Naturally
A lot of people have the perception that leadership skills are related to telling everyone what to do. However, escape rooms show that leadership is more important than just directing.
Great leaders are able to do the following:
Keep the team on track.
Bring team morale up when it starts to decrease.
Help those around them organize what needs to be done.
Maintain an even atmosphere.
The most interesting part of the leadership role in escape rooms is that no one is assigned what the leadership role is.
Instead, different people naturally step up to lead depending on the circumstances. For example, someone who is good at spotting and organizing all the clues may lead a segment of the game while another person may be guiding the team in the right direction in the solving of a particularly challenging puzzle.
This kind of leadership is flexible, which means that all members are encouraged to present their best, most effective role.
Problem Solving Under Pressure
The whole structure of an escape room is built around the idea of solving problems. Some of the challenges and puzzles are designed as a logical conundrum, while others focus on observation, thinking in patterns, and even creativity. Playing an escape room teaches you that the best outcomes come from careful, methodical play.
Successful teams tend to:
Take larger challenges and break them down into smaller ones.
Try all the different possibilities.
Discard the answers that are incorrect.
Synthesize clues from all of the different places.
Work through problems as a team.
Interestingly, these same techniques are applied in all walks of life, be it at work, school, or home.
Time Management
There is usually a limit of one hour to complete an escape room. This creates a time constraint which pushes players to manage time. Successful teams do not spend a long time solving one challenging puzzle. They move on to other clues and may even ask for a hint. Balancing speed and careful thought is a valuable game skill that goes beyond the boundaries of the game.
The Escape Room Form of Entertainment Emphasizes Creative Thinking
Escape rooms encourage you to think differently. Escape rooms show that sometimes the obvious answer or next step is not what is needed to proceed further to escape. Thinking of the answer may require a different perspective, or different reasoning that is not common. Escape rooms may combine patterns or clues that appear to be unrelated. Often, escape room participants find that what may seem to be the most unusual or strange answers to puzzles, or clues given, may in fact lead to the most successful answer or be the next step to take in the escape.
Creating Confidence
Escape rooms have a very unique and fun way of exercising the brain with puzzles and clues. Escape rooms promote confidence in several ways. Even if the whole escape room is not completed, solving even some of the puzzles encourages confidence. Additionally, escape rooms show how possible it is to remain calm, not lose focus on the main goal, the escape, and work effectively with everyone involved.
Teamwork is Key
Escape rooms are a great way to show that one cannot achieve a goal alone. On the contrary, the escape room does a great job promoting that many tasks require teamwork and many skills and goals as a group and individually. Escape rooms help strengthen a good habit of improving collaboration and relationships. Escape rooms are a great way to show how successful a good team can be when they learn from mistakes and celebrate even the smallest progress.
Escape Rooms as a Team Building Activity
Escape rooms promote a great change of environment for people. Escape rooms also encourage communication. Escape rooms show how each individual person supports the team's progress. The clues given in the escape room lead to more clues and more room for progress in the escape. Escape rooms are a great change of environment while keeping people in a work-related setting. Escape rooms are a unique employee experience. Escape rooms help with employee engagement and strengthening workplace relationships.
Perfect for Family and Friends
Escape rooms are great for family bonding and stress relief. Working together on puzzles allows family members to spend quality time together. Friends get the opportunity to bond and have a laugh. Working through the challenges together creates a sense of achievement amongst the group. Escape rooms are way more engaging than other activities. Unlike most entertainment activities where individuals focus on their own enjoyment, escape rooms offer an opportunity for true engagement.
Lessons to Learn
An escape room experience is a short 60 minutes, but the lessons learned can last a lifetime. Although there are many lessons learned from an escape room experience, the most important are:
The importance of communication.
Listening as a form of teamwork.
The reward of staying calm when challenged.
The benefit and importance of creative thinking.
Each of these lessons can be applied in everyday life; during your work day, while doing mundane tasks, and even when confronting challenges.
Why Escape Rooms are So Popular
Escape rooms have become popular because they are a perfect blend of entertainment and meaning. This attractive combination draws customers in. Escape rooms add a natural element of teamwork and communication through challenges, and also critical thinking and leadership skills.
Each experience is engaging and interactive because of the room’s design. It is an escape room experience like no other.
