How To Plan a Team Retreat – Part 3: Retreats for Managers and Individual Teams

The best retreats help your team feel more connected to each other and more motivated to find innovative and efficient ways to achieve your organization’s goals. In the first two parts of this blog series, you learned key ways you can custom design your retreat to fit your organizational needs and goals, as well as some tactics and topics that can be tailored to retreats for senior leadership and executives. Now, you’ll learn about retreat strategies that best serve managers and their teams. 

 Retreats for Managers and Individual Teams 

Perhaps no single group of your employees work closer together than individual teams. Whether these teams all are comprised of individuals working the same task (like an IT team or a group of graphic designers) or is a work unit built to accomplish all aspects of a project, a retreat can be the perfect opportunity to step outside of the traditional work setting and think about the team, the teammates that comprise it, and the work their trying to accomplish differently. 

Even teams who spend most of their work life together can benefit from the opportunity to look at their coworkers and their work goals in a different light. Retreats can offer the opportunity to work on teamwork skills, empathy and understanding, innovation possibilities, and more. 

 Looking at Teams from the Inside Out 

Far too often, all an individual may know about their coworkers and teammates is based on a small set of working interactions, many of which may occur during stressful situations like quick turnaround needs or troubleshooting and problem solving. A team building retreat offers you the opportunity to discover more about the lives and experiences of your coworkers. Getting to know who your teammates are and what shaped their professional lives creates a deeper sense of empathy and care within the team.  

With these greater understandings comes a higher level of collaboration. As teams better understand the working and feedback styles of their coworkers, it makes it easier for them to communicate and cooperate on projects. The more individual perspectives that look at a problem in need of solving, the more unique, and often innovative, solutions your team will begin to generate. This can lead to high levels of work efficiencies, new product or process development, and overall organizational growth. 

 Retreats from a Manager’s Perspective  

Involving your team’s manager(s) in the design of their retreat can be a fantastic opportunity to custom tailor the offerings to individual workstyles, issues that need to be addressed, or even the specifics of upcoming work projects. No one knows a team better than their manager(s), so accessing and utilizing that knowledge is key when it comes to building the best retreat possible. 

However, it’s just as important to involve the team’s manager(s) in the retreat activities as well. Having managers work alongside their reports gives them a unique perspective on how their employees work individually and with their teammates. In many work settings, managers aren’t always afforded the ability to watch their team work. A retreat is a perfect time for them to see their team in action, spot successes to be highlighted, and notice areas that could use further mentoring and management going forward. 

 Where to Begin with Your Team Retreat  

If you’re ready to start planning your team retreat, here are a few recommended topics and prompts you can use to begin the retreat designing process: 

• Goal Planning – Especially helpful during the transition to a new calendar or fiscal year, set aside some of your retreat time for managers to share organization-wide goals and work with their individual teams on the roles they play in achieving those goals. Involving them in the bigger picture can empower your team to be an important part of the change your organization is trying to accomplish. 

• Management IQ versus Leadership EQ – You've likely heard before that a team is only as good as its leader. There’s a lot more to it than that. Use your retreat time to discover what inspires and motivates your team, learn about your manager’s leadership style and what type of leader your team best responds to, and find ways to connect those in a way that moves everyone forward.  

• Conflict Resolution – Conflict is a natural part of team-based work. The most successful teams find ways to break through conflicts by establishing compassion and accountability. Identify key obstacles, discuss why they exist and how they impact the work and the team, and build ways that work through these challenges respectfully and fairly. 

• Sharing Feedback – A key part of managing or being part of a successful team is learning how to give feedback. However, receiving feedback -- from your own managers, from those who report to you, and from your teammates -- is just as vital. Expand your team’s professional development by learning the best way to give praise and constructive criticism while also building the trust within the team needed for them to give each other feedback as well. 

 The Next Step Towards Your Team Retreat 

Are you ready to start designing your custom-tailored team retreat? Loeb Leadership is just the retreat facilitating partner you need. We’ve crafted a wide range of teambuilding and project-oriented retreats, and would be happy to work with you on building a high impact retreat for your team. Contact us today to get started.