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A successful offsite starts with clear ideas, goals and approach. Design your team offsite strategy, agenda, and activities.
By Gustavo Razzetti
December 7, 2017
Regardless if you are reaching the end of a fiscal year, finishing a project or launching a new group, taking your team out of the office is an effective way to reflect, refocus and reignite performance.
I’m not talking about getting everyone together to grab a couple of beers or a karaoke challenge, but an offsite to develop your team’s mindset, behavior, and performance.
A team retreat can be fun too. However, its main purpose is team development, not just bonding. It’s about providing a safe experience to help your team improve its game and performance.
“In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.”― Albert Camus
A Team offsite helps uncover, unblock, and solve tensions. This article will help you choose the right one for your team.
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” ― Søren Kierkegaard
Some managers falsely believe that a holiday break will make tensions go away — that everyone will return fresh and with a clean slate. However, the effect of a break can alleviate but won’t make problems disappear.
The best time to address long-standing issues is now. What makes your team suffer? What are the key emotions and barriers that are holding them back? Team retreats are perfect for identifying the root cause of the problem and develop a solution collectively.
Let’s start by reviewing the most important causes why a team offsite can help relaunch your team.
High workloads, unrealistic deadlines, unclear priorities, and lack of support both at a manager or peer level cause burnout. A team retreat helps release the pressure, but if you don’t fix the root cause, it’s just a band-aid.
Is the stress a temporary symptom or is it caused by more significant reasons? Stress affects 83% of US workers at different levels, before planning your retreat, understand what’s causing your team’s suffering.
Disengagement, underperformance, and counterproductive behaviors are clear signals of a group that got stuck. That’s when low morale and stress are affecting, not just people’s emotions, but their behaviors too.
Low performing teams are a luxury: disengaged workers cause massive losses in productivity — between $450 and $500 billion a year. To get a team back on track requires much more than motivation and timeout: you need a team intervention.
Alignment is an overused and romanticized concept in management. Culture alignment is more of a myth than something real. Teams always have tensions, and not everyone will be on the same page depending on the topic.
About 75% of employers rate teamwork as “very important.” But true collaboration respecting, and building on, everyone’s differences, rather than being trapped to the lowest common denominator management. A team retreat is perfect to apply empathy to understand better how others see the world. And to embrace the power of opposites.
People leave managers not companies, according to Gallup. Or better indeed, employees quit their jobs because of toxic behaviors that are tolerated or promoted by their managers.
A team outing can provide a safe space for people to start opening up. But you can’t build Psychological Safety overnight — the shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. Setting up the right environment requires external facilitation but, most importantly, that leaders embrace vulnerability too.
The need to plan for next year or to develop new solutions, are perfect reasons for a team retreat.
But it shouldn’t be a one-off practice though. When a team doesn’t spend quality time brainstorming from time to time, it becomes rusty. Everyone gets frustrated during the session. Training your team’s creative juices requires cadence and not an isolated workshop every year or so.
How many times do you feel something is off with your team, but you don’t know the real cause? A retreat helps everyone take distance from deadlines, emails, and fire-drills and look inside. Self-reflection is a powerful tool that top performers know how to use. When something is not working, having clarity is half of the solution.
The divide between where an organization wants to go — and where it is now — creates lots of tensions. Change is not easy. We all want to change but have a hard time adapting.
Most of the symptoms described above are a consequence of The Change Gap: the tension between our desired and current states that tears team apart. To learn more about “ The Change Gap” and how it affects teams, read this article.
Any of these symptoms — individually or collectively — are a good reason to take your team out of the office. Once you are clear on the problem, you need to solve it’s easier to choose the right kind of retreat.
“To separate yourself from your weakness and look at it objectively is a very powerful thing.” ― Russell Simmons
There are many kinds of retreats some more suitable than others depending on the challenge you are facing. To simplify the conversation, I narrowed down the list applying the following axes:
Reflection” versus “Transformation:” The first type is a deep understanding of a team’s mindset and behaviors to unblock or accelerate performance. The second type is about focusing the energy on the development of new solutions or change initiatives.
“Crisis” versus “Opportunity:” The first is about solving urgent matters that need to be resolved to unblock team performance or even guarantee its survival. The latter is about focusing on strategic and vital topics with a longer-term impact
The four types of team retreat are captured in the matrix below. Let's cover each in more detail.
Think of this as the ER for a team. Toxic behaviors, frictions, and lack of trust are bleeding your team to death. If you don’t stabilize the team, it’s impossible to expect any improvements, least to say great performance.
The purpose of Team Stabilization is to recover trust among the team members. This type of retreat tends to be very introspective, personal and applying a lot of reflection and mindfulness. Handled the right way, it can be a path to fast recovery. If not, it will accelerate the death sentence of a team.
Why: To stop unhealthy behaviors and mindsets from destroying a team.
