Your leadership team is the fuel that keeps your business running, but keeping your day-to-day operations functioning soundly is no cakewalk. Leadership faces a constant barrage of problems and issues that arise with clients and internal affairs. With so much happening, even the most meticulous leaders can have trouble focusing on the one thing that can improve your business in the long run: leadership itself.

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If your business leadership stagnates, you can’t make strides for the future. And that’s just what a leadership retreat aims to solve. By allowing leaders or future leaders, i.e. team members or junior associates, to sidestep their duties for a week or so, they can focus on the big-picture idea of leadership management and create a better vision for the future of the company.

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Discover the importance of leadership retreats in this article and plan the function that turns your team into a cohesive, ambitious force.

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What Exactly Is a Leadership Retreat?

A leadership retreat is an in-person, single-day or multi-day activity that gives your leadership or management team time to step aside from daily operations to concentrate on a clearer vision for the future or to develop leadership skills. Some of these are in-house gatherings while other companies choose a facilitator or outside company to hold offsite retreat.

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Retreats can also be either onsite or virtual, although onsite options are becoming more popular due to the lessening threat of COVID-19 exposure. Retreat locations are entirely up to you, so choose something that’s ideal for your team—you know them better than anyone, at least in a professional sense.

What Will My Team Learn at a Leadership Retreat?

The most important idea of a leadership retreat isn’t theoretical or text book-based learning. A successful retreat focuses on community-based learning, interactive activities, and a customized plan. Generic approaches to retreats aren’t nearly as functional or prosperous, so keep that in mind as you plan your next leadership retreat.

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That said, what your team learns at a leadership retreat focuses around your company’s needs. Yet one important distinction is that a retreat should revolve around the future rather than the present. Without this focus, your leadership development and progress can become stymied, and thus, postponed.

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Skills That Your Team Will Learn

Beyond the more generalized approach to leadership development, a leadership workshop or retreat should focus on other skills that can lead to progressive changes back at the office. Some of the soft skills and hard skills that you can expect to dive into include:

• Problem-solving
• Personal and professional wellness
• Team-building
• Leadership skill-building
• Conflict resolution
• Organizational transformation
• Company culture and growth
• Employee engagement
• Trust-building
• New technology
• Strategic planning
• Brainstorming

This isn’t an exhaustive list, as every company has different core competencies they want to address. Catering the list of skills to achieve a goal is the most important facet of a leadership retreat. As such, the planning or consultation phase of the leadership retreat is of prime importance.

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How To Formulate an Objective for a Leadership Retreat

To get the most out of a leadership retreat, you need a clear objective. While this idea is straightforward, creating an objective isn’t nearly as streamlined. You need to really dive into your business and where it’s lagging to formulate a suitable goal.

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One foolproof way to establish a leadership retreat objective is by interviewing management and team members at your business. These individuals are on the battlefront each day and may provide valuable insight into how the company can improve. This might include strategic development needs, personnel and morale improvement, prioritization, or culture.

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If you need to get the creative juices flowing, here are a few ideas for your leadership retreat that can result in a high-performing team once you return to the office:

• Leadership development and team-building
• Action-based learning on leadership principles
• Leadership initiative and implementation plans
• Leadership behaviors to create company-wide “buy-in” of your vision
• Design-thinking, critical-thinking, and problem-solving
• Culture change

How To Keep Your Team on Track

Great facilitators of leadership retreats can keep your team focused and on track for success. However, you still play a crucial role in the success of failure of your retreat. Keep these things in mind as you plan your retreat to stay focused on the goal and tasks at hand:

• Engagement: For a leadership retreat to work, you need to focus on engagement of every attendee. You need to minimize distraction, get people out of their comfort zones, and switch up activities to achieve engagement.
• Goal Alignment: As part of the planning process, you need to have leaders, decision-makers, and key employees in alignment with your goals. Draft an objectives document and get approval from each party so you’re all on the same page.
• Actionable Results: Leadership retreats breathe fresh air into your business, but without any actionable results or ideas you can bring back to the office, it’s an unnecessary expense. Before the retreat or during it, think of ways that you can take the knowledge you learn and transform it into actionable ideas for the office.

The Transformational Aspect of Leadership Retreats

While you may have smaller tasks and improvements on the agenda, the transformational aspect of a leadership retreat is the most integral. As a result, you should push this idea to the top of your priority list. Some ways to think about internal transformation can center around these ideas:

• Accessibility to support and new technology: The more support you can give employees, the better that they’ll perform. Whether this is through new technology or a retooling of how you provide that support is up to you, but it’s a vital aspect that requires your attention.
• Keeping up with industry trends: Every industry, regardless of its longevity or infancy, has trending topics. Whether technological, societal, regulatory, or consumer-based, these trends dictate the future of the industry. Get ahead or get left in the dust so to speak.
• Risk management: Risk can come with great upside if managed correctly. If you haven’t analyzed your risk management within the last year, you could be missing profitability and expansion opportunities.
• Assessing vulnerabilities and tackling innovation: Much like industry trends, tastes and needs in consumerism change rather frequently. You can transform your company during a leadership retreat simply by looking at where your products or services falter and how you can innovate.
• Challenging the status quo: Part of company stagnation is due to culture and employee engagement. But what if this wasn’t necessarily the result of your product lines and more the aftermath of constant assumptions by your employees and management? By challenging the status quo of your company and eliminating assumptions, you can create a transformational edge.

Not every company needs a total transformation; a positive tweak can suffice. However, understanding that a successful business is also a dynamic business can create innumerable benefits in every aspect of the company. You just need to find what needs work and improve upon it. Transformational leadership does just that. And with a leadership retreat, you can get to the crux of the issue holding you back.

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Ideas for Your Next Leadership Retreat

An exciting aspect for a leadership retreat is that it’s entirely customizable to your needs, wants, and tastes. Moreover, what works for one company may not entirely work for yours. That’s when your planning comes into effect.

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You can always opt for a more basic approach to a leadership retreat, but the more effort you include, the better the results. Here are a few ideas for your next leadership retreat.

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Icebreaker Activities

If you work in a larger company, not everyone will know each other. This can create issues with communication and understanding, so socializing is an excellent option. Any icebreaker activity that helps employees learn more about each other is a great option: games, quizzes, or even sports can help bridge the gap.

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Training Sessions

Breakout meetings are another effective way to maximize the results of your leadership retreat. Wherever your team is falling behind—let’s say with social media practices, leadership ideas, emerging technologies, or software—you can put request an interactive training session with an expert that helps everyone reach their full potential.

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Get Outdoors

A study by the American Psychological Association shows that being outside or in nature can help people improve their cognitive functions and mental health. So at a retreat, why stay indoors when you can go outside? A retreat that focuses on outdoor activities, whether it’s team-building, socializing, or even a round of golf can vastly improve the enjoyment of the outing while giving your team time to clear their heads.

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Plan Your Leadership Retreat With Ease

While you could plan your company’s corporate leadership retreat internally, it’s a strain on your resources. That’s when Unicorn Labs can help.

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With our free consultation, you can discuss leadership retreat options that provide high-quality interactions, a strong sense of purpose, and a lasting impact on team dynamics. Leaders aren’t born every day, but in the right environment, you can certainly push your employers one step closer to greatness.