How to make your team offsite great

Bringing your team together for an offsite can be an extraordinarily powerful and beneficial use of time… Or it can be a complete waste of time that further reinforces ineffective interpersonal dynamics. Yikes.

So let’s talk about the most important aspects of a successful offsite to consider as you start planning a day (or two) filled with breakthroughs, team building, creativity, and constructive steps forward. 

Hire a Professional to Run Your Offsite (No, Really)

We get it. Right now, companies are cutting budgets and hunkering down as the word “recession” is thrown around daily on the news. Your organization may even be among those that are laying people off. 

So you might be thinking, “How can we possibly justify hiring an executive coach or facilitator to lead a session when we just went through a painful reorg?” 

It may seem counterintuitive to do this, but the truth is, bringing in a neutral outsider to work with your team is money very well spent.

Most companies are seeing their employees deal with burnout, the stress of remote or hybrid work environments, and empathy fatigue. Managers are juggling so much, trying to inspire their employees to perform while also meeting the performance expectations on their own shoulders. 

It’s a lot to ask of your managers to design and impartially lead an offsite experience on top of everything else. More importantly, if there’s an issue that needs to be addressed with one of your leaders, that person should not be in charge of running an offsite.

The issue will not be resolved; team members won’t feel safe enough to share their experiences, and the offsite will only work to ensure that those dynamics become further entrenched in your workplace culture. 

There is a ton of value in bringing in an impartial professional or company who can objectively look at the social dynamics at play within your teams. They should be trained to facilitate conversations and activities that reinvigorate your people, raise employee engagement, and get employees excited about doing work together. 

What Can’t You Say? 

We recently had a conversation with a Marketing Director at a tech company who said it like this: 

“When my boss leads our company offsites, nothing changes. There are things I simply can’t say to her, even though everyone (but her) is aware of the issue. I don’t even think she knows she’s doing things like shutting down ideas, taking credit for other people’s work, and generally creating low morale. But when she runs our team retreats it basically makes them pointless.” 

There are things that employees simply can’t talk about when their boss is running the session. A third party can push back, ask questions, and dig deeper — and they don’t have an emotional stake in the situation, which makes it easier for everyone to say what they need to say.

When an executive coach is running the room, it creates space and opportunity for the truth to come out, get discussed constructively, and resolved. 

Create Space for All Voices to be Heard

Clients have told us that they don’t feel comfortable sharing or speaking up in meetings for all kinds of reasons. It can be something as charged as being afraid of getting laid off, or as mundane as simply being the type of person who freezes when they’re put on the spot.

Women and people of color in particular may have a harder time advocating for themselves due to longstanding biases in the workplace. There are many companies who speak about diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging but don’t take appropriate steps to create work environments that reflect these stated values.

Your goal with an offsite should be to make a point of inviting all voices to share in a comfortable and open environment. It does require thought and effort to intentionally begin to promote psychological safety.

Our Favorite Team Offsite Best Practices and Principles

Our team at People at the Center spends a lot of time thinking about, creating, and facilitating empowering offsite experiences for leaders and teams. Our work is to help people feel more calm, more centered, more confident, and ultimately, more resilient in the face of whatever is happening in the workplace around them. 

We believe in the power of people, and the offsites we create are built with an understanding that leadership means modeling authenticity and collaboration.

Here's a personal note from one of our clients:

"I appreciated your welcoming personality. It made me (and I think the group as well) feel at ease, which allowed us to open up. I also appreciated that you didn't push too hard when people didn't want to share. It was great! Thanks!"

1. Set clear objectives and create a visual roadmap for the retreat. Set the agenda in a way that everyone knows what’s expected, and why the themes and topics are meaningful for them specifically. The content you cover needs to relate to their job and be applicable to the work people are doing together on a daily basis. Be sure to revisit the path periodically through the session to reinforce the good work that’s being done. It’s easy at the end of an offsite to have forgotten all that was accomplished, so keeping this front and center reminds people of the value of spending this time together. 

We love this company who creates beautiful illustrations for events. They also have workshops and free downloads for creating your own. (https://inkfactorystudio.com/about/)

2. Encourage team building activities that foster collaboration and creativity. Ditch the trust falls and opt for working on small projects together that further an outcome you are working toward. Don’t be afraid to tap into the childlike creativity that is in all of us and bring in colored markers (maybe even scented ones), colored paper, and various toys like large dice and stress balls. Encourage imperfection.

3. Allow everyone to have a voice in decision making and problem solving. At People at the Center, we are trained in the Bob Pike Group methodology and the three key tenets of adult social learning: control, open and included. Participants must have control, which is a choice in what they are learning. In order to show up at their best, there must be an air of openness and social safety in the learning environment. Finally, everyone must feel included and no one should be able to weasel out of participation.

4. Use powerful openers and closers to help get people engaged and out of their comfort zones. Icebreakers can be used as openers, but so can powerful stories, videos or other technology tools. Remember that the way you close an offsite is just as important as the way it is opened. Find creative ways to revisit the topics covered during the day, and give participants a chance to share their takeaways. Ask them to verbalize or write down what they learned that they can put into action immediately, and make sure that everyone leaves with at least one action item.

5. Provide a lot of spaciousness for information to be processed. Encourage walks outside, meditation, and quiet spaces to make notes about the learning. Some participants may even want to lay down for a moment to rest the brain. Most offsites and retreats do not give people enough time in between activities for their brains to fully integrate the material and experience, which is crucial, as it turns out (Don’t believe me? Read this article from Scientific American). 

6. Remove hierarchical boundaries. Cliques and hierarchies form naturally in the workplace; people will instinctively seat themselves near others with whom they are comfortable (especially during meal times). 

Shake things up by presetting a card on each chair that has a different shape on it. Once people are seated, say, “Okay, everyone stand up and go to the table with your shape on it.” This will help mix up the groups and give employees a chance to interact with new people who aren’t normally part of their daily sphere.

7. Build your offsite with an Equity Lens. Go in with the expectation that your goal is to craft an experience that fosters equity and inclusion for all participants. We love this guide from the Non-Profit Association of Oregon, which advises to consider diversity, check assumptions, ask about inclusion and apply activities to specific areas of work.

When we design offsites, we consult with the company DEI leaders, and advise running the agenda by various members of the organization who represent varied groups to get different perspectives. We review the learning outcomes, values and concepts to be covered to make sure they are applicable to everyone in attendance, inclusive of role, race, gender orientation, learning style, etc. 

We’d Love To Discuss Your Next Offsite

Your leadership and team offsite events are excellent opportunities to strengthen the resilience of your team. Take full advantage of these important days by bringing in an impartial and highly experienced facilitator who can make the most of this valuable time. 

If you’d like to speak with us about our approach to offsites and how we can help your organization, please get in touch by emailing: support@peopleatthecenter.com.