(upbeat music)- Hey everyone, welcome to the Leadership Growth Podcast. I'm your host, Daniel Stewart, with my brother, as always, Peter Stewart. We're here to talk about tools and ideas to help you along with your leadership journey. Okay, Peter, you ready to dive in?- Yeah, it's always great to do an episode. Great to see you again. Great. And so today's topic, today's topic, how to hold a successful leadership off-site. What does that mean? How to have a successful strategic team off-site. And we'll be diving into that. But first an Insight of the Week. You ready, Peter? Yeah, let's do it.(upbeat music) So I was thinking back on one of the things that we learned from Dad early on. And one of the things that he had in one of his many leadership seminars, as of course they were called, was this great quote. And as you and I, we would be collating and assembling the different binders, we would see this quote. And it was a quote by Robert Frost. And the quote, and I'm going to read this exactly, it says“By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work 12 hours a day.” You know, and as an eight-year-old I would read that and I'd be like, what the heck is that talking about? And then you get into the working world. Now, we've got to remember Robert Frost, poet laureate of the United States, wrote the great poem, The Road Less Traveled, back in the 1950s, 60s. And he said it back then. Fast forward 40, 50, 60 years later, and it's as true now as it ever has been. And it brings up such this fact that when one gets promoted into management, you are likely going to be working longer. You're going to likely have more stress more pressure. It's a different kind of beast that you've just agreed to a different kind of role. And and yet people fight it. And it's a duality. You can't turn it off completely. It's everybody needs to figure out how they manage it, but inevitably you can just spend a lot more time working which the irony is I mean does everybody want that and sometimes yes sometimes no. But it's this reality and thus you and I so many executive coaching conversations with so many leaders helping work through this because everybody needs to negotiate and navigate this reality. But it is a reality to embrace for sure. It's very much a reality and it did it did give us a little bit of a should I say jaded perspective as children as we're sitting here looking at what is the corporate path? Is the view as you climb that corporate ladder truly that much greater? And there's a lot of effort that goes into it, a lot of commitment. And I think we're in a day now where there's this movement toward, well, maybe that isn't what I want out of things. Maybe I don't want to work 12, 14, 16 hours a day so I can have the title after my name. And is there space for me to be recognized for the value I bring as an individual contributor, for example? So I think that's a whole nother avenue we could go down, but the reality is as one increases in position and responsibility, often there comes an increase in the expectation of time. Yeah, yeah, and of course it can run amok, it can go too far. And that's where so much concern for the individual and burnout and unsustainable activity. So there is that, there's that middle point. And that middle point may shift for each person and at different points in their life. But the reality is, it often is a, it's a larger job to negotiate that. So anyway, just an Insight, kind of a Memory Lane slash Insight, that is important for all of us to keep in mind and be up front with ourselves as we negotiate the amount that we can put into the role and what kind of role really suits us for our family situation, etc. lifestyle. So there you go. Insight of the Week. Helping to be intentional about those decisions and we do have choices about the types of roles we take, but when we commit to a role, it's that expectation. We're going to fulfill it. Also help explain why so often one of the most common coaching areas we're working on with executives and leaders is delegation, to try and help free up a little bit of that time because you can't continue doing everything you used to do in the prior role. That's a fact. Yes. So with that, let's jump into this topic. topic today, how to have a successful team off-site. And this can be called a retreat, a summit, a meeting, a session,-A workshop.-whatever it is, usually a half day, a full day, two days, maybe three days, it's out of the office, there is some sort of desire for a strategic outcome, a team outcome, a business outcome, a strategic outcome. It's not something that's done all the time, but there's a need for it. And so, Peter, let's dive in as to why the heck people want to have off-sites. What do they look like? How do you best prepare? So let's paint the scene. So imagine there is a leader out there, a director, VP, C-suite person, who looks at their team and says, "You know what? For whatever reason, we need to get out of the office. we need to talk and spend some time together. What are the first things that that person should start to think about? What would you say? I think as you start thinking about it and it's recognizing we've been involved in more of these off-sites than we can count. I mean, we've seen really, really successful ones. We've seen ones that are less successful and it does boil down to some factors that really increase the probability that this is time well spent. But I think one of those driving factors is they're recognizing that there is something not clicking with the team. Like there's some issue, some problem, something where we need to dedicate time to focus on solving this issue. Okay, I think that's one reason why we have it. Another reason might be is there is an upcoming event, issue, maybe it's a merger, maybe it's a time of year where now we're heading into budgeting for the next year. whatever it might be. So there's a contextual factor that is driving it. And so I think those are often the two areas. We're trying to fix something or we're trying to prepare for something.