Games and Leadership

It started with a hot coffee.

Then an iced latte, a café mocha, and an iced coffee with no ice (!?!). Within five minutes, everyone at the table was shouting beverage orders at each other like over-caffeinated baristas. We weren’t in a café. Well, technically, we were. This was one of my favorite things we did back at Google - a week-long, drop-in board game tournament I ran out of the Google Board Game Café in Singapore.

The game itself (Order Overload: Café by Oink Games) was simple on paper: remember your team’s numerous fake coffee orders and call them out before making too many mistakes. But in practice, it turned into glorious, noisy mayhem. What started as a side activity became something bigger as teams got competitive, practiced at side tables, and returned for rematches. I’d be working from the café, and someone would swing by and ask, “Is the leaderboard updated? Are we still winning?” I’d be like, mate, it’s a game about coffee.

What I realized in those moments is something that carries into our leadership training today: people just want a reason to come together. To laugh, to win something silly with their teammates, and to create a memory to hold on to. I’d bump into someone months later, and they’d still talk about that time their team nailed the perfect order. That same energy is what makes team building powerful, whether it happens through a board game, a team offsite, or an immersive escape room training experience.

There’s an unfortunate truth. The workplace doesn’t always give people a fair shot at joy. There’s pressure and politics, but in a game, everyone’s on equal footing for a moment. You can be the intern or the VP - it doesn’t matter if you’re the one who remembers there was a fifth hot latte ordered at just the right time. That sense of equality and play is exactly what great team development training and leadership escape room training are designed to unlock.

When people feel safe enough to play, they feel safe enough to show up. That’s still my goal. Whether it’s a board game, an escape room Singapore challenge, or a full leadership training Singapore workshop, I want people to walk away feeling like they belonged, like they contributed, and like they had a moment worth remembering.

Even if it’s just the feeling of shouting fake coffee orders across a café on a Tuesday.