Facilitated Team Building Workshops in Chicago
Make Believe Works designs and facilitates creative corporate team-building workshops for companies and organizations throughout Chicago and the Greater Chicago area.
Creative, non-competitive workshops that build trust, connection, and psychological safety.
Team building that actually builds the team.
Our workshops are designed for teams that want more than just a distraction from work - they want to change how they work. We use playful, creative activities to help coworkers lower their guard, understand one another better, practice interpersonal risk, and build the kind of trust that carries back into real work.
Whether you’re gathering for a team-building session, a department offsite, or a leadership retreat, the time needs to be genuinely worthwhile. When teams step away from their day-to-day, they’re not just looking to be entertained. They’re trying to improve how they work together.
Activities like scavenger hunts, trivia contests, or game shows can be fun. But because they rely on competition, they often divide people, reward the loudest voices, or leave many participants on the sidelines.
Our workshops are non-competitive by design. They bring people together.
Our experiences are fun, playful, and deeply human, but purpose-built to help teams build trust, strengthen communication, and build connections that carry forward into real work.
Groups: 5–500 · Duration: 60 minutes to full-day · Formats: In-person, hybrid, or remote
Areas served: Greater Chicago Area (including the Loop, River North, West Loop/Fulton Market, Wicker Park, Lincoln Park, and nearby neighborhoods)
Corporate Team Building In Chicago
The right team-building experience depends on what your team actually needs.
Some Chicago teams come to us because they are newly formed or recently reorganized. Others are trying to strengthen relationships across departments, reconnect distributed colleagues, build more trust on a leadership team, or make an offsite feel genuinely worthwhile.
Our workshops are especially useful for:
New or changing teams that need stronger relationships and a shared sense of connection.
Cross-functional teams and siloed departments that need to understand one another beyond their roles.
Leadership teams and executive groups that need more trust, candor, curiosity, and openness.
Distributed or hybrid teams gathering in Chicago that want rare in-person time to create stronger relationships.
Company meetings and celebrations that should be fun without becoming competitive, awkward, or forgettable.
Skeptical or introvert-heavy groups that are unlikely to enjoy traditional team-building activities.
If you’re not sure which of those describes your team, that’s normal. Most conversations start with what is happening in the organization, not the name of an activity.
What Makes Make Believe Works Different
Most team-building activities are built around competition, performance, or shared entertainment.
Make Believe Works is designed around participation, interpersonal risk, and connection.
Our activities are non-competitive and talent-agnostic. Seniority, artistic skill, athletic ability, speed, and extroversion offer very little advantage. That makes it easier for more people to participate without feeling evaluated.
The activities also create small, manageable interpersonal risks. People make something without knowing exactly how it will turn out, share stories, respond to one another’s ideas, and occasionally allow themselves to be imperfect in front of colleagues.
Those moments matter because trust and psychological safety are not built by telling people to trust one another. They grow through repeated experiences of taking a small risk and discovering that the people around you respond well.
Every Make Believe Works session is professionally facilitated. We create enough structure for people to participate comfortably without making the experience feel forced or overly scripted.
What Happens in a Make Believe Works Workshop
Make Believe Works workshops are built around creative activities designed by experts in psychology, philosophy, and design thinking. They might look playful (they are), but each one is built to create the conditions where trust, vulnerability, and connection actually happen naturally.
Three of our most popular activities are described here.
EMBLEMOTTOS
People create art pieces for each other after swapping personal stories. Explaining their creations is simultaneously playful and profound, surfacing what colleagues value and how they see each other beyond roles.
The activity combines reflection, generosity, creativity, and attention. People leave having both shared something meaningful and made something specifically for another person.
Especially useful for: new teams, culture-building, celebrations, and groups that want stronger personal connection.
STORYLINE
Participants draw portraits of one another under a series of playful constraints that make conventional drawing ability almost useless. Along the way, they exchange stories that become titles for the portraits they have created.
Because everyone is guaranteed to make something imperfect, failure becomes funny rather than threatening. People practice creative risk while discovering things about colleagues that rarely surface in ordinary meetings.
Especially useful for: cross-functional teams, offsites, skeptical groups, new teams, and teams building psychological safety.
HOMEGROWN HEROES
In small teams, participants share the emotional superpowers they've developed in reaction to life’s challenges—qualities like resilience, empathy, or determination. Then each team combines their powers to create a single superhero action figure.
The activity gives people a way to recognize abilities and stories that often remain invisible when coworkers know one another primarily through job titles.
Especially useful for: leadership teams, reorganizations, newly merged groups, and teams that want to recognize what different people contribute.
Every activity is:
Professionally facilitated by experienced hosts
Accessible and enjoyable for multiple personality types
Adapted to your goals, whether that’s trust-building, onboarding, or reconnection
We have a library of more than 20 creative activities, and we select and customize them around your goals, group size, personalities, and reason for gathering.
Why creative activities work when talking doesn't:
When people create together, they lower their defenses (it's "just art"), share through story instead of analysis, and see each other as humans, not job titles. The activities might look simple, but careful design and expert facilitation make them powerful. That's the difference between a fun hour and lasting change.
Designed to Change How People Relate, Not Just Fill an Hour
The creative activity is the vehicle.
