Why Investing In A Team Retreat Is Important (and how to do it well)
Last month the G&G team was Bayou Bound amid the crazy aftermath of the worldwide data glitch to get together in person for the first time in two years.
We decided to invest in our business in a different way in 2023 and knew that this year's annual retreat was needed.
While we prioritize our weekly team meetings and periodic planning sessions, there is something about setting aside special time to reflect, dream and execute our mission.
And as a business owner, I hope this is something that you prioritize too! I also realize that the school of hard knocks we cut our teeth in for entrepreneurship didn’t have “Business Team Retreat 101” as a class elective. So, today I am going to share what we do and how this might inform the next team retreat you have (or start having in 2024)!
Why Investing In A Team Retreat Is Important
Before we dive into the “how to” let’s talk about the why!
Whether this is an in person retreat where you are galavanting around New Orleans eating beignets, getting color analysis from HOC West New Orleans and obsessing over Wingspan or you’re simply having a dedicated quarterly/annual virtual retreat there is science behind why these team touch points are important.
Connection
I don’t know anything about your team, but I can guarantee they are humans. And humans crave connection. While I will forever be grateful to the Gram for connecting me with the G&G team and other amazing people.
I also realize that there is something different about being in person, sharing meals, laughing about the silliest things and the unexpected moments that you might never experience in a solely virtual world.
I know I crave human interaction (especially as my job is virtual) daily. While I understand as a business owner flying people to one location, getting lodging, planning meals, providing gifts, managing the business activities is time consuming and a big cost.
My hope is that the connection you have in-person will forge a deeper relationship/connection/meaning to your team members so they will continue to work with you for years to come.
Same Page
Working with a virtual team allows you the benefit of getting the best of the best on your team regardless of zip code. It also can elicit miscommunication.
No matter the Slack, Asana, or group text prowess you have there will likely be big team decisions that require you all to be on the same page with time and space to talk, provide feedback, make decisions and take action.
Getting in the same room is vital to these big company changing conversations. You don’t want to have these smashed into your 15 minute huddles or hour long team meetings. It needs its own time and space so you can all walk out on the same page.
Group Synergy
Something beautiful happens when you are in the same room as people who care deeply about your company mission. People in corporate hate the term “group synergy” – in fact, my friend who is a corporate queen immediately eye rolled when I mentioned the term.
But, in small business where everyone is touching the final products, synergy is of utmost importance. Synergy is when a group of people is able to achieve more together than what they could accomplish individually. This is why you actually have a team.
I remember baby business owner Sarah who struggled to stay afloat with customer service, creative assets and sending a freaking email without a typo. And that is why G&G is not a solo run business.
The G&G Team creates much bigger, better and more innovative solutions than little ole Sarah could do on her own. We also realized after doing multiple in-person retreats that we can CRUISE through some work like we are on Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift when we are in the same room. Seriously I think we got a month's worth of work done in 2.5 days.
When you set aside the time to do this you too can see that synergy come to life for your business and your team.
What To Do During Your Team Retreat
Reflect
Reflection (IMO) is the only way you know what to change. In business, you are probably tracking KPIs, SMART goals, Financials and so much more. While numbers are uber important, answering the “what does this data mean” is even more vital to your business growth.
As the leader it is important that you:
1. Provide your team with data to analyze prior to your event AND
2. Questions that help them think about the past and project toward the future.
Data you might what to provide could include:
Quarterly Financials
Goal Progress
Attendance to conference, course, membership calls
Interaction of clients (ex. Social media, response to communication time etc.)
Data doesn’t always have to be numbers. Remember that thing called “qualitative research.”
This might look like:
Client Satisfaction Surveys
Comments/Questions from Client or Potential Clients
Focus Group Script/Commentary
Numbers don’t always talk (like some say) you might need to provide some context to help your team know what they are looking at.
Once you have the data to your team, give them reflection questions to ponder as they prep for the retreat. For our team this looked like reviewing all of our company offerings in a google doc.
Having this reflection time before the event saves some time in person and primes everyone for robust discussion which will help you move to the next step: Decide.
Decide
The whole point of these retreats is to move your company forward. That obviously includes the relationship side but we’d be lying if we didn’t want it to move our company growth forward as well. This time allows you to decide on next steps. But before you start thinking about new ideas, it is important to decide what to do with what you already do.
Your team spends precious time and energy in many avenues in your business from writing newsletter, hosting coaching calls, responding to customer emails, recording podcasts and more. To make sure you are making the best impact for your clients and your team, set aside time to review each and everything you offer.
Our list this year included things like our podcast, social media, newsletters, a community, and even swag.
We wrote our thoughts out on a common document before the retreat and then decided to either keep, kill, edit or obsess on those offerings for the rest of the year.
Keep: Means very minimal changes and a similar work lift to continue to offer this product to our clients
Edit: Means changing a good portion of that offering to maximize team time and amplify client impact.
Kill: Means stopping this offer/action (at least for the time being, it can be resurrected later if able (ex. You hire a new team member, it becomes essential for business growth, you find time to edit it)
Obsess: Means it is time to be all hands on deck to make this offering/action the best it can possibly be in the coming year. This will probably be where most of your backend time will be spent!
Once you decide on all of your offerings then you will review the offerings in the Keep and Edit categories.
This means deciding what needs to be done or changes and typing out those tasks in your task management system. No lost tasks up in here! The Edit offerings will take the bulk of your time, that is good and exactly where your time should be spent!
Then you will review your Kill offerings and decide how you will sunset them
Some of those might be sunsetted with one Instagram post (like we did when we stopped doing weekly podcasts) or it might take a few extra tasks (like when you need to shut down a product that some customer rely on, you need to think with empathy before just dropping the hammer on them (cough like has been happening recently in MLMs cough).
Finally you can sit in with the Obsess offerings and decide what needs to happen for you to maximize this offering!
One thing we decided to Obsess on in the past was our website. We knew it wasn’t providing the resources we wanted to our people so we invested in our favorite website designer Nicole to help us make that website a vault of beneficial resources to our community.
Execute
One of my biggest mistakes in facilitation strategic sessions is not providing time to execute. A lot of times when you’re in a group planning session you get a case of SOS – Shiny Object Syndrome.
Which means you create this new shiny, beautiful goal/idea/strategy (or multiple 🥴) and you are so jazzed with the ideation phase of that new thing you keep on talking about the thing instead of DOING the thing.
Execution takes a backseat to many brainstorm/quarterly planning/annual retreat events. And while some might fight me on it by saying that is the exact reason you should do it, especially for virtual teams I stand by this. Because we have done it both ways.
Way 1: Create a list of incredibly innovative and exciting offerings/products/actions that serve your clients with excellence. Go back home and you have no idea what steps to take to tackle it and it takes so much time to get the ball rolling again. You end up pushing these ideas back and back and back until their launch is postponed or end up not happening at all.
Way 2: Create a list of incredibly innovative and exciting offerings/products/actions that serve your clients with expertise. Set aside the last third of your retreat to create a plan to execute these new things (details, details, details like Laura will create the 3 social media static images with XYZ by this date) and common work time to get some of those tasks done together!
I’m going to go Way 2 for every strategy session I host from now on. The momentum doesn’t stop and we aren’t caught up on SOS like Tomatoa from Moana.
Deep breath! You did it, you took time to prep your team, provide meaningful connections and grow your business.
While you might walk out of your retreat saying “I wish I did…” “I really wanted to do…”, know that you did your best and the next retreat is just around the corner!
