What does a great Offsite look like?

Offsites – The word that sends fear into a lot of teams, managers and leaders.

What is the key to a great offsite? How do we measure the impact? How do we ensure there is something for everyone? I don't have the answer, but here is one that I attended that was really impact full to me.

Recently I was invited to be a special guest at our sister Team Based in North America. It’s a long way from London to San Francisco, however, allow me to assure you it was worth it. I arrived a day early, which was really helpful to absorb the 8 hour time difference.

On the first day we kicked the event off at about 3PM where we attended a registration received a goody bag with a Lanyard that listed all of the Group activities and breakouts that we enrolled to attend. This Lanyard was Gold, I referred to it several times to know where I needed to be. 

We Broke into “icebreaker groups” this was an exercise to get to know each other by doing a few fun activities to let our hair down. BTW….I never knew we were all so competitive, especially at keeping two feathers aloft by blowing!

We broke up into another group and went to our next activity. We had to complete a bunch of challenges to win bike parts to build a Bicycle. This was super fun and we built our Bicycle with great care knowing that it would be given to a underprivileged child in the local area… I don’t want to brag…. But our Bike (Team: We Wear Pink!) was definitely the best constructed.

It was dinner time and we all broke for dinner to various restaurants where we shared stories and anecdotes about the day. We played a few games to get to know each other better and to create memories. I must admit I was really tired but went back to the hotel excited for the next day.

Outcomes for me that Day: I made new relationships, I got comfortable in an environment that I felt safe in and this enabled me to let my guard down and made me willing to share my thoughts and ideas

Day2

We had a welcoming message from Emily and Dan who did a great job of Mc’ing the event and getting all of us settled and ready for the day. They introduced Daniel Hayward the Director of CSO NAMER

Daniel did a great job to presenting slides that were visual and not wordy – this meant we listened to what he was saying. The presentation covered the year we have had, he highlighted the highs and lows and then proceeded onto what the future looks like for the organisation. He laid down the plan for the key areas that the team were going to be focused on and relayed how we as IC’s were vital in achieving this plan. This was a short and sharp 45 min presentation that hit all the topics with clarity.

The next segment of the summit was with 2 colleagues sharing stories that demonstrated LinkedIn’s culture of authenticity and values (I’d like to share more on this, unfortunately these were closed door topics) which lasted about 15mins followed by a quick break. What I can share is that we spoke about examples of Our Values and how they relayed to LinkedIn.

The Mc’s Emily and Dan got the room settled once again and introduced our next speaker Margo(Technical Consultant), she outlined the new partnerships that the team have set up with our product team to help information flow more readily. At this point she invited a Panel to the stage. The panel presented short examples of how we and TC’s have partnered with them to solve product issues, bugs and improvements. This was highly informative as we had not previously known en-mass that the partnership model had been established.

We broke for lunch with strict orders to be back into the conference room on time as we hard a sharp kick off time. The vibe in the room was good, the energy was terrific. Admittedly, jetlag was catching up with me, but I was feeding off the positive vibes from my colleagues.

We reconvened and Dan Reid the Director of Product Management deliver an outstanding presentation on how the team innovate and prioritize improvements to our platform. This was great insight into how all those product suggestions that we submit are considered and processed. It gave me comfort to know that these suggestions and queries were viewed and not just saved in an inbox somewhere. He also shared some insight with us on how decisions are made and how to communicate with his organisation to provide them with context.

Whilst he was presenting it made me to reflect on how I have previously asked, suggested and proposed product changes and improvement and realized I had missed some of the fundamentals of answering the “why” of these requests….

Like the day before after Dan’s presentation we had 2 colleagues share personal stories that reflected strength of character and resilience. We had standing ovations to these presenters and are thankful to them for sharing their stories.

The L&D team then presented a workshop on Individual Development Plans. I thoroughly enjoyed this as we had a few exercises attached this to help narrow down the areas that we felt we wanted to work on. Best of all, we had to buddy up and keep our buddies accountable for their IDP’s. Yikes!!! We actually had to commit to these plans.

With this the next session was ready to kick off and these were self-selected. I chose the “Three Top Tips of communication”. This was great refresher on good comms, ashamedly I forgot to how to incorporate 5 Dynamics into my emails and this was a nice reminder on better email crafting. We had a “who dunnit” exercise which was great as we as a collective realized that we had to work together to get the complete picture of this mystery!

We all reconvened, and our MC’s got us settled and prepared us for the agenda for the rest of the evening. 2 more colleagues shared their stories of challenge, bravery and resilience which lifted the mood in the room with applause.

We were then wooshed onto a bus where we went to a arcade with “no pressure” activities such as Bowling, Table Tennis and Loads of Games to play with a buffet dinner. We were all in a great mood and then we had a few awards presented where we celebrated great acts that reflected our values. For me it was bedtime, I managed to make it to 21:00 drawing from everyone’s energy

Outcomes and Learnings for the day: understanding our Org relationships better, Reflection of “the Why” when asking for help. A well composed IDP that I am held accountable for and reflections on self of how to communicate better.

Day 3

Usually this is the point where I would hit the wall, but our MC’s got us back in the Zone with a few exercises. A few more awards were presented to lift the mood even further before we broke out into our second self-elected workshop. I chose “Unleash your Discovery Superpower”.

Admittedly I though that I was pretty good at discovery until I realized that I wasn’t doing it all the time. We did a few exercises to replicate a framework we have to encourage good discovery, I found it really helpful to have this structure as crib notes to check and reflect if I have done a good job at discovery.

We reconvened and wrapped up the offsite with Thank you and acknowledgment of the huge efforts this took to put this together. We of course had a Slido survey that we all completed there and then to help provide feedback on the event. And we wrapped up with a mindfulness exercise that encouraged us to help reflect on the offsite.

All In all, I enjoyed this offsite massively. I had the opportunity to Network, get ideas on how to do my role better, improve my skills sets like discovery and communications and Crafted a robust IDP.

But I think the most valuable experience for me was to build relationships and to have time to get together with peers in a safe environment and learn more about them and myself.