After several rounds of meetings with your team focused on solving a business problem, someone suggests to you, “We should have a retreat and dedicate time to this topic.” You think, what a great idea! And then you immediately have questions about how to ensure a retreat can help your team tackle this challenge. Before you spend the time, money, and sweat equity of gathering your team together, here are 5 tips for a productive retreat.
- Select a clear, specific purpose. It sounds simple, and yet, with so many potential ideas, limited time, and finite resources, you should ruthlessly prioritize when deciding why you want to dedicate time to a retreat. Retreats often focus on planning strategy, team building, solving a real-time business issue, action planning after an engagement survey, improving team dynamics, or leadership training. Whatever the reason, be as specific as possible so that a program can be designed around that exact purpose and everyone attending arrives clear, focused, and ready to work.
- Choose the facilitator wisely. It might be tempting to appoint someone internally to facilitate the retreat program, and maybe that will work well for your organization. The internal facilitator would likely know the players and the organization well and is a cost-effective option. The downside is they may not be as willing or able to ask difficult or pressing questions, especially of those group members who are in positions of power. External facilitators come from a place of neutrality and have less at stake during discussions because they are not as close to an issue, which often results in them bringing a new perspective to the table. At Human Capital Next, we also bring best practices for designing your retreat program based on your overall purpose, goals, and audience needs.
- Consider an assessment as part of your agenda. If a main goal of the retreat is to improve organizational, team, or individual effectiveness, having assessment data will help. Human Capital Next uses many validated tools proven to measure effectiveness. These tools help teams build insights about inter-team dynamics, obstacles to effectiveness, and opportunities for leveraging strengths. Often assessments describe these components as part of a simple framework, which helps teams internalize the learning more easily and apply it to their jobs quicker.
- Avoid starting the day with the most complex or “heavy” agenda item. Imagine sitting in a training and the first activity of the day is to discuss your key disagreements with your co-workers. What stress might that induce? How much dialog would occur? In adult learning, a concept exists where a facilitator should introduce activities that first build trust and then gradually move participants on to more complex, “riskier” topics once the foundation of trust and camaraderie is established. Having a skilled facilitator (see tip #2) who understands these principles will ensure trust is built and attendees are able to be candid and share ideas with one another.
- Close the retreat with clear next steps. Even if a traditional “to do” list is not progressive enough for your organization, it is important for individuals to feel they accomplished something and know what they need to do next. Do they use the tools or strategies learned in their roles going forward? Does additional information need to be gathered? Are next steps to develop ideas into more concrete plans? Is there simply an expectation of new beginnings or a new set of rules for engaging as a team? Whatever the action may be, thoroughly define it so attendees know their contributions are meaningful to the organization and align to a bigger purpose that will not simply be forgotten the next day at work.
You will know the time spent at the retreat was truly worth it when you look back and realize the team did meaningful and productive work and followed through on plans or action items. And maybe when you realize the team even had some fun along the way, too.
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