Sean GlazeWorkplace Culture Speaker | Facilitator, Great Results Team Building · Leadership lessons from the locker room that change how your people work together.

THE 86 PERCENT PROBLEM OF COLLABORATION

29 May 2026 · 1 min

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1:03

In this brief presentation, the speaker highlights that 86% of employees attribute project failures to a lack of collaboration, emphasizing that the root issue lies not in individual performance but in the gaps between people—unspoken assumptions, silos, and limited personal understanding despite spending full work weeks together. The speaker argues that superficial interventions such as memos, Slack messages, or casual pizza parties cannot bridge these gaps. Instead, the speaker advocates for intentional team‑building experiences that create shared, meaningful moments, allowing team members to see each other’s stories, challenges, and personalities. Such purposeful experiences, unlike recreational events, can fundamentally shift how people interact and support one another in daily work, offering a concrete approach to solving the 86% collaboration problem.

Chapters

86% of employees say a lack of collaboration is why team projects fail. 86%. That means the problem really isn't the individuals, it's the space between them. The unspoken assumptions, the silos, the fact that people spend 40 hours a week together and don't really know how each other thinks. You can't fix that with a memo. You can't fix it inside a Slack channel. And honestly, you can't fix it with a pizza party. What actually moves the needle is when people have a shared experience that makes them see each other differently. Not just working alongside each other, but genuinely understanding each other, their stories, their challenges, their personalities. That's the difference between a recreational event and intentional team building. One feels good in the moment, the other actually changes how people show up for each other on Monday morning. If your team's dealing with that 86% collaboration problem, let's talk about how an intentional team building would help your group.