"I can't relate to the activities": what actually happens with non-painters at a team event

Byline: Luca von Oesen

Title tag (56 ch.): Team Event: When Employees Don't Want to Join In

An employee posted on Reddit that at the last company outing they stood around 90 percent of the time while colleagues rode a roller coaster. They said they felt out of place, sidelined, without a task. Fifty comments piled up, because the question hits a nerve for a lot of people: do I have to join in if the activity gives me nothing?

The answer rarely lies in the person's motivation. It lies in the format. A team event where one activity is meant for everyone automatically produces spectators. A graffiti or action-painting workshop works differently when it's built right: it splits the group, instead of putting it in front of a stage.

What structurally happens when nobody has to watch

1. Small groups instead of one crowd. For the Personio event in Munich, around 60 participants were split into six teams, each with its own word that it brainstormed and built itself. Working on your own piece in a group of six or eight, you're never the one just watching.
2. A piece, not a whole picture. At the CRX Markets event at Bahnwärter Thiel, every team member designed just one letter of a shared word. Nobody had to design an entire motif alone; every contribution was small enough to manage without any pretense of artistic skill.
3. An individual piece to take home, no group obligation. At GKM, a summer day at the Botanikum in Munich, every participant created their own individual graffiti in 50×70 format, plus five larger department pieces came out of it (General Management, Data Management, Medical Advising, Project Management, Biostatistics). Anyone who'd rather work alone on their own piece can. Anyone who wants to join a department group can too. Both paths run in parallel, neither is a fallback for the other.
4. Guidance instead of expectation. "No prior experience needed" isn't a marketing line for us, it's the actual basis of every workshop: spray-can technique, safety distance, and the first stroke are shown before anyone works alone. A customer in Munich put it this way after her event: "Huge fun and great guidance!"
5. A result, not a performance. Anyone who joins in leaves with a piece, not a performance. That removes the stage-fright element many team events unintentionally create when one person has to demonstrate something in front of the group.

These five points aren't a study claim, they're the documented process of real events. For the general effectiveness of structured team-building activities, there's a solid academic reference, Klein et al. (2009, Small Group Research, a meta-analysis on team-building effectiveness): structured group activities work. A comparison of whether small or large groups fare better isn't something that source provides, and that would be a claim we can't back up.

The difference from a pure communication fix

Many guides on this topic recommend talking through the resistance: address your own reluctance openly, inform the manager, ask for understanding. That helps, but it doesn't change the format itself. Anyone booking an event as a planner can instead choose a structure where the communication burden never arises in the first place. Small groups with their own piece don't need a conversation about who's pulling back. There's nothing to pull back from.

What this means for planning

Anyone booking an event as HR or office management doesn't need to invent this structure themselves. It's enough to ask for it in the brief: how big are the small groups? Does each person work on their own piece, or on a shared work that one individual has to carry? Is there guidance before the first stroke, or is it assumed everyone already knows how? These three questions separate a format that automatically produces spectators from one that has none. The difference rarely sits in price or venue, it sits in how the work is split.

FAQ

Does every participant need to be able to paint?

No. The briefing starts with spray-can technique and safety distance, no prior experience needed. Anyone who'd rather work on a small piece than a whole motif isn't worse off than the rest of the group.

What if someone simply doesn't want to be in the spotlight?

That's exactly what the small-group split is for. In the CRX case, each member designed just one letter; in the GKM case, one small individual piece. There's no moment where one person has to perform something in front of the whole group.

Is there anything left afterward, or is it just the one afternoon?

After GKM's summer day, the pieces went up as office decoration and a keepsake. A result you can hang up is a different thing from an activity that ends with the day.

What if someone genuinely can't take part actively, for health or personal reasons?

That's a Reddit objection we take seriously: someone sitting out a theme-park trip due to intolerances has no fallback format. With a small-group workshop, the share of the work can be adjusted individually, from concept to execution, without anyone having to just watch entirely.

Does this work even if the group is genuinely skeptical ("we've got nothing to do with art")?

Yes, because the task isn't "paint a work of art," it's "shape your piece following instructions." That's a different brief than the one many people shy away from, and exactly the brief the small-team formats at Personio, CRX, and GKM actually gave.

How small groups work even with very large teams is covered in the article team event for large groups. How the GKM team experienced its summer day at the Botanikum is shown on the reference page. Anyone planning an event for their team in Munich can find prices and formats in the Munich team event hub.

Written and checked by Luca von Oesen, Brain2Canvas (Restless UG, Hamburg). Last updated 15 August 2026. Prices, process and references from our own events.