- And it could be this creative force, perhaps as well, that we need to think of something that we haven't thought of before. And it's like dedicated thinking, planning time, and also like team alignment time, where a leader can look at it to your point that something's not working as good as well. And maybe the team is working okay, but it's not optimized. It's not there to be able to accomplish the strategy that needs to be accomplished as easily. And we need to focus. And so this getting off-site really helps reduce distraction. And people can just be in a different frame of mind. Now, it might involve a little bit of investment, but there's lots of ways of doing it close by and going to places that aren't as expensive. But if you're scattered throughout the country, coming into having a physical summit or off-site can be very, very valuable. And people tend not to forget these off-sites. And so it matters how you prepare. It matters the agenda, it matters how you spend time. And it's not something that usually can just be thrown together the night before, especially if you want a really good one. Okay, Peter, so keep going, yeah, please.- Yeah, you're bringing up a lot of really good points, but I wanna just double click on that idea of trying to have them in person. Sure, there are circumstances where you can do them virtually and we've been a part of them and sure, they can work, but there is so much that added benefit of physically being in the same room, rubbing shoulders with each other, spending time, because it also allows then for some of that, just the social bonding to occur, which is so critical. Over meals, after the event's done, those sorts of things, and even scheduling in some team building type bonding time during the day can be so beneficial, but gathering physically in person sure has tremendous benefits to do that. So let's jump back then to get the most out of it, you have to be prepared for it. And that's where I think one of the biggest mistakes happens is we'll get the calendar invite out, we'll coordinate the travel, we'll get everybody at their seats at that location, and then it's kind of like, well, we'll just kind of figure out where we're gonna go from there. Here's a little bit of an issue. And you're not gonna get as much out of it if there isn't that preparation. It's really thinking through what are we trying to get out of this?'Cause there's a lot invested in that time, especially if you're pulling people together from different locations. So how do you maximize that? How do you help ensure that you're gonna get some good return on that investment?- So let's talk about the purpose. The purpose of an off-site. And also, we'll keep saying the word off-site. You could absolutely have this meeting on site as long as it's a dedicated space that can reduce disruption. Absolutely. We'll just keep setting it as an office. Yeah, and it makes it very hard for them to run back up to their offices to have a meeting or, "Hey, I gotta check in with this thing." That's the whole function is it's dedicated mental space to being very present here and now with this team. That's what we're trying to create, which is why the physical separation used to be so critical before wireless devices kind of changed that whole thing. So now it's trying to create a off-site, almost more offline is the more powerful term. For sure. So this purpose idea, when there is a clarified need, and that's the key point, I often will then, as we're brought in to help support as well, we'll often say, okay, what's the desired outcome? What do you want to have happen? And inevitably, it's something around how to help the team work better together, how to have a clear action plan moving forward. Those are usually, inevitably, what we need to focus on in some way. Sometimes there's skill development. Sometimes there's education, where you might have outside speaker or internal folks come and share and present information, but inevitably it comes around oftentimes how to help the team work better together and or how to have specific actions resolved, clarified, so that strategy initiative can then move forward. And those are examples, but how to keep, how do you then move forward beyond that? And one thing that we will often do is we want to talk to every person who is going to be there. And whether you're running this yourself or you have an external facilitator, you want to talk to each person who is going to be there because their voice will matter. Otherwise, they shouldn't be there. And so that's the other key element. Everybody who comes needs to be able to have a voice and have had some input into creating so that they know what to expect when they come in.