Yesterday’s Leadership Daily Advisor gathered some of the latest ideas to boost the return on your corporate retreat experience. Today we continue with the next three results-oriented approaches.
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Drive Involvement and Get Competitive
Consider whether you need a facilitator. You can choose to lead the retreat yourself, let employees take responsibility for certain aspects, or bring in an outside facilitator with experience in corporate settings. Some organizations frown upon bringing in outsiders—for a number of reasons, including competitive ones—but depending on your internal circumstances, they can be an effective option to get more done in less time. For example, outside help can promote a sense of neutrality that may help clarify and reduce conflicts among departments. Or, if creating participation isn’t one of your strengths, a facilitator can get more people fully involved.
Facilitators also can help develop the agenda, moderate meetings, and act as a catalyst for stimulating and assessing progress with follow-up activities. Bruce Withrow, founder of Meeting Facilitators International, who facilitates between 50 and 60 retreats every year, uses what he calls a “parking lot” approach to getting groups to stay on topic and keep moving forward. When someone brings up an issue that isn’t on the agenda at that time, he’ll write it down on a whiteboard or flip chart and come back to it at the end of the meeting.
Use the retreat to develop and defeat your perfect competitor. That’s the advice of Dave Logan, PhD, founder of management consulting firm CultureSync, senior lecturer at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, and author of Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization (Collins).
Divide attendees into groups, he says, and ask them to come up a description of a competitor that could put your company out of business within 2 years. How is the company run? Where is it located? Who works there? What makes them so devastating?
“Then shuffle the groups and ask people to come up with an action plan to thrive in the face of this fictional competitor,” he says. “If run well, people will leave the activity with a sense of the competitive landscape and an idea of how to do better in serving the customer.”
Make time for follow-up. Among the most common complaints of off-sites is that there’s little follow-up after the retreat’s excitement wears off—and that any progress that’s been made is temporary at best or completely falls apart at worst. Scheduling a check-in meeting, say, 3 months or 6 months after your retreat can help keep your focus going toward the positive results you’re after.