4 strategies for an impactful team offsite
In an age where more and more of us are in a hybrid or fully remote environment, offsite meetings can be an impactful way to bring your team together. Offsites are happening more regularly since the pandemic, allowing us to step out of our daily routines to increase team cohesion and address organizational challenges.
When it comes to creating an offsite that works, a one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter approach won’t cut it. In order for your offsite to be effective - and for the results to last once you’re back at work - you need to create a unique experience for your team.
1: Consider the business impact
Choosing the right focus for your offsite can be the difference between impact and indifference. The goals for your team offsite should be specific. Broad, general goals like “improve communication,” “get to know each other,” or “better cooperation” generally aren’t effective - they’re not clear enough. Your goals should be focused on what’s meaningful to your team, addressing both their challenges and their needs.
When creating your goals, consider your past experience and present situation alongside the future possibilities in order to create real impact. First, organize your thoughts by asking yourself what the biggest challenges are facing your team. Then, rank their importance on a scale from 1-10. Once you have clarified what you think, engage your team. What do they perceive to be their biggest challenges? How would they rank them? Before the offsite, make sure you and your team are in agreement on what you hope to achieve during the event, as well as how you’ll measure success afterwards.
For offsites, it’s tempting to default to individual development, which often involves some sort of personality assessment (like Myers-Briggs or the Big Five), followed by a sharing session. It’s well-meant, but this type of work isn’t as effective as it may seem. While some challenges may relate to the personalities and styles of individual members, team-related factors - available resources or clarity of goals, roles, and priorities - are often much more impactful. Save the personality tests for a team meeting, and make your offsite count by focusing on organizational impact. What’s really going to move the needle for your business?
2: Work with your team to create a safe environment
As we discussed in my last newsletter, psychological safety is vital to any kind of team collaboration. Psychological safety at work is a shared expectation that both leadership and teammates will not embarrass, reject, or punish them for sharing ideas, taking risks, or soliciting feedback. Because successful offsite retreats rely heavily on participation and problem solving, creating an environment where your team feels safe enough to speak up should be top priority. That kind of work needs to start long before your event.
You can set the stage for a psychologically safe environment by making it clear through your words and actions that team differences are viewed as a positive. When your team knows that diverse ideas are welcome and encouraged, they are more likely to be an active participant in the kinds of discussions that happen at offsite meetings.
3: Consider using a facilitator
Changing team behavior is not easy. Unearthing and addressing challenges and tensions is complicated enough in a regular meeting, and it’s doubly so when you’re dealing with the extra logistics of an offsite. When you facilitate your own meeting, it’s natural that much of your energy goes into planning and leading. With so much to focus on, it’s very difficult to be fully present. Bringing in an external facilitator increases your chance of success after your offsite because it allows leadership to be an active participant in the process. An experienced facilitator takes on that responsibility, giving you the freedom to focus on what’s important.
4: Maintain the impact
One of the most common complaints about offsites is that goals and commitments that have been established fall quickly by the wayside when “real life” resumes. To ensure that your hard work doesn’t go to waste, make time near the close of your offsite to discuss, as a team, key takeaways and the actions and behaviors the team will commit to doing. Well-managed follow up meetings are the most important factor in ensuring that your new plan sticks, so scheduling a follow-up offsite, or at minimum a check-in meeting, perhaps one, three months and six months after the event can help ensure that the team stays focused on making progress and sustaining positive change.
The combination of thoughtful preparation and mindful follow-through is what will determine the efficacy of your team offsite. When you keep this in mind, you and your team will increase the probability of continuing the good work when everyone is back to “business as usual.”