- Yeah. There is intentionality to who is invited to this. And that's so that you're creating the proper group, the proper team, the proper audience to be discussing and deciding and acting on the things that this group is uniquely qualified and positioned to do. And so you wanna pay attention to who's being invited And then to your point, checking in with each of them ahead of time, say, what's working well? What's not working well? What are you hoping to get out of this? What are some things we should keep in mind as we're together? What solutions do you have that we should bring up? I mean, just asking some of those basic simple questions to each person is going to give a just depth of insight so that not only as you're facilitating that, whether you're as the leader or the outside facilitator's doing it, you know where to go, but they're also feeling a part of it and they're contributing. They are an owner and not just a participant of this off-site. So that's a key, just helping to set the table expectations from a participation perspective.- Yeah. And building on that, we also have to always remember that these off-sites or summits, retreats, whatever you wanna call them, they're never not going to be political. You're not going to go into a session and expect everybody to love everything that is said, or not to have their own perspective, or their own agenda in some way. And so we need to be able to embrace the political nature, and one of the ways of embracing it is to get people's opinions out early, especially during the prep process, to understand what's going on, because if you're going in and say you're the one designing it and you haven't talked to everybody or you haven't talked sufficiently and or you do not have at least a few allies in the room to help support some of the just even the the topics, that is one of the dangers of an off-site. You do not want to go in friendless. You need to take allies. And it's not like you're pitting people against you. No, you want to make sure that you're not the only one who is suggesting let's talk about this topic or let's approach it this way. You want to be able to have people who are with you and agree with the agenda, agree on the general purpose, come prepared with it beforehand. Do not assume that a off-site is going to be politically neutral because that is a dangerous thing to assume.- And just to kind of turn that assumption on its ear a little bit, another way to think about it, if the issues you're planning to discuss or work through on an off-site are not politically charged or if there are simple solutions, I would argue this is not the best setting to be discussing those.- Yeah, great point.- As you're really trying to work through and think, what should we be spending our time doing? It's those sticky issues that over the course of just standard work week, the normal cadence of meetings, you just don't have time to get to in the depth that you really need to. And so those are the big things that you're trying to tackle. It's maybe a large-scale workforce restructuring issue. You know, maybe it's helping to build out a new five-year strategic plan. Those aren't things you'd take care of in a Monday morning staff meeting for a half an hour. And so they're going to be topics that are political, that have strong opinions, that are gonna have strong impact across the organization. And so that is what you wanna focus on and dedicate time because you're not gonna get to it any other way. Yeah. So who should come, Peter? who should come to an off-site?'Cause I know we've both been asked over the years, yeah, how many people should be there? And who? And should we bring this one person? And this person reports to this, or should we not? Should, what's the guidance that you give? And I think that's where the purpose really drives it. And it's recognized, and it's not always a one size fits all. And maybe there are components and sections and modules and topics of this off-site, where not everybody's participating in everything. Oftentimes there is a core team, a core leadership team, a core executive team, which is a part of the entire off-site. But maybe for particular topics, we're bringing in a business line leader or a functional leader who is overseeing a certain aspect that has an opinion that's really important as we're making those decisions. And so that's identifying how much of this time is spent for the team alignment side of it to kind of brainstorm, discuss, get ideas out. And how much is the solutioning and the digging deep into issues where you may need some subject matter experts to join for that portion of it. So it's kind of helping break that mindset of not everybody has to be a part of the entire thing.- That's a good point. And I'm thinking through several recent off-sites I've led that had like 45 people. And you can have a lot of folks there, like say the whole top leadership team, and maybe it's 50 or 60 people, that can work. The point though is, to what you're mentioning, it needs to be explicitly tied to the desired outcome of the actual process. And to be able to then leverage the fact everybody's there to foster buy-in. What I also find is, yes, we want to then find solutions, say to a strategic effort. The trick is, though, to not negate other people's cooperation and collaboration during it, because one of the beauties of the off-site itself is to foster buy-in and to allow people the time to process. And so, and we can get into this a little bit later. As a leader in the room, to be able to allow other people to have the time to process out loud and to speak, even if you've already gone through that yourself, but there is that magic ability to be able to allow some time for others to go,"Oh, I didn't think about that," or "Let me share some concerns," or, "Yes." And this, there is a reasonable amount that can be allowed to foster a sense of buy-in. So as we've talked about the purpose, getting that clear, and getting some prep work going and being clear about that, let's talk about the role of the leader. Because even as you're clarifying the agenda and intent, if the leader's not the one facilitating, whoever is facilitating needs to make sure that the leader is one of those friends involved in the process and is in agreement and is supportive of where you're going. Otherwise, if you go in and the leader is not clear, depending upon how he or she shows up during periods of stress, that might be a very ugly situation. So to make sure they are on board and buy in and agree and often can kick off the off-site with the intention, with the outcome, with a exclamation, exclamation, an expression of support and belief that we can accomplish whatever it is as well.