Join us live to ask questions and be part of the conversation alongside other creative leaders. This session includes audience Q&A and will be released as a future episode of the Creative Confidence Podcast.
Event Description
Too often, team-building activities feel awkward, expensive, or like a box to check. They may be fun in the moment, but they don’t change how teams actually work together. And when the stakes are high, teams still hesitate to speak up or take risks.
Join us for a Creative Confidence Podcast live event with Ben Swire, founder of Make Believe Works, a studio that hosts live and virtual teambuilding workshops across North America. Ben has led workshops with organizations including Google, Pixar, Stripe, and P&G.
In his new book, Safe Danger, Ben distills what he’s learned from designing and facilitating experiences for teams across industries. In this event, he’ll share his method for helping leaders create environments where teams can take meaningful risks, build trust, and learn together, without relying on forced fun or surface-level rituals.
What we’ll talk about:
Why most team building fails, and the elements of meaningful team building.
The difference between psychological safety and comfort.
Why innovation efforts often stall, even when there’s desire for change.
How to facilitate a meaningful teambuilding experience.
Practical activities you can try with your team.
This conversation is for leaders who are responsible for planning or facilitating team-building experiences, want their teams to be more creative and collaborative, and feel skeptical that another workshop will actually change anything.
Can’t join live? RSVP and we’ll send you the recording, podcast, and recap.
Co-Founder of Make Believe Works & Author of Safe Danger
Ben Swire is an award-winning designer, writer, and speaker who helps teams build trust, reconnect as humans, and work better together. He is the founder of Make Believe Works and the author of Safe Danger, a book about how creativity, psychological safety, and shared emotional risk fuel collaboration and innovation at work. Ben’s work sits at the intersection of team building, organizational culture, creativity, and human behavior. He is known for designing experiences that help people lower their guard, engage honestly, and practice the kind of trust and curiosity that real work requires—but most workplaces struggle to create.
Mina Seetharaman
Creative Confidence Podcast Host & Head of New Ventures, IDEO
Mina leads strategy for IDEO’s learning and media initiatives, including IDEO U. In this role, she is focused on finding new, customer-focused, tech-supported ways to deliver IDEO’s long-standing value proposition to our clients. Her specialty is helping iconic brands go through major transformations and be competitive leaders in their markets. She has led strategy and operations at respected media and content companies, including The New York Times, Gartner, The Economist, and OgilvyOne. She is experienced in launching new product offers, developing and leading teams, and driving cultural and operational change. She holds a degree in Journalism from New York University, speaks six languages, and is an amateur abstract expressionist painter.
