Case Study: Improving Team Performance with Crystal Quest
- Tom Frearson
- Jan 15
- 4 min read
By Tom Frearson | Be Fearsome Events
When a team struggles to operate as one unit, no amount of away days, workshops, or vision statements will fix it. You can’t bond your way to performance. You have to reveal what’s really going on — and then face it together.
That’s exactly what happened with one of our recent corporate clients — a logistics and operations business under pressure to improve collaboration, accountability, and shared clarity across teams.
They didn’t need entertainment. They didn’t want motivational fluff.They needed a structured experience that would expose how their people behaved when the pressure was real and the answers weren’t obvious.
That’s why we brought them Crystal Quest.
The Business Challenge: Silos, Stress, and Stalled Progress
The client was clear — they weren’t struggling because of lack of skill. Individually, their people were highly capable. But performance was inconsistent. Team communication broke down under stress. And the big picture was regularly missed because departments were locked in their own priorities.
They needed to:
Break silos between departments and regions
Build leadership capacity in emerging managers
Improve collaboration under operational pressure
Their senior leadership knew that if people only operated well in calm, controlled environments, the business would continue to stall when it mattered most.
The Solution: A Tailored Crystal Quest
We designed a bespoke version of Crystal Quest — one of our flagship corporate challenge events — to reflect the pressures they face day-to-day:
Constant decision-making with partial data
Ambiguity around roles and priorities
Friction between teams who rarely interact but depend on each other
The format was large-scale, outdoors, and fully immersive. Participants were split into multiple cross-functional teams, each given access to only a portion of the task — meaning no team could succeed alone. Time limits, physical checkpoints, and shared resources introduced natural tension.
Importantly, they weren’t told how to win. They had to figure that out themselves — just like in business.
What Emerged: Early Chaos, Honest Behaviour
Within minutes, team dynamics surfaced:
The more dominant voices led early — but not always in the right direction.
Natural thinkers and analysts held back, unsure of where to contribute.
Confusion about task objectives slowed everyone down.
Two teams made identical mistakes — but never shared that with each other.
There was no shouting. No fallouts. Just quiet inefficiency. Missed opportunities. Hesitation. The kind of communication breakdown that doesn’t trigger alarms — but erodes performance.
At the halfway point, some had lost momentum. Others pushed blindly ahead. It mirrored what the business had described.
And then it changed.
The Turning Point: Peer-Led Realignment
What shifted things wasn’t a facilitator stepping in. It was the team taking ownership.
Two team leads called a halt. They gathered everyone. Re-centred on the objectives.
Clarified who was doing what. Agreed how decisions would be shared. Reset the tone.
From there, collaboration increased. The energy returned. Key information started flowing between groups. Resources were shared. Priorities realigned.
They didn’t win the task. But they learned more about their team in two hours than they had in two years.
The Debrief: Behaviour as Data
After the event, we ran a structured debrief using the C8 Leadership System — observing behaviour through a lens of:
Clarity – Was the mission understood?
Communication – How was information shared or withheld?
Collaboration – Did teams work together, or just in parallel?
Composure – What changed under pressure?
This wasn’t a feedback session. It was a mirror.
Leaders heard things they didn’t expect. Senior staff admitted they’d assumed clarity that never existed. Junior managers recognised they had more influence than they realised — they just hadn’t used it. Teams saw how unspoken dynamics led to misalignment.
The Operations Director said it best:
“That’s the first time I’ve seen our people show this level of honest reflection. They weren’t embarrassed. They just hadn’t seen it before.”
Why Crystal Quest Works
Crystal Quest doesn’t test knowledge. It tests behaviour — under real constraint.
It works because it’s designed like real business:
Complex, unclear, fast-moving
Success requires leadership, not just management
Mistakes aren’t obvious until they compound
It strips away formal roles and reveals how people actually think, act, and lead. And crucially, it allows them to do something about it — in a professional, safe, and structured environment.
Fun Matters — But Only If It’s Meaningful
Yes, people enjoyed it. There were laughs, energy, moments of flow. But this wasn’t fun for fun’s sake.
We design our events to be enjoyable because people learn better when they’re engaged. Adults need play — not as distraction, but as a tool for accessing creativity, problem-solving, and emotional honesty.
The activity creates the engagement. The debrief creates the learning. Together, that’s what makes change stick.
What This Business Took Away
The client followed up two months later with a progress report:
Several mid-level managers had taken more ownership, unprompted
Cross-department meetings were now shorter — and more productive
One team restructured their internal comms based on lessons from the event
These are the changes that move businesses forward. Not just morale. Not just bonding. Performance.
What Next?
If you’re serious about improving how your team communicates, leads, and operates under pressure, we’ll design a Crystal Quest that’s tailored to your reality.
Not a game. Not a gimmick. A high-impact, professionally delivered challenge that reveals the truth of your team — and helps you build from it.
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