Get the most out of your company offsite events
I spend many days each year at offsite sessions with groups of leaders. Sometimes for strategic planning, sometimes for enhancing team effectiveness, and sometimes for creating alignment and engagement with a broad group. In each of these instances, I find the team leader (often the CEO) can behave awkwardly – seemingly not knowing how to participate. First, let’s clarify a couple of things:
1) They are watching you and watching your participation. If you’re on your smartphone, they will see. I once had an executive pull the high school “friend’s house” trick pretending to every breakout group that he was in another room – they figured it out. Really unimpressive.
2) Your participation needs to be a deliberate. Although your spouse or your kids might not give any weight to what you say, your team will. Your words and deeds can stifle new thinking and squash the very ideas you dragged everyone offsite to foster.
So, being a leader at an offsite is hard – but when isn’t it hard to be a leader? Take some time to get your thoughts straight in advance and your next offsite will be a welcome change of pace. Try these general guidelines.
Tip 1: You need to participate.
You are not above the issue (whether it’s strategy, team effectiveness, or culture) you are a part of it.
Engage.
Tip 2: You probably shouldn’t be a part of a single break out team
You will want to hear and to participate in different conversations.
Move.
Tip 3: If you’re looking for different ideas and behaviors from your team, try some yourself.
If you’re normally conservative, throw out a radical idea. If you don’t talk about the customer enough, tell a story of a customer interaction that affected you.
Model.
Tip 4: Use the time wisely as a chance to hear things you don’t normally hear.
Solicit opinions and ideas from people you are less likely to have one-on-one time with. The change of scenery might just embolden them enough to answer.
Ask.
Tip 5: If you’re expecting people to be vulnerable, go first.
Share something you learned about yourself through the process. Admit when a key learning from the session is new to you. If you admit that you don’t know, everyone will have permission to do the same.
Lead.
An example of leadership participation
I had the pleasure of working with the President of an energy company. During a full day of learning, we did an exercise on listening at multiple levels. During the exercise participants were asked to try to listen not only for facts and information, but also for feelings and emotions and for values and motives. Not only did the President participate, but she stood up in front of her top 40 leaders to admit that she realized she was mostly listening for facts. It was a powerful moment that gave legitimacy to the program and solidified her brand as a leader who walks the talk. Imagine if she’d been on her Blackberry instead…
If you change the way you participate, you’ll change your team.
Further Reading
Planning an Offsite? Things you Need to Consider
Vulnerability – a Strength or a Weakness?
Liane – Thanks for sharing this. You present a firm and practical challenge for a team leader who wants to hold productive offsites AND further – wants to build a stronger, healthier team in the process. My personal key take-aways -> be present, be in the moment, listen visciously, go first.
Oh, as a self-diagnosed BlackBerry addict, this helps deliver a message right between the eyes, even if my head may have been down reading an email when the message came through 🙂
So much money, time and planning go into these of offsite meetings. In my experience, not as much has gone into really defining the role key leaders need to play and not play to enhance the entire experience for everyone. Thanks for a good kick, I will continue to work hard at leaving the device in my bag. The world will go on and it just may give an unplanned opportunity for someone else to step-up and develop.
Thanks Liane – i think your tips are quite helpful and short and sweet. As a coach to executives within my past organizations, I find that they looked to me for advice about the right balance – how much to engage and how much to observe. Your tips offer a good balance. At the end of the day, I think it is about bringing that human compassion to the table.
I think we all have been in meetings where you look and wheter the CEO, VP, or peer have checked there smart phone at some point. Again, clearly laid out rules of the meeting must be discussed upfront and a proper agenda that has sufficient breaks in order to allow for checking mail. Most of us live in a 100 mile an hour world so it then is very hard to park it for an extended period of time.
Jenny has a great personal take away – thanks for sharing that.
I echo Tyler Cochrane’s comments. We recently attended a leadership session where we had 50 leaders from across the company all in one room and each time a high ranking employee (CEO/President/or VP) checked their iPhone everyone around the table I was at did the same thing because by him doing so he condoned the behavior, despite us setting clear ground rules that they need to be shut off during the session knowing we provide enough breaks to keep on top of things. It’s definitely frustrating behavior when we’re trying to set positive examples – hard to give someone crap for doing the exact same thing that a higher up is doing.
I also really support the idea of being vulnerable – showing you are human. It’s ok for people to know we struggle some days, may have hurt feelings, or have a life outside of work that grounds us. It’s important for people to know that we’re not machines, we feel just like everyone else – we just have to control it a little better.
I agree with Jenny’s comments, as you need to lead by example. Often it is tough for your team to open up or actually full participate if you are not doing it yourself as a leader.
Thanks for the useful tips Jenny.
It takes self dicipline not to be checking emails ,phone messages or participating in other distractions, not only during meetings but during one on one conversations. We live in a culture where emails or text messages are expected to be answered in the same time frame as a phone call used to be.
Unfortunaltly this is not only happeing at work but appears to be more common at the dinner table or at the coffe shop with a friend.
If we are willing to let a conversation with a family member or friend become secondary when you get an alert that text or email has arrived ,how could you ever be completly focused at a meeting with co workers?
I agree with Tyler’s comments that clear ground rules must be established at the outset of any meeting instructing all to park their blackberries and iphones; however I find it disappointing that our culture has evolved to one that gives priority to a flashing light indicating “new message” over showing common courtesy and respect to the facilitator presenting or an individual sharing their thoughts in this type of forum. For most it takes a great deal of courage to stand up and speak in these settings, to look over as they are doing so and see their leader or peer more engaged in their smart phone than what they have to say is sure to be disheartening and silence that individual for the duration of the session.
As a leader we need to role model the behaviour we want to see in our team. We need to display self discipline and respect to all teammates. Great off site tips that can be apllied to any team meeting.
I think that we all find it very hard not to continually check our e-mails or text messages 24/7 Our world almost dictates that we respond immediatly.. When we are in meetings, whether it is a one on one or a group we must refrain from checking our e devices as this is the only way to show respect. What did we do before cell phones, e-mails or text messages?