As a new year gets underway, the workplace continues to evolve in ways that demand both strategic adaptation and human connection. We sat down with Outback Team Building and Training’s leading experts to understand what organizations can expect in the year ahead.
The professional landscape in 2026 will be defined by a tension between acceleration and connection, balancing the tools that let us move faster and the relationships that help us move better.
To explore what’s coming, we spoke with two experts who see these dynamics play out every day with hundreds of organizations across North America.
Jules Joyce, President at Outback Team Building, brings insight from the front lines of team building, where she sees how companies are bringing distributed teams back together and what they’re prioritizing when budgets are tight.
Lyndon Friesen, who leads Ignitor, our Professional Development arm, has facilitated over 900 leadership development events in the past decade and works directly with organizations navigating the gap between learning and application.
Here’s what they’re seeing for team building trends and professional development trends in 2026.
Table of Contents
Part One: Team Building Trends for 2026
Before we look ahead, it’s worth understanding where 2025 left us:
- The return-to-office movement continued to gain momentum throughout the year, with more organizations calling employees back to physical workplaces, though hybrid arrangements remained common.
- Economic uncertainty shaped decisions across industries, forcing leaders to think creatively about budgets while still recognizing the value of bringing people together
- Technology (particularly Artificial Intelligence) became impossible to ignore, showing up in nearly every conversation about the future of work
Against this backdrop, the team building trends for 2026 reflect both practical realities and deeper human needs.
Team Building Trend #1: Collaboration Takes Center Stage as Teams Reconnect
One of the strongest team building trends heading into 2026 is the emphasis on collaboration, not just as a buzzword, but as an intentional practice that needs to be rebuilt.
“We’re definitely seeing more people moving toward in-person activities,” says Joyce. “Groups want to be together physically, even if their activities are being facilitated remotely. There’s a lot of interest in those getting-to-know-you style activities that focus on genuine connection.”
The shift isn’t just about location. It’s about recognizing that the way teams collaborate in person differs fundamentally from how they work remotely, and many organizations are still figuring out how to facilitate that transition.
For teams that haven’t worked together face-to-face in years (or in some cases, have never met in person), there’s a learning curve.
Joyce notes that even the format of engagement matters now.
“People recognize that they have to meet virtually because of where they’re physically located, but they don’t want additional technology layered into their events,” she explains. “It’s about creating more actual engagement, with less screen time, more human interaction.”
Organizations are prioritizing activities that create space for genuine interaction—more conversation, less task completion. The goal is connection first, with collaboration as the natural result.
Team Building Trend #2: AI Shows Up in Team Building—But Only Where It Fits
Artificial Intelligence was impossible to escape in 2025, and team building trends for 2026 show that organizations are curious about how it might enhance their events, within reason.
“We have seen some interest in AI applications,” Joyce says. “We’ve been experimenting with how to incorporate it to keep things fresh and current.”
The applications tend to be fun and creative rather than foundational. Joyce offers examples.
“You can take a team photo, and AI will generate a 1970s version of it,” she says. “AI can also help with design elements. For instance, if we’re doing a Bridge Builders activity, it can assist with dimensions and criteria.”
It’s important to note that organizations aren’t looking to AI to replace the human element of team building.
Instead, they’re exploring how these new tools can add a layer of novelty or solve specific creative challenges. The facilitator, the connection, and the shared experience remain decidedly human.
Team Building Trend #3: CSR Activities Respond to Real-World Challenges
Corporate social responsibility remains one of the most requested elements in team building, and the trend shows no signs of slowing down in 2026.
But the “why” behind it feels especially urgent right now.
“Times are tough,” Joyce says plainly. “Groceries are expensive. There’s conflict happening globally, housing challenges, and people struggling. There’s just a lot going on in the world right now.”
She continues, “Organizations feel genuinely connected to their communities or to causes they support internally. They want giving back to be a main focus of their events.”
This isn’t performative.