- And that's where you're touching on a key point in terms of what are some of the roles that are really helpful to have an effective off-site? And you're highlighting a good one of clarifying who really is the leader of the group? Who is kind of the authority decision maker, who's kind of presiding for lack of a better term over that off-site, but then who is facilitating, who is the one who is guiding the group through the respective topics? And it may be that that facilitator changes based on the module, but who really is helping to focus on time, helping to focus on, here's the purpose we're trying to accomplish, guiding the group through a series of exercises or so forth to help get to that point. And the reason you wanna clarify that is it helps to have that leader know what is my role. Because if that leader is not having to worry about the facilitation process, they can then focus on being a participant and an observer and watching and keeping track of kind of who's participating, who's not a little bit more, when that's hard to do when the leader's also trying to facilitate the whole thing. It just gets, that's a lot of things to be keeping track of.- It is, and it's a great point for any of the participants who also is the facilitator, because they then have to keep in mind they're having two roles. And the trick, of course, is as their facilitator to not convey a sense of bias as to where they're going, and to be able to then help remain neutral to a certain degree. And that's hard, especially when they also need to be, frankly, a very active participant. And this is where having an external facilitator can be powerful on certain topics. And in other topics, you can absolutely do it internally. It's just keeping in mind as you're facilitating, you need to increase that level of neutrality so that everybody's voice can come out and be heard and people can be an active participant of it. And then I'll just mention, as the leader of the group, reflecting on your tendencies. And this is where an external facilitator needs to have a very frank conversation with the leader beforehand to talk about how do you want to show up? What do you want to say? What do you not want to say? And how often do you want to say it? Because if the leader has a tendency to become impatient and curtail conversations, that needs to be addressed to be allowed to be moderated a little bit more. And maybe the leader on the other side can just let things go forever and not come out with a declarative statement. That also needs to be addressed. And even during breaks, having side conversations with the leader saying,"Okay, what are you hearing? And it's now time for you to emphasize what you like or what you want to continue because people are looking to you for some direction." So it's that balancing act on both sides. It really is the balancing act. And at the same time, it allows for the facilitator, as you have that partnership with the leader, to then adjust and pivot the flow of the day based on how it's going. Because inevitably you lay out the agenda, you lay out, this is our expectation of what's gonna happen. We're gonna cover this, this, this, and this over the course of the day, and you're getting into topic B, and this is now uncovered, and this is a much deeper topic than it, and the conversation is very fruitful, and it's very helpful, but now we're cutting into time of what was gonna be next. And so they're also included into making that call. Okay, do we cut this off now because we wanna get to topic C or exercise C or do we let this continue for another hour and maybe push it into lunch a little bit or so forth? So it's helping them be on that same page because you wanna leverage and take advantage of where the energy is going.-Mm hmm.- And what you're bringing up is so key. It's to allow the flexibility in the agenda to happen and to be actively on top of it and to see where the energy in the room is and balancing that against the desired outcomes. How often, Peter, has the prescribed agenda become the actual agenda at the end of the two or three days? How often does it match? It doesn't always happen. In fact, rarely does it happen. There are so many, but yet you still get the outcomes accomplished, but it can be in such a very different approach. And there needs to be this level of flexibility to embrace that as well. I chuckle whenever I see a consultant or an internal person come with like this two or three day, every 15 minute agenda. I mean, it's a place to start, but I know full well, it ain't gonna happen that way. It never does, and that's okay. It doesn't mean we're wasting time. As long as it's focused on the desired outcomes, and you're checking in during those breaks and lunch, and at night you're debriefing, and you're continually adjusting, and also you're listening to the feedback from the people, because nobody's coming to that meeting wanting it to be a failure. People come to retreats, they come to these summits or off-sites wanting it to be successful. Otherwise it's such a bad waste of time and they'll never forget it. So leveraging the energy and the desire for people to be successful and taking their input and feedback throughout to adjust it.