When: An intervention is required when the toxicity of the team is putting its continuity at risk. Though you don’t need to wait until things get out of control.
Type: Reflection/ Crisis
Length: Ideally two full days with some space in between for the team to breath. A Team Stabilization is very intense and emotionally draining.
A halt in the game can dramatically change the result of a match. Or your business goals for that matter. Taking a timeout is critical for a team to reflect on what’s working (or not), adjust tactics, or even reset their behaviors.
The purpose of Team Timeout is to provide some distance for the day-to-day. And evaluate the performance to make the necessary adjustments. Even if you are winning, reflecting on how you are playing is an appropriate pause. Some teams can quickly become complacent or get distracted when they don’t feel challenged. This type of retreat resets the bar and keeps the team motivated to play at their best.
Why: To reflect on how the team is doing, identify areas for improvement and experimentation, and define how to play the “second-half” of the game.
When: Turning point that requires learning and adjustments(e.g., end of year or a quarter, half-way through a large project implementation, etc.)
Type: Reflection/ Opportunity
Length: One-day session. It can be compressed to a half-day if needed.
Both Team Stabilization and Team Reboot are perfect when there’s an urgent need to change. The difference is that in this particular situation the team is underperforming, but hasn’t reached a high level of toxicity or distrust.
The purpose of a Team Reboot is precisely what it happens to a phone or device when it’s not working correctly. Rebooting a team reloads the operating system, updates mindsets, and behaviors, and fixes temporary communication and management issues.
Why: To reset the team operating system and refresh how and why they work.
When: A high-performing team has lost its mojo, a team is underperforming and on its way to a significant crisis.
Type: Crisis/ Transformation.
Length: One or two-day sessions. It can be cut to a half-day session if the situation is not critical but will require further follow-up.
This is an idyllic scenario for any team. To get out of the office with a bigger ambition: to design what’s next. But to thrive in an Innovation Session, your team needs to be in a good place. Most often than not, I see creative or strategic retreats get stuck. Not because of lack of talent or ambition, but because the underlying personal issues and dysfunctions get in the way of creativity and collaboration.
The purpose of Team Innovation Sessions is to generate new ideas to solve current problems or anticipate potential challenges or growth opportunities. Adding “outsiders” to the session amplifies perspectives and minimizes group thinking.
Why: To develop new products or services, define new strategies or solve for specific challenges that are out the regular day-to-day work.
When: Out of the ordinary projects or challenges that require deep thinking, focus, and fresh perspectives.
Type: Transformation/ Opportunity
Length: One or two-day sessions. More complex projects might require more time
“Comfort is a stance of avoidance rather than the pursuit of excellence.” ― Craig D. Lounsbrough
Understanding your challenges as well as the various type of workshops will help you make a more educated decision. Consider the following tips to plan a retreat that will move your team forward.
Be clear on the problem you must solve. Don’t react to the symptoms, aim for deeper understanding. Be clear on the outcome you want to achieve. And, only then, choose the type of retreat that better suits your needs.
Avoid pleasing your team. Many managers try to provide a fun experience to make everyone feel good. But when deeper issues are affecting performance, a fun day won’t erase those away. Some retreats are full of tensions and conflicts, but it’s a bridge everyone needs to cross to stabilize a damaged team.
Fun or serious? Hands-on group activities, games, and other fun stuff are critical to driving engagement and learning. Even when addressing “more serious issues.” But the fun needs to be purposefully woven into the agenda. It’s a means to an end. If you just want to celebrate an achievement, you don’t need a team retreat, have a party.
How deep is too deep? Self-reflection exercises or guided meditations are powerful to unlock personal potential. And, in my experience, people are all in to experiment their deepest sides. But it’s critical to balance emotions to avoid crossing the line where that journey can become a dark one. Group activities, fun exercises, and other stuff are perfect for rebooting the mood. When planning a workshop, be mindful of balancing the feelings and emotions across the session.
Follow-up is critical. To get clear ROI, you need to consider the “event” as just one piece. To avoid wasting your money, assess the problem you want to solve before the retreat starts. Also, the session must end with a clear action plan to bring back to the real world. The team should identify behaviors and mindsets to be changed, implement tests on a small scale, assign clear responsibilities and dates. Before the event is over, how will the new behaviors be monitored, who will coach the team as they make progress, and how will improvement be measured?
Executive or team retreat: The problem you need to solve should determine if you need an executive, team, or a hybrid retreat. Many organizations fear to have senior executives having candid conversations with “regular folks.” In my experience that can be game-changing. Everyone who’s part of the problem should be part of building the solution. Leaders should abide by the same rules and play like everyone else. If you want to improve trust among your team and encourage self-reflection, put your title aside and embrace vulnerability.
Practice builds good habits: Some companies have a team offsite every quarter — frequency helps build consistency. Reserve 2–3 times per year for a team retreat.
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