Organizations that are doing well recognize they have the ability, and perhaps the responsibility, to give back. And for employees, participating in charitable activities provides a sense of meaning that’s harder to find in day-to-day work.
“It works as a pay-it-forward style of activity,” Joyce explains. “Corporations can bring their teams together with a philanthropic team building activity, engage them meaningfully, and create that sense of giving back at the same time.”
Team building trends for 2026 show that CSR isn’t an add-on. It’s often the main driver for why teams are gathering in the first place.
Team Building Trend #4: Smaller Teams Take Control of Their Own Engagement
While large-scale company-wide events still happen, one of the notable team building trends for 2026 is the rise of smaller, more targeted gatherings.
“We’re seeing a lot of requests in that 10-to-20 person range,” Joyce observes. “Smaller groups really want to get together and create their own experiences.”
This isn’t just about logistics or budget. It reflects a shift in how teams think about engagement.
Rather than waiting for corporate to organize something massive, individual departments and workgroups are often taking the initiative to create their own connection opportunities.
“Even in our company, our operations team will do their own activities, and sales will do theirs,” Joyce explains. “Then, every once in a while, we bring everybody together.”
The result is more bespoke experiences tailored to the specific dynamics of a team, rather than one-size-fits-all programming. Smaller groups mean more relevance, more conversation, and more ability to address what that particular team actually needs.
“It’s about boosting morale,” Joyce says. “We’re in a challenging moment in time. Everyone’s working hard, going home, paying bills, and managing daily life. There’s still a real need to reward people, recognize them, and just do something fun outside of work.”
Part Two: Professional Development Trends for 2026
The past year in professional development has been marked by one overwhelmingly dominant conversation: artificial intelligence.
Organizations across every sector scrambled to understand how AI might transform their operations, their workflows, and their competitive advantage.
At the same time, the pace of work continued to accelerate, leaving leaders and employees alike feeling the strain of doing more with less clarity about whether it was actually working.
These forces are shaping professional development trends for 2026 in distinct ways.
Professional Development Trend #1: AI’s Power and Limits in Human Development Are Becoming Clear
There’s no question that AI has become deeply embedded in how organizations operate, and Friesen is quick to acknowledge its value.
“AI is real, it’s happening, and it’s here for the long term,” he says. “It has a significant role in our world, and it offers a ton of benefits in terms of business opportunities, workflow optimization, and beyond.”
But when it comes to leadership development and the kind of work Outback does in professional development, Friesen sees clear boundaries.
“I tested creating a coaching session through AI, and not one of our customers would have found value in what it produced,” he explains. “It was cookie-cutter, vanilla, completely generic. It added no real value.”
The distinction isn’t about being anti-AI but rather recognizing what the technology can and cannot do.
“There’s a massive place for AI in society,” Friesen says. “But we, as professional development facilitators, exist primarily to bring people together so they can appreciate each other, learn from each other, collaborate, problem-solve, and perform at a high level as a team.”
Friesen contrasts two models in the professional development space.
“There are companies that do 50-person low-cost sessions based on completely generic content that they repeat across the country,” he says. “That model can use AI effectively because it’s built for scale and standardization.”
But Outback has chosen a different path.
“We’ve created a very different kind of organization,” Friesen says. “From the moment we engage with a client, we approach their situation as unique. There’s not a single other client in North America that shares the exact same nuances and needs.”
He shares a recent example.
“I just received feedback from a customer who wrote four paragraphs about why the event I ran in Atlantic City was exceptional,” says Friesen. “That’s not AI. That’s a relationship. None of what she valued about that experience could have been achieved through artificial intelligence.”
The professional development trends for 2026 suggest that while AI will continue to transform operational work, the deeply human work of listening, coaching, and facilitating growth remains irreplaceable.
Professional Development Trend #2: Redefining Productivity From Busyness to Impact
One of the most significant professional development trends emerging for 2026 is a fundamental shift in how organizations think about productivity.
