Planning a team retreat, where the main course of business is NOT business, can seem like an expendable team activity for a business owner. While time is short and there is a long list of project deliverables to be powered through in a work day, a team retreat can provide invaluable insight into your team, your messaging, and your stakeholders.
A retreat opens the lines of communication for your team unlike any other type of work meeting. Is your team working efficiently? Is everyone communicating effectively? Does the team have a sense of purpose in their work and even in their lives that is propelling them forward? Are there lurking trouble spots in the business you can head off? Generally, is everyone engaged and happy to be a part of the team?
Planning
Remote COO management took some time to think about what we wished to accomplish from our recent retreat and what impact it would have on the team. There are 4 main areas to consider when planning a work retreat: Tone, Budget, Desired Outcomes, and Connections. Our handy Company Retreat Planning Worksheet is an excellent tool to plot out your vision.
Tone – The tone sets the stage. Is the retreat mainly focused on fun and relaxation? Maybe you want team members to form a stronger bond and connection. Therefore, you wish to create a teambuilding/bonding tone. Or are you looking for the team to solve a particular problem? This would call for an investigative problem/solution tone. Perhaps company management wants to work on more effective communication among team members that plays to the team’s strengths, in which case, there needs to be a learning and development tone. Maybe it is a combination of some of these tones. Be clear on the tone of your meeting. This will help guide how you organize the retreat, focus your team when kicking off the retreat, and even when choosing a setting.
Budget – You can conduct a retreat no matter what your budget. However, the budget may have already been set in the company’s annual plan. If you stay in-house, you may have to be more creative to generate a fun, teambuilding atmosphere, so the team truly steps away from “work mode.” Taking the meeting offsite offers a great opportunity to step out of usual roles and relax a bit more. If the tone you want to set is one of fun and team bonding, you may wish to look into outings such as a local bowling alley or a baseball game. If your tone is learning and development to sharpen some skills, then you need a quieter location where the team can collaborate.
Desired Outcomes – If you are clear on specific outcomes you want from your retreat, start your planning here. Is there a gap in team performance that you want to solve together? Are you poised for a significant growth stage and want to take a breath for some teambuilding activities? Maybe everything is going really well in the company, and you simply want to let your employees know they are appreciated. It is also perfectly okay to have more general outcomes in mind, such as a closer-knit team, learning more about one another’s skills, or understanding the business goals better.
Connections – All retreats are about connecting to your employees, connecting your employees to the company vision, and having employees connect to one another. We do not work in silos. We work collaboratively, and the more purposeful you can be about encouraging these connections during your company retreat, the more likely these stronger connections will translate to healthier work environments after the retreat.
Remote COO completed our annual retreat in July. We ended up organizing a 4 hour retreat in a convenient neutral location for our team with a relaxing, teambuilding, and fun tone for the event. We wanted the team to have some fun while building stronger connections in an effort to grow relationships and improve communication upon leaving the retreat.
Retreat Agenda
The next step is to nail down an agenda.
Our retreat agenda consisted of:
- Opening remarks, introductions, and intent of retreat
- Hand out goody bags filled with fun items, inspirational messages, and team swag
- Interview with a current Remote COO client to hear what it is like working with our team from her perspective
- Team communication and teambuilding exercise
- Assess our team’s strengths and how to capitalize on them (we have an upcoming blog post on how we assess our team’s strengths coming SOON!)
- An inspirational speaker on finding life’s purpose and overcoming life’s challenges
- Closing and fun team giveaways
Our Team’s Takeaways from the 2019 Remote COO Retreat
Here are some of our team’s top takeaways from our meeting and a free downloadable resource to help you set up a retreat that’s best suited for your team.
- Team communication exercise – I purposefully paired people who don’t generally interact. Besides providing insight into communication styles, it was an element of fun. I heard lots of chatting and laughter.
- Team communication exercise – I learned that my communication can be received differently between people and across different platforms. Being mindful of this is something that I need to consider in both my personal and professional life.
- Client interview – (Our client gave us feedback that we need to regularly remind them of all the services Remote COO is capable of doing for her.) As we create our relationship with a client, reminding them what we can and cannot do is an ongoing process, not a one-time event.
- Client interview – When our client spoke about her Remote COO Client Manager, it demonstrated how important it is to cultivate and nourish the trust that must be built. It takes time. Also, it validated how much Remote COO IS part of the team for our clients!
- Team strengths assessment – I have a better understanding of the personalities and an appreciation of our individual strengths. On a day to day basis, we get so caught up in our defined roles and responsibilities that we tend to categorize our colleagues and our own selves into specific slots. A team building activity forces us to see our colleagues in a different light. It gives us an understanding of how to work with and around each other’s personality traits and helps us figure out how to work with that individual, fine-tuning our approach to their personality.
- Teambuilding – The retreat allowed for increased appreciation of roles, purpose, and group-established expectations. Also in the case of people whom you don’t see every day or whom you interact with only via email/phone, you tend to have an image of them which could either not be true or inaccurate. In-person interactions, like at the retreat, dispel such misconceptions and enable us to respect and appreciate our colleagues for the different and/or unique skills they bring to the table.
- A glimpse into the “Bigger Picture”, whereby one understands that it is not a one-man show. We need each other equally to achieve common goals and focus on the big picture, not just our individual objectives.
- Stress relief and morale booster – The retreat was a stress reducer and morale booster in the midst of crazy busy week with some much-needed laughter, team bonding, fun and memorable experiences.
- Work process improvement / strengths assessment – We would all love to partner more on projects and clients, so we can use our strengths to support our clients and rely on the specific strengths of our team members to bolster our efficiency and master our craft.
- Best practices – As always, the team comes from a multitude of varying backgrounds and getting together is a reminder that although it feels as though my work environment can be isolated, this isn’t the case. Reaching out with not just work-related questions but how are you feeling today questions can help.
- The inspirational speaker – I loved dipping into the personal side a bit and coming back to having to think about my life purpose (how I want to live and how to support that).
- Inspirational speaker / personal mantra – Something to give serious thought about. What you are is not what your profession is.
Such powerful stuff from our team! We look forward to planning next year’s retreat and would love to hear what you have in store for your team.