Looking for a Traitors Style Team Building Activity for Your Company?

We regularly hear from companies looking for a Traitors-style team building activity. Sometimes that is exactly how the brief arrives. Other times, clients mention The Traitors and a murder mystery in the same enquiry.

We understand the appeal. We watch the programme ourselves, and we’ve discussed whether we should develop something along those lines for corporate groups.

We decided not to.

Why we chose not to create a Traitors-style activity

The question for us was how the format would work when you take it off television and put it into a company event.

On the programme, some people are secretly working against everyone else. Participants are also gradually removed from the game through murders and banishments. Both are a big part of what makes the programme entertaining.

For a team building activity, we prefer everyone who turns up to be able to take part for the duration of the event.

If a company brings 50 colleagues together, we don’t particularly like the idea of some of them being knocked out early and having less to do while everyone else carries on.

We also prefer teams competing against other teams, rather than teammates competing against each other.

That still leaves plenty of room for mystery, competition and something for colleagues to work out together.

What appeals to companies about The Traitors?

When somebody contacts us about a Traitors-style event, they’ve usually watched the programme, enjoyed it and thought the concept could make a good company event.

Our sales team explains why we haven’t created that format and talks to them about what appealed to them in the first place.

Quite often, it comes back to the mystery.

They want colleagues looking for clues, discussing the evidence and trying to work out what happened. They want competition between teams, suspense around who has got it right and a reveal at the end.

For many of these enquiries, the first activity we recommend is Manor House Murder.

Why we recommend Manor House Murder

Manor House Murder gives teams a murder to investigate, with colleagues working together to solve the case.

The story begins with the murder of lawyer Laura Norder. Teams examine evidence, work through witness statements and complete challenges as they try to establish who killed her and how.

They collect points throughout the investigation and can see how they are doing on a live leaderboard. With 20 minutes remaining, our event manager switches the leaderboard off, so nobody knows where they stand.

With ten minutes left, every team has to answer two final questions: Who killed Laura Norder, and what was the murder weapon?

Once time is up, our event manager reveals the killer and murder weapon before announcing the winning team.

Throughout the investigation, colleagues have been discussing the evidence, sharing what they’ve spotted and trying to solve the same problem. The competition is between the teams, not the people within them.

One client summed it up well:

“New and existing team members had fun, worked together and have started to get to know each other.”

That is much closer to what we want from a team building activity.

Is Manor House Murder similar to The Traitors?

There are similarities if the mystery and suspense are what attracted you to a Traitors-style event. There are clues to consider, theories to discuss, competition between teams and a reveal at the end.

But Manor House Murder is its own activity. It isn’t an adaptation or recreation of The Traitors, and Dynamic Events isn’t affiliated with the programme.

We recommend it because it often fits what clients are looking for when they initially ask us about The Traitors: a mystery to solve, competition between teams and colleagues working together.

Looking for something with mystery, competition and a big reveal?

If The Traitors was the starting point for your brief, tell us what appealed to you about it.

We can talk you through Manor House Murder and help you decide whether it suits your group.

And if we don’t think it’s right for your team, we’ll tell you.

Manor House Murder is an original Dynamic Events activity and is not affiliated with The Traitors.