“Work has become about how many emails, how many phone calls, and how many meetings we’re part of,” Friesen observes. “We call that productivity. But organizations are starting to realize the difference between being busy and being effective.”
He’s seeing leaders wake up to a painful reality.
“Many leaders are looking back and realizing they worked incredibly hard and were very busy,” he says. “But somehow we weren’t as effective as we needed to be. We missed our goals. And yet everyone is exhausted.”
The problem, Friesen argues, is that organizations have been measuring the wrong things.
“Your professional objective should never be to get all your work done,” he says emphatically. “The most highly productive people never finish everything. Meanwhile, the most unproductive people are free by Friday at noon, wondering why everyone else is so busy.”
What makes the difference? Alignment and focus.
“There’s a huge difference between the two scenarios,” Friesen explains. “One: I worked a long day, I’m tired, and I have no idea what I accomplished. Two: I worked a long day, and I’m actually energized because I made real progress on the two most important priorities my leader and I agreed on.æ
He adds, “Both are long days. Both are tiring. But the experience is completely different.”
The shift he’s describing, from volume to impact, from hours to outcomes, requires intentional conversation between leaders and their teams about what actually matters.
It means empowering people to make choices about what meetings to skip, what emails don’t need responses, and which priorities deserve sustained attention.
“When there’s real alignment, employees feel empowered to pursue their objectives with focus and clarity,” Friesen says. “Not with an overwhelming sense of dread, but with genuine direction.”
Professional development trends for 2026 suggest this redefinition of productivity will become a critical conversation in more organizations.
Professional Development Trend #3: Self-Awareness Tools Combat the Speed Problem
As work accelerates, one casualty has been self-awareness, and that’s driving increased interest in assessments and frameworks that create space for reflection.
“To be self-aware, you need to be reflective, thoughtful, and present,” Friesen explains. “But those three things aren’t valued in most careers right now. It’s all about speed, throughput, and pace, none of which supports self-awareness.”
He sees organizations turning to tools like DiSC assessments and Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team assessment to address this gap.
“An assessment is simply a reflection in the mirror, showing you who you are in the context of your team,” Friesen says. “DiSC acts like a magnifying glass on our behaviors when we’re working with others.”
The value isn’t in the assessment itself, but in what comes after.
Friesen uses a three-part framework with clients: awareness, acceptance, and application.
He walks them through critical questions:
- How do they become more aware of their behaviors?
- When they see something about themselves in the mirror, do they accept it?
- What will they actually do differently based on that understanding?
But here’s where professional development trends reveal a critical challenge.
“Every single client is terrified that they’re going to learn a lot and have absolutely no idea how to apply it,” Friesen says. “They’ve sat through countless sessions that felt valuable in the moment but led nowhere, and they’re worried about sitting through one more session that sounded great but left them wondering how to actually implement any of it.”
He addresses this concern directly in his work.
“We dedicate real time to helping individuals and teams understand how to apply what we’ve covered,” he explains. “We don’t just talk about what they learned, but how to actually use it.”
The professional development trends for 2026 point toward a growing demand not just for insight, but for the scaffolding that helps people actually change their behavior based on what they learn.
The team building trends and professional development trends shaping 2026 reveal a workplace caught between two powerful forces: the drive to move faster and the need to connect deeper.
Technology—particularly AI—will continue to reshape how work gets done, offering unprecedented efficiency in many areas.
But the work of building trust, facilitating growth, and creating cohesive teams remains stubbornly, valuably human. Organizations that thrive in 2026 will be those that recognize where each belongs.
Collaboration, connection, and meaningful impact aren’t obstacles to productivity. They’re the foundation of it. And the most successful teams will be those that make space for both the speed that technology enables and the relationships that only humans can build.
Looking to build great employee engagement in your organization in 2026?
Get in touch with our Employee Engagement Consultants to learn about team building activities and professional development trends that help achieve your goals.
