I understand the “why” of team building, but the “what” or “how” the team-building is done often handled in such a hackneyed top-down way that I often wonder “if you just brought the team together, gave them options on ways to spend their time together, would they otherwise choose to do the same activities the managers designed for the event”?
That’s more rhetorical than anything and is a roundabout way of saying: most organized team building events are just…boring.
It’s also just a preference though: getting together and just hanging out without the pressure to talk shop or participate in some kind of coordinated, planned and overly-orchestrated activity is just as engaging for me as “escape rooms” or “games” or other “activities”.