- Oh, it's huge. So two points to really kind of emphasize here is one, it goes back to the preparation. as topics, as issues are brought up, they should be prioritized. And so that you're able to then look as time goes and flows, like these were the most important ones for us to hit on. And those are the ones we don't want to run out of time with. So we're gonna put them earlier in the day so that we be sure we hit them and have the sufficient time for it. So there is some prioritization that goes into it. The second part is building in, and this is why you can't schedule every 15 minutes. You know, it's building in the time to analyze the process of what's been going on. Because so much of what's happening isn't just at the level of discussing and solutioning on the issue that we're talking about. It's also an examination of the process that the group or the team, or whoever is participating is going through to get to that. And inevitably, especially if we're trying to introduce a newer process or shift or change a culture of decision-making that hasn't been done, that requires extra bandwidth and space to give that time to process.- I will often call it the great pivot.- Yes.- And when you sense that the group is just like, either not with you or they're on something else, or you yourself are like, wait a minute, is this really getting as quickly to the desired out as the facilitator? And frankly, anybody has this ability, but people don't often think about it. But especially the facilitator, you have an obligation to do a timeout, and you can do a process check, and you can ask the group, from a process, this is what we've just been doing. This is where we're thinking of continuing. Is this the right way of doing it? What might we change up to make this even more effective? What might we do differently? And to get their input and right then and there in front of everybody, pivot and say, oh, then what about this? Here are two suggestions then to be able to continue to talk about in this way or to change this up or where would you like to go? And it's hard to ask the group when you say three to five things and pick, you can do that sort of, but what I often recommend is here are two or three things. Here's what I recommend. What would you have? Just to give them something to react to, because you want to help facilitate and increase the decision-making, but the pivot, that is what a good facilitator can do in the moment to be able so that the folks are like, Oh yeah, thank you so much. this is exactly where this, we need it. In fact, I just did this like a week ago with an executive team. We were all talking about something that each person wanted to then work on. And it was early in the meeting and a couple of person, people had gone and I could sense there was not full attention and I paused and I'm like, let's step back. Is this helpful? What else should we dive in? And somebody else was like, hey, we have a significant meeting coming up tomorrow. can we please apply the things we've been talking about to that meeting? Let's do it. How about let's spend the next half hour diving in and they're like, thank you, this is great. And I'm like, yeah, let's do this. And so the caution is to make sure whoever's facilitating isn't so adherent to a predetermined agenda that the pivot doesn't happen because the pivot inevitably does happen and it needs to happen.- Yeah, and how often have you been a part of these, Daniel, where there are comments made early on, suggestions or issues that then become a theme that gets pulled back in as we're talking about other issues. And so there's also that level of connection and connectivity on things that you're continuing to remind them of as we're going through this. It's like, remember when we were talking about that this morning and here is the same issue here and I'm observing something else here. Like, it sounds like there's actually a separate deeper concern going on because this is now the third time that fill in the blank has come up. That is such a great— because as a facilitator you can pay attention not just to the content but to the emotion and to the room and how people are interacting and you can connect things because you can also do a timeout for yourself and say may I share an observation about the team dynamic. Yup. Especially if team dynamic is one of the desired outcomes. And you can say, by the way, I'm finding that three out of the 11 people are doing 80% of the talking. Everybody here told me that everybody needs to speak today. What do we want to do differently to be able to encourage this? Oh my gosh. Yes. And so this also brings up the point, the ground rules that we wanna set up at the beginning of the off-site. I typically have three. Peter, you may add more, but I often will say, are you being present? So no distractions, being mentally and physically all technology aside, unless you're taking notes and you better be taking notes. The second is to be positive. Not that we're avoiding tough stuff. but we're going to approach it in a way to produce a positive result. And I also say open, open with your mouth, open with your thoughts to challenge our own assumptions. And then I'll also typically add, I hope we all feel uncomfortable at least once. We want to feel uncomfortable. Those are key. And then making sure everybody's in agreement with those and reinforcing them throughout.