4 Tips for Purposeful Team Retreats

Four tips for a top-notch #teamretreat that builds collective purpose, impact, and — most importantly — JOY!

1. Co-plan with a group! A team is by definition more than 1 person, so more than 1 voice should be heard to create the retreat agenda.

• Keep the planning committee small enough to move the work forward (think 3–5 humans) but large enough to incorporate different perspectives.
• Include representation from different identities in your organization (gender/ race/ ethnicity/ age, etc) as well as different levels of staff. Remember that entry-level staff have as much to add as experienced leaders!
• INSIDER TIP: Have your planning committee evaluate a draft retreat agenda for a balance of strategy work AND culture building. Does one strongly outweigh the other? How can you adjust? A strong team needs to spend time on both!

2. Intentionally infuse joy. A retreat should purposefully give team members time to pause as well as built-in mind/ body breaks throughout, not just at the start and end of the session.

• Moments of joy will also help team members calm their amygdalas, the part of the brain that controls emotional responses. When the amygdala is at ease, we’re better able to think deeply.
• To kick off a retreat, check out our favorite icebreakers here.
• For a mid-retreat pause, consider adding to a Shout-Out Wall where each team member has an envelope, and they can write short affirmations to each other.
• To close a retreat, have the team collectively identify wins (both large and small) that they’ve experienced together.
• INSIDER TIP: We hear a lot that these moments are often skipped because there “isn’t enough time.” If this is the case for you, pausing for ONE MINUTE to ask your team to focus on their breathing and connect with how they are feeling in the space is worthwhile.

3. Use a common language or framework to get to know each other and build relationships over time. One of our favorite ways to build relationships is through the Myers Briggs (MBTI) tool.

• The MBTI system provides insights about people’s working styles, energizers, stressors, and communication preferences. The MBTI is helpful on an individual level AND when considering how different people on a team interact, approach a project, and keys to navigating conflicts.
• Read more about using MBTI to co-create psychologically safe spaces, the #1 predictor of team success according to Google’s Project Aristotle study. In a retreat setting, you can apply MBTI preferences as you dig into strategies and systems.
• Allow for all voices to be heard by incorporating individual processing time before sharing out or use a tool like Padlet or Google Docs to capture team members’ thoughts throughout the session.
• INSIDER TIP: If your retreat is focused on longer-term visioning and planning, the Back to the Future protocol is a good framework to use!

4. Close strong. We’re big fans of properly closing ALL meetings, but a retreat closing takes on particular importance, as team members will likely be carrying bigger things to implement in their future work.

• Build into your agenda time to think, “Now what?”
• Remind the team in closing that the team is comprised of both culture (a deeper understanding of each other + human relationships) AND the strategies and systems for the work itself.
• Post-retreat: Team members can help hold each other accountable for maintaining the systems and vibe established during an impactful retreat. As a team lead, you can be the one to follow up on an ongoing basis.