Throughout my career, I have designed and delivered many leadership offsites or awaydays (call them what you will).
But what are they and what are they for?
It’s probably worth starting in answering these questions by distinguishing leadership offsites from team coaching, which I explored in a blog post back in 2021.
From my perspective, an offsite can have many purposes, including team development, whereas team coaching’s focus is predominantly on how well the individuals in a team understand each other, their collective purpose, what is expected of the team by its stakeholders and how they can grow as a team. Team coaching is focused on developing this joint understanding.
Leadership offsite goals are much broader and include topics such as:
Setting up an offsite for success depends on understanding where the team are, what challenges that team is facing, how team members interact with each other and what they think is important for them to focus on at their offsite (such as some of the goals above).
This understanding is gathered from discussions with the offsite sponsor, who is often the leadership team leader. Capturing the themes that the leader sees as key, then sharing these with the offsite attendees in 1-2-1 calls and asking them what else is important to consider is a great way to co-design the offsite. This is also helpful for all the attendees, as it encourages them to feel they have inputted into the offsite design, helping foster engagement for the offsite.
If you are bringing a group of people together potentially from around the world, it makes sense to make as much use of the time they have together to talk with each other, share ideas and make plans and to also minimise the time they are sitting listening to someone talking at the front. As such, the offsite design needs to be light on sharing information/models and heavy on group discussion-type exercises.
You don’t need to bring people together to explore these types of topics if cost-prohibitive or climate change impact is important to you. Alternatively, you can run great leadership sessions remotely, but it is best to then have everyone remote rather than some together and others joining remotely, which creates a “them and us” situation.
You also need to think about how the offsite design best works for a virtual session, keeping these shorter, perhaps by breaking them into several sessions over a couple of weeks, which can be helpful as people’s attention span is lessened when remote.
One of the reasons coaches can make great offsite facilitators is that they know that when people explore a topic, develop their self-awareness around it and come up with their ideas as to how to move forward, they develop greater feelings of responsibility to see things through than if they are simply told to do something. You want people leaving the offsite motivated to put into practice what they have agreed and not forget about it as soon as they get back to work.
Coaches are also good at contracting with people regarding how we are going to work together today, what confidentiality is required (what stays in the room) and how to build trust and rapport so that people engage well from the outset.
As well as the key themes agreed with the leader and attendees, it is good practice to include the following in this offsite design:
A well-designed and facilitated offsite can work wonders for team connections and shared ownership of key priorities. Delivered well, they are a joy to be part of as an attendee or facilitator. To achieve this outcome don’t scrimp on the design phase, getting input from the attendees and checking back in with the sponsor as the design progresses.
Logistics (food, flip charts, technology, etc.) are also critical to success on the day.
As a coach, I enjoy the very private space 1-2-1 coaching creates, but I also appreciate the buzz of a team sparking off each other and demonstrating that the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts.
I hope you have found something of interest in this blog. If it raises any questions for you, please feel free to get in touch.
From the author:
As coaching is not an advice-giving service, these blogs are not written with the intention of proposing solutions to common leadership challenges. Instead, they are thought pieces with the aim of prompting the reader to think more deeply about the topic and reflect on whether it warrants further exploration, with or without a coach.
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