Why Bring Your Team Together? Powerful Reasons from Our Team's Offsite
Whitney Johnson
Learning is the oxygen of human growth. Learn along with me on the Disrupt Yourself podcast.
Last week, the Disruption Advisors team convened in the mountains of Colorado for a team offsite—our term for a company retreat.
If we are being honest, there was a point in my leadership journey when I didn’t see the need to bring together our remote team. We were effective and efficient with our work and developed strong interpersonal relationships despite many of us never having met each other in person.
It always seemed hard to justify getting the team together because setting up an offsite is a lot of work and takes us out of our daily client service work. It’s also more expensive than just keeping everyone at home.
Then, following the easing of the COVID regulations worldwide, Disruption Advisors began supporting organizations as they planned and facilitated offsites for their decentralized teams (remote, hybrid, or just leadership groups located throughout the globe).
The impact was incredible, and our clients continued to return to us, asking us to facilitate multiple offsites each year for their team. They could truly see the value of their investment.
Seeing the clear benefits the offsites gave our clients, my co-founder, Amy Humble, and I made the strategic decision to prioritize offsites for our team.
A fully virtual team, we have teammates who live across the country, from Washington to Virginia, Georgia to Colorado. Not everyone could make it last week, but the entire team was invited, and those who couldn’t make it joined virtually whenever possible.
We approached the offsite, intending to create a greater sense of clarity, alignment, connection, collaboration, and inspiration.
Within this, we aimed to:
As the list suggests, finding authentic ways for people to build relationships is very important. We are all people first, employees second (or third or fourth), and in a virtual world, it is beneficial to make space for us to simply be human (and not wear our work hats for a bit).
We had fun dinners geared solely toward bonding. We focus on using meals as a chance to build connections because research has shown that the levels of circulating oxytocin are higher after just a single food-sharing event (one meal). These higher oxytocin levels, in turn, promote social bonding and higher levels of cooperation.
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We like to capitalize on that oxytocin.
We also scheduled activities where people would be outside their comfort zones, perhaps at the launch point, such as bowling and cross-country skiing lessons. It was a chance to connect and have fun while providing important takeaways about each other, being a team, and the challenges of being at the launch point of an S Curve.
Having structured time to learn and work through business challenges and opportunities as a group is also essential. Recognizing that people learn and process differently, we focused on infusing different types of sessions throughout our work time and creating visuals, handouts, and activities that would align with varying learning styles.
It was wildly successful, thanks to Amy Humble, Becky Hofkes, and Stephanie Brummel for their planning, facilitation, and logistical support.
In short, it was worth it! It was worth the money, the time, the flights, and the drives.
We moved the business forward. We discussed where we want and need to go as a company as well as what we can expect of one another over the next three months.
We bonded. We developed a common language and memories, realizing we don’t just want to work with our colleagues, but we want to grow with them as well.
Could we have done this all through a series of virtual meetings? Maybe. And if getting the majority of the team together in person wasn’t viable for one reason or another, we would’ve tried our best to make it work virtually. But, there is something uniquely impactful about getting out of your day-to-day setting –– about going off-site and in person.
I can’t wait for our next get-together in August.
When was the last time you bonded with someone over a meal?
How does getting off-site help you grow?
If you were to meet with your teammates in person, what would you spend your time doing or discussing?
Interested in having Disruption Advisors help facilitate an offsite for your team? Reach out to [email protected].
?? M&A Advisor and Business Broker | We 10X Your Results, Your Service and Your Offers | Ready To Sell Your Business? Get a Free Biz Valuation Now | Veteran | Woman of Influence Award Recipient | HIT FOLLOW To Learn More
2 年Amazing article! Whitney Johnson
HR Technology Practice Director | Accenture Technology | Large-scale organizational transformations | Core HR Technology | SAP | EMBA
2 年Wonderful, I am sure you had a great time. I could not agree more that there are powerful reasons for companies to prioritize team offsites. These can foster deeper relationships and connections between team members and help to build trust.
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2 年Love this Whitney!
Grow and learn with me: personal development, leadership, innovation. I am a project leader, coach, and visual creator, and I share all I learn through my posts and newsletter.
2 年thanks for sharing your experience Whitney! we can take the best of remote and in-person experiences if we are intentional in planning the meetings and the goal is clear, as in your great example
Life Science Psychologist
2 年Offsite meetings are essential for off the record discussion about any topic besides the official subjects. Basically it’s an Idea Exchange learn better to meet and greet in person over lunch & Dinner know each other better and develop repo on personal level as well. Best occasion to unwind and refresh the mind.