Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Melissa Rosenthal

Getting better ROI from your team building efforts

Your team offsite won’t deliver sustainable team development.

There I’ve said it.

Yes, they’re typically scheduled and designed with best intentions. But let’s take a look at why a single (even if they are multi-day) session can’t possibly provide the fertile ground required for your team to flourish.

There is no “right time” for an offsite.

Teams change. People leave and new members join. Team regeneration is great for disrupting both thought and behaviour patterns. But even with the best luck, your “once a year strategic development / team dynamics offsite” can’t possibly be timed to accommodate all the changes.

The environment too is constantly changing. The rate of change and degree of complexity is ever increasing. Why then would it make sense for a team’s cadence for reflection, planning and connection to be completely out of step with it’s environment?

Some of the most beneficial team development happens when the team is doing the work — not talking about it.

Just like turning coal into diamonds, team strength can come from being placed under immense pressure. Offsites are often designed to be the complete antithesis of this — a place for people to “get away from the daily grind of the office”.

It is highly likely your team operates within a system of interconnected teams. Ability to navigate this system is a critical determinant of success. It seems counterintuitive to create a vacuum by removing the team from the system in order to create the conditions for success.

Leaders typically overload the list of topics and underestimate the time required to cover them.

Offsite agendas are often full of “the things we don’t have time or headspace for in our day-to-day work”. So as a solution we shove them into a tightly packed agenda where each critically important topic gets allocated an hour or 2 to be “solved”.

Consider trust as an example. What is the “right” conversation for the team to have about trust? How much time should be spent on it? How will you know when it’s complete?

Actually the right conversation probably isn’t even about trust per se — it’s about enough trust. It’s about creating bonds in the team where members trust each other enough to admit when they disagree, to admit their mistakes and confront each other about them, to embrace a robust conversation rather than avoid conflict. This needs time and experience to develop properly. It certainly wont be solved in the 90 minute session between lunch and afternoon tea.

So what’s the answer?

Should we throw away offsites altogether?

No.

Time away from the office can create important opportunities for the team to think, debate, reflect, connect and plan. Change in environment (especially if it’s the right environment for creativity) can produce an amazing array of new ideas and perspectives. But it’s not enough.

Here are my 5 tips for getting better return from your team development efforts:

Create a strong link between the team’s mandate and team development effort (ie. link working in the team with working on the team).
Quarantine the time required to work on the team. Don’t allow day-day “urgent” matters to undermine the importance of the team’s development.
Demonstrate commitment to team development by creating a roadmap of activities across the year. Ensure this moves in step with cadence required by the system and the environment. Ensure a balance between at work and offsite activities in the roadmap.
Create opportunities to disrupt the “normal” patterns. Introduce new stimulus — people, places, problems or processes — to challenge the way the team thinks and behaves and amplify curiosity and self awareness.
(Shamless plug…) Engage an external coach to provide independent observations and accountability for all members of the team.

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Your team offsite is doomed… was originally published in Prototyping: From UX to Front End on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Your team offsite is doomed…

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