The real purpose is giving people a reason to pay attention to one another differently.
When normal roles and responsibilities stop mattering, people notice new things about their colleagues. When the experience is non-competitive, helping someone else succeed does not come at your own expense. When the risk is small enough to feel safe but real enough to matter, people get practice showing up with a little more openness, curiosity, and imperfection.
That is the territory where trust grows.
“I usually dread team building activities, but this was different. The facilitation was magical and made all the difference.”
- Amy O., Design Manager, Spotify
Make Believe Works has worked with teams at organizations including Google, Meta, Netflix, Salesforce, Spotify, Stripe, Pixar, IDEO, American Express, BlackRock, Johnson & Johnson, P&G, Mayo Clinic, and Capital One.
Chicago Offsites, Leadership Retreats, and Company Gatherings
Offsites are often inflection points. They’re moments to reset priorities, rebuild trust, and align around what matters next.
A Make Believe Works workshop can fit into a larger offsite, retreat, planning meeting, annual gathering, or company event without taking over the entire agenda.
We regularly work with Chicago teams meeting in offices, hotels, conference spaces, and offsite venues throughout Chicago. The workshop can serve as a focused 60-minute experience, a longer standalone session, or part of a larger half-day arc. Recent Chicago work has ranged from recurring 10-person leadership workshops to 50-person team sessions and 250-person annual meetings.
We tailor the activity, framing, pacing, and debrief around what you want the team to get from the gathering.
That might mean helping a leadership group practice more openness, giving newly merged colleagues a chance to learn who they are beyond their titles, reconnecting people who usually work in different offices, or simply creating an experience everyone is genuinely glad they participated in.
Chicago Team Building FAQ
Do you run team-building workshops throughout Chicago?
Yes. We regularly facilitate sessions throughout Chicago, including the Loop, West Loop, River North, Fulton Market, Lincoln Park, and surrounding neighborhoods.
What group sizes do you support?
We work with groups from approximately 5 to 500+ participants. The activity and facilitation format change depending on the group size, so we recommend experiences that make sense for your headcount rather than simply scaling the same activity up or down.
How long are the workshops?
Our workshops run 60 minutes to full-day sessions. For longer offsites or retreats, we can combine activities or build a larger arc around your goals and agenda.
Do you support hybrid or remote teams?
Yes. We facilitate fully in-person, fully remote, and hybrid experiences. This is particularly useful for Chicago-based teams with colleagues joining from other offices or locations.
How far in advance should we book?
We recommend booking 2–4 weeks in advance for best availability, though we’ve also facilitated last-minute and next-day sessions when schedules require it.
Do you provide food or alcohol?
Nope. We focus on what we’re good at: designing and facilitating the team-building experience itself. But this is Chicago - there are so many great options!
Where do events take place?
We come to you. We regularly work in offices, offsite venues, conference spaces, and retreat locations across Chicago. Make Believe Works is a team building company, not a venue or marketplace.
Can you customize a workshop for our goals or theme?
Yes. We regularly customize prompts, pacing, and debriefs to support goals like trust-building, psychological safety, onboarding, collaboration, breaking down silos, navigating change, creativity, and stronger relationships.
What makes your team-building workshops different from typical activities?
Most team-building activities focus on competition, performance, or forced fun. Our workshops are designed differently. They are non-competitive, psychologically safe, and thoughtfully facilitated so people can participate at their own comfort level.
The goal isn’t entertainment for its own sake — it’s building real trust, connection, and momentum that carries back into everyday work.
Are your workshops a good fit for introverts or people who dislike team building?
Yes. Our workshops are designed so everyone can participate without having to fight for airtime, perform, or publicly prove themselves. Activities are structured, non-competitive, and talent-agnostic, which means everyone is heard — not just the loudest or fastest.
We designed them for people who want meaningful connection without forced enthusiasm or awkward vulnerability. Introverts often tell us they feel more comfortable and more genuinely included than in traditional team-building activities.
Read more about team building for introverts and skeptics
Are your workshops facilitated or self-guided?
All Make Believe Works sessions are professionally facilitated. We do not offer self-guided activities, kits, or drop-in activities. Facilitation is a central part of how the experience works.
What does team building in Chicago cost?
Pricing depends on group size, session length, activity, format, and level of customization. We are generally more of an investment than a scavenger hunt or self-guided game because our workshops are professionally designed, customized, and facilitated around your team’s goals.
Tell us your headcount, timing, and what you are planning, and we can recommend the right option.
We’d love to help your team connect and thrive. Tell us about your event or goals and let’s make a plan.
You can also always reach us at:
hello@makebelieveworks.com
What Participants Are Saying:
“Make Believe Works reinvents connection and development with its unique, fun, engaging and highly impactful workshops. Most recently, their ‘Super-Secret’ activation facilitated what our team called ‘the most meaningful & fun’ virtual get-to-know you’s they’ve ever participated in. We can’t wait to work with them again!”
— Naomi G., Director, Business Planning & Strategy, American Express
"I usually dread team building activities, but this was different. The facilitation was magical and made all the difference. I sincerely enjoyed the process and learning so many new things about my colleagues. Thanks for pushing me out of my comfort zone. Absolutely want more of these."
— Amy O., Design Manager, Spotify