A great way to do team building is to take the team off site for an activity. Getting your team members away from their normal work space and environment is a wonderful way to help them to relax and take the edge off a normal full and busy day.
I have been asked to help with facilitating and training at these type of off-site meetings. It’s always refreshing to see a company invest time and money into the team by allowing the employees and manager the team to get out of the office and go do something different and fun!
Bringing together managers from different locations is a great way for the director of the division to help the team to have develop stronger ties one with another, not to mention also with the leader.
During this off-site retreats, you can do many different things that help team members better understand each other and to see how they can leverage each others strengths as a collective whole. When I’m facilitating retreats, I love to see attendees come together and create a new vision for their division. It is awesome to see the managers collaborate and develop their very own division vision!
Once, while facilitating an off-site retreat for engineering managers, we took the opportunity to tour the fabrication plant. Honestly, I’m such a nerd that I enjoyed dawning the white bunny suit and touring the fabrication facility with them too!
Personal development and “get to know you” type activities are a fun way to add to an off-site retreat. Even simply playing together, like ping-pong and billiards allows attendees to relax and laugh.
Food. You always need good food at a retreat. Have lots of snacks of quick eat on hand for nibbling throughout the day. But, also look for ways to enjoy local restaurants – either catered or at the restaurant.
As I followed up with a division director after one off-site retreat he commented how helpful it was to have me there to help with facilitating the training and the team building activities. With the facilitation being handled by someone else, the division director was able to really focus on his team and really get to know people even better… All while not worrying about the details of pulling together the off-site retreat, not to mention he didn’t need to manage the details of the activities and hour by hour flow of the retreat.
If you’re thinking of a great way to develop your team and/or have a team-building experience, give me a call and we can talk about what I can do to help you to create an off-site experience that will actually get results for your team!