The Golden Rules of Highly Valuable Team Offsites

How can leaders design team offsites that actually drive value?

Without intentional strategy, employees forget 90% of team offsite material within a single week. To guarantee lasting value, leaders must establish concrete post-offsite accountability, survey their team on what topics to explicitly avoid, and heavily diversify the agenda between hard skills, human connection, and deep ideation.

We’re nearing summer, which means teams are planning their offsites. Regular gatherings with a special blend of work and play can build a positive relationship and improve the well-being of your team.

Too often, however, offsites lack strategy, focus, and, most importantly, follow-through.

Here are ways to ensure your team has a valuable experience while achieving your objectives.

Start with the post-offsite in mind.

No offense, but your team will forget aspects of your offsite the second it concludes. Data suggests humans forget approximately 50 percent of new information they encounter within an hour and an average of 70 percent within 24 hours. After a week, that average goes up to 90 percent.

What this means: Before finalizing your agenda, think about how you’ll extend the value of the meeting. When running offsites with my clients, I ensure we have a scheduled time after the offsite to advance the next steps. Before your offsite wraps, ensure you have established key actions, that the team understands those next steps, and that you put something in place no later than two weeks after your offsite to discuss progress.

Ask what they don’t want.

While it’s important to have a theme or approach for your event, it’s just as important to ensure buy-in. Survey your team to get their thoughts, but I have a slight twist. Often, we focus on asking our team for ideas on topics for offsites, and out of that comes many different ideas. While it helps to receive this information, it can be overwhelming and ultimately challenging to make everyone happy.

What this means: Instead, I recommend asking a straightforward question of your team, “If we hosted an offsite, what is something you do not want to experience or discuss?” The answers will be critical to ensure you’re covering valuable topics while giving you the necessary flexibility to create an exceptional experience.

Build the offsite like a balanced meal.

Offsite topics can be tricky to balance. In today’s multitasking era, getting people to focus for hours or days at a time is challenging. This is when perspective is critical. Would you want to simply sit in a conference room all day without getting up and moving around? Probably not, I know I wouldn’t!

What this means: Great offsites offer a unique blend of learning a new hard skill, learning or relearning a human skill, learning about one another, learning about the business, and taking all that in to better your team. Consider a diverse agenda in which everyone will find at least one aspect of the time together of value. One of the most popular sessions I host with teams gives them a complete roadmap of professional development opportunities over the next 12 months, with topics taught by one another.

Allow everyone to participate and lean in.

One of the challenging aspects of team offsites is ensuring everyone feels comfortable. While some people love commanding a room and speaking in front of everyone, others aren’t as comfortable.

What this means: Along with diversifying the topics, diversifying how your team works together during the offsite is critical. No two aspects of your offsite should look the same. Some topics might be full-team discussions, while others are smaller breakouts, while other aspects are time for individual ideation.

Set your boundaries and celebrate.

The more you can set boundaries for your team, the better. Ensure your partners, clients, and internal teams know that your team is in essential training and unavailable.

What this means: Give key partners a heads up at least two weeks out and a reminder 1-3 business days from the event. If necessary, identify one person on your team – perhaps you - who can be contacted via text.

Finally, enjoy your time with your teams! With permission from the team, document the event and get great photos and videos ready to share with your internal and external audiences. Prospective clients and employees want to see that you’re doing all you can to improve the well-being of your team.

Have a wonderful summer, everyone!