- There are a couple additional things I'll do as I'm laying that out. I'll call out three animals as well, as we're talking about topics. I'll talk about the elephant, the squirrel, and the rabbit. Because it helps us prioritize and give, you open it up so people can share their thought, their opinion. And so elephants would be, this is an issue that anybody, and anybody in the room can say that. they feel is a absolute critical, like we cannot ignore this anymore. And what's fascinating is some people feel certain topics are elephants and others say,"Oh, well, we didn't realize that." So that's where the elephant is. Squirrels, these are the tangent. I mean, these are like the distractions that are coming up of like, why are we spending our time talking about this? It feels like it's pulling us away from really the important stuff. And then the third would be rabbits or the rabbit holes. And this is where we've been diving deep into a topic for the last 10, maybe even 15 minutes. And it's taking that stop timeout, say, okay, this feels like an important topic and a worthwhile conversation, but it's only been involving two of you. Is this the right audience to have that conversation here and now? And we're often the nod, it's no, actually. So great, let's have a time for you both to continue this later,'cause we're pulling out of this rabbit hole. So elephants, squirrels, and rabbits is another way to help frame that up.- So good. Okay, Peter, so how do we wrap up? There are so many other comments we can keep going around this, and it's really personalized to each individual session, making sure that the desired outcomes are clear, people are involved, there are specific actions that people leave with, and there's an accountability plan at the end. So key at the very end, and I'll also add at the very end, I usually look around and say, okay, if one of the people on your team call you up and say, hey, what have you been doing the last two days? What would you say? And then I'll ask another person the exact same question, another person, and another person. And so we actually practice what people are going to say happened. And then we can clarify what we're gonna talk about and what we are not gonna talk about. And then also, of course, confirming who's following up on all of this. When do you meet again? So there's a clear accountability and action.- Yeah, and I think there's really two natural places for those to happen. One is as we're concluding a topic, a module, is, okay, what are the clear actions that are happening and messaging? But then also doing it again at the end of the event. So that we're looking, so we're not just, great, we had good discussion for the last few days, but do we really know what we're gonna do with this? And that's where that, and oftentimes it doesn't take very long, but having that 20 to 15 minutes at the end to just make sure everybody's in line with the messaging, we're clear on who's doing what, sometimes that gets kicked off'cause we're running out of time. And that is some of the most important wrap up time that we can spend. Okay, as we're wrapping up, Lightning Round question for you, Peter.(upbeat music) What is the one thing that leaders need to do to prepare to have a really successful team off-site? I think the most important thing leaders need to do for a successful team off-site is to make sure they have a clear purpose in mind, identifying what it is we're trying to accomplish during this time together. And then you're able to really measure how we did.'Cause if we're going in with somewhat of an ambiguous thought or plan or idea, it's really hard to know, was this good use? And the team's gonna recognize, we're not really prepared for this. So have a good, clear purpose. So Daniel, Lightning Round question for you. What is the one thing to do to help ensure that actions are clear and are taken after an off-site?- Oh, I love the question because if there are not clear actions, why did we meet? And so we have a couple of choices. After each significant topic, we review and we capture what are those specific actions and the names, and then at the very end, reserving at least a half hour or more to review the specific agreed upon actions, the dates, and the people who are responsible for it. That is going to be key to be able to help the whole retreat or off-site feel successful so that there can be action from the insights that were shared. And that's going to be key, especially around the accountability plan to be able to agree upon, yes, this person is gonna do XYZ, and this is how they're going to follow back up with us at the end. OK, Peter, another great conversation today, all about how to have a successful off-site with your leadership team. So folks, thanks for joining us. Please like and subscribe in the future here, and join us again. And as you always have comments or questions, Please email us at podcast@stewartleadership.com. All the best as you continue to elevate your leadership journey. Take care, everyone. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend or colleague, or better yet, leave a review to help other listeners find our show. And remember to subscribe so you never miss an episode. For more great content, or to learn more about how Stewart Leadership can help you grow your ability to lead effectively, please visit stewartleadership.com.