Date: 16 th of April 2026
Location: Piatra Neamt, Romania
Client: HR Team, 6 people (1 team)
Context: This team is in fact a group of people working mostly separately on specific tasks. The
leader’s intention was to activate the power of the team, to make it more coherent in acting as a
model for the whole organization.
Objectives: Enhance team cohesion, reveal individual strengths, empower people to take
initiative.
Partner: Radu Mindru, PCC & ACTC, ICF Romania
The Team That Didn’t Escape — And Learned More For It 🌱
Not every team makes it off the island. And sometimes, that’s exactly the point.
On the 16th of April 2026, in Piatra Neamț, Romania, a six-person HR team sat down together for something they hadn’t quite done before: looked honestly at how they functioned as a unit. What followed wasn’t a triumphant escape from Miki Island. It was something rarer — a moment of genuine clarity that prompted immediate action from the very top of the team.
A Group Becoming a Team 🔄
The context was familiar in many HR functions: six capable people, each doing their work well, but largely in parallel. Separate tasks, separate rhythms, limited moments of genuine collective action.
The team leader saw the gap — and the opportunity. Her intention wasn’t to fix dysfunction. It was to activate something that hadn’t yet been switched on: the collective power of a team that could model cohesion for the broader organisation it served.
For an HR function, that ambition carries particular weight. You can’t credibly build team culture across an organisation if the team doing that work hasn’t experienced it themselves.
Small Team, High Stakes 🏝️
Six people. One simulation. The stakes, within the scenario, entirely real.
From the moment gameplay began, the team’s natural patterns surfaced — the way they do when the situation is unfamiliar, time feels short, and the path forward requires people to coordinate rather than operate independently.
Roles were interpreted differently than assumed. Time pressure shaped decisions in ways nobody had consciously noticed before. The space for learning — pausing, reflecting, adjusting — was squeezed by the momentum of just trying to move forward.
The mission, in the end, wasn’t completed.
What Not Escaping Revealed 💡
The debrief that followed was where the real value emerged — and it was significant.
Because Miki Island hadn’t gone smoothly, there was more to examine, not less. The moments of friction, hesitation, and misalignment weren’t failures to explain away. They were data — honest, specific, and immediately recognisable to everyone in the room.
What surfaced:
🎭 How roles were understood in the simulation — and how closely that mirrored the way roles were played in their actual work environment
⏱️ How perceived time pressure was shaping decision-making, often driving speed over alignment
🌱 How much — or how little — space the team genuinely created for learning while moving forward
🤝 Where individual initiative was waiting to emerge, and what was quietly holding it back
None of these were abstract observations. They were reflections of a team seeing itself clearly, perhaps for the first time together.
Leadership in Real Time ✨
What was particularly striking about this session was the speed of the leader’s response to what she saw.
Radu Mindru, who facilitated the experience, reflected on it:
“In just a few hours, the Miki Island workshop created a new level of awareness for the team leader, on how she positions herself in the team — with immediate leadership decisions. It’s great to witness such quick transformation!”
That quality of response — insight translating directly into action — is what separates a memorable workshop from a meaningful one.
Before the day was over, the leader had already decided on her next step: one-on-one conversations with each team member, using the “Stop and reflect” practice that the debrief had surfaced as the team’s most important missing habit. Not a future initiative. An immediate commitment.
What Moves Forward 🚀
Six people who came in as a group of individuals left with something they hadn’t walked in with: a shared honest picture of how they actually function together — and a leader ready to act on it.
The HR team of Piatra Neamț didn’t escape Miki Island.
But they left with more than escape would have given them. They left with clarity, with the beginning of a new team identity, and with a leader who had seen something in herself that she wasn’t willing to leave unaddressed.
Sometimes the most powerful learning happens not when everything goes right, but when the debrief creates the space to understand why it didn’t — and what to do next.
That’s what a team looks like at the start of becoming one. 💛
