- Identify current decision making practices at both an individual and team level
- Discover The Four Phases of Team Development and overlay the model onto current team dynamics
- Apply the Six Steps for Effective Decision Making to future individual challenges and team opportunities
- Measure individual and team-based decision making success with real, comparable data
- Apply exercise content to current leadership situations and people management processes
- Develop an action and implementation plan of new leadership competencies
Survival Simulation
An Experiment with Team Effectiveness
& Decision Making
What does your team look like when the stakes are high, the rules are gone, and every decision carries real consequences? This team effectiveness and decision making workshop answers that question in the most engaging way possible, and gives teams the data, the frameworks, and the dialogue to become measurably more effective because of it.
Participants are placed in a high-pressure “emergency” survival scenario, working first as individuals and then regrouping as a team, where every decision directly impacts their chances of survival. Beyond the immediate experience of collaborative decision making under pressure, participants explore how the Four Phases of Team Development impact their results, apply the Six Steps for Effective Decision Making to future challenges, and mathematically measure their individual and team-based effectiveness. The result is not just a memorable team building experience. It is a data-driven conversation about how the team actually operates, what drives their best decisions, and exactly what they can do to lead and collaborate more effectively from this point forward.
What You'll Learn
During this team effectiveness and decision making workshop, participants will:
Leadership Behaviors You'll Develop
As a result of this session, participants will be able to enhance their leadership capabilities through the following behaviors:
- Leveraging data to make expedient, well-informed decisions that move teams forward with confidence
- Building consensus and alignment with stakeholders and team members across all levels
- Navigating differing perspectives during decision making discussions to reach stronger, more inclusive outcomes
Who Is This Workshop For?
This workshop is a standout choice for team building events, leadership off-sites, and any setting where a team is ready for an honest, high-energy look at how they make decisions and collaborate under pressure. It is equally effective for new teams building their foundation and established teams ready to reach the next level of collective performance.
Related Workshops
Learning Objectives:
- Clarify leadership and communication preferences, and develop a “user’s manual” to articulate our findings
- Discover the attributes, behaviors and common blind-spots of natural preferences, and explore and understand the same attributes and behaviors of opposing types
- Highlight specific actions we can take when working with someone who leverages opposing preferences, and develop a plan to adjust our styles with at least one current colleague
Key Themes & Leadership Behaviors:
- Effective Communication
- Collaboration + Trust
- Openness + Awareness
Learning Objectives:
- Determine personal approach to conflict conversations, and discover the five differing conflict styles
- Identify benefits and potential obstacles for each style to clarify effective conflict communication strategies
- Develop an action + implementation plan for positive, long-term behavior change
Key Themes & Leadership Behaviors:
- Effective Communication
- Adaptability + Assertiveness
- Building Consensus + Alignment
Learning Objectives:
- Clarify leadership and communication preferences, and develop a “user’s manual” to articulate our findings
- Discover the attributes, behaviors and common blind-spots of natural preferences, and explore and understand the same attributes and behaviors of opposing types
- Highlight specific actions we can take when working with someone who leverages opposing preferences, and develop a plan to adjust our styles with at least one current colleague
Key Themes & Leadership Behaviors:
- Effective Communication
- Collaboration + Trust
- Openness + Awareness
Learning Objectives:
- Determine personal approach to conflict conversations, and discover the five differing conflict styles
- Identify benefits and potential obstacles for each style to clarify effective conflict communication strategies
- Develop an action + implementation plan for positive, long-term behavior change
Key Themes & Leadership Behaviors:
- Effective Communication
- Adaptability + Assertiveness
- Building Consensus + Alignment
Learning Objectives:
- Define the CURRENT STATE and FUTURE STATE of the team’s collective goals and objectives
- Experiment with design thinking methodology to begin ideation of creative, implementable action plans to fully realize your team’s ideal future state
- Leverage positive psychology to create future-focused, behavior-based outcomes
Key Themes & Leadership Behaviors:
- Strategic Thinking + Goal Setting
- Creativity + Innovation
- Positive Psychology & Growth Mindset
Learning Objectives:
- Experiment with interactive exercises to enhance active listening, setting others up for success, challenging the status-quo, and confidently stepping outside of our comfort zones
- Embrace the concept of “YES, AND” to build upon the ideas of others in an effort to strengthen interpersonal, team, and organizational relationships
- Develop an action + implementation plan for positive, long-term behavior change
Key Themes & Leadership Behaviors:
- Collaboration + Trust
- Effective Communication
- Openness to Change + Innovation
Learning Objectives:
- Define the CURRENT STATE and FUTURE STATE of the team’s collective goals and objectives
- Experiment with design thinking methodology to begin ideation of creative, implementable action plans to fully realize your team’s ideal future state
- Leverage positive psychology to create future-focused, behavior-based outcomes
Key Themes & Leadership Behaviors:
- Strategic Thinking + Goal Setting
- Creativity + Innovation
- Positive Psychology & Growth Mindset
Learning Objectives:
- Experiment with interactive exercises to enhance active listening, setting others up for success, challenging the status-quo, and confidently stepping outside of our comfort zones
- Embrace the concept of “YES, AND” to build upon the ideas of others in an effort to strengthen interpersonal, team, and organizational relationships
- Develop an action + implementation plan for positive, long-term behavior change
Key Themes & Leadership Behaviors:
- Collaboration + Trust
- Effective Communication
- Openness to Change + Innovation
View More Workshops
View More Workshops
Frequently Asked Questions
What happens during the Survival Simulation team effectiveness workshop?
Participants are placed in an “emergency” scenario where they must prioritize a set of survival items, working first as individuals and then regrouping as a team. Every decision carries real consequences within the simulation. The structured debrief that follows connects what happened in the room directly to real team dynamics, decision making patterns, and collaboration opportunities that participants can act on immediately.
How does the Survival Simulation measure team effectiveness mathematically?
Individual scores are compared to team scores, and both are measured against an expert benchmark. When a team outperforms its best individual member, it is evidence of genuine collaborative synergy. When it does not, that data opens an honest and productive conversation about what dynamics got in the way and what the team can do more intentionally going forward.
What are the Four Phases of Team Development explored in this workshop?
The workshop draws on the classic Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing model of team development. Participants overlay this framework onto their own collective experience to spark honest, forward-looking dialogue about where they are in their journey as a team and what will help them continue growing toward peak performance.
Is the Survival Simulation workshop a strong fit for newly formed teams?
It is one of the best workshops available for new teams. The simulation creates immediate shared experience, surfaces team dynamics early, and gives leaders and participants a data-informed starting point for building more effectively together from the very beginning. New teams consistently describe it as an accelerator for both connection and clarity.
What leadership and collaboration skills does this workshop build beyond decision making?
Participants develop skills in delegation, consensus building, strategic thinking under pressure, and navigating competing perspectives within a group. The combination of an immersive challenge and a structured debrief makes the learning both highly memorable and immediately applicable to the real situations participants face every day.
Jacob Goldstein
Jacob Goldstein is the founder of The Leadership Laboratory, and leverages his experiences in education, the performing arts, and corporate learning & leadership development to his work. As a performer, Jacob has sung as a backup vocalist for musical artists such as Josh Groban, Idina Menzel, and Patti LuPone, as a recording artist for Netflix series Sense8, and at venues including The United Center, The Chicago Theater, and Chicago Symphony Center. In the education space, Jacob has served as an educator for high school, undergraduate and graduate students, and has been a Guest Lecturer at Northwestern University since 2016. As a Learning & Leadership Development Consultant, Jacob has worked as a one-on-one coach and group workshop facilitator to organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies in diverse industries, including technology, healthcare, non-profit, and fashion/apparel. Jacob holds a Bachelor’s degree from The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a Master’s of Science in Communication from Northwestern University.
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