Realizing our potential to become fully developed adult human beings is not an easy task and it doesn’t just happen on its own. At 15Five, we feel strongly that company retreats provide the opportunity for levels of growth and connection that people need to become their best selves. A retreat layered with emotional renewal and peak experiences, which Abraham Maslow believed was necessary to achieve self-actualization, can make all the difference for individuals as well as the company culture and overall business success.

Today, we’re exploring the importance of retreats. We’ve been putting these together since the start, even when there were only a handful of us here launching the company. We still hold them every year and the benefits have been substantial! We explain the many benefits we have seen as the result of our company retreats and how to get your employees enthusiastically involved.

The term "Corporate offsite" makes us cringe, and retreats are something completely different. They bring everyone together to align around the mission and company priorities, and also to build camaraderie and connection in a setting away from the office.

We also see retreats as a way to strengthen a company’s culture and values. We talk about how we design our retreats to do this. Success here involves many factors such as choosing an inspiring location, creating effective content, facilitating deeper connections on the team, and delivering peak experiences along with time afterward for integration.

Have you had transformational experiences as the result of a company retreat? Tell us about it in the comments!

In this episode:

• The ROI that comes with a retreat that can’t easily be quantified
• Presenting the retreat to your employees so that they understand its real purpose - to accelerate business growth
• Retreats as times to truly reflect on and celebrate all the accomplishments that your business and employees have made
• The detailed structuring of a company-wide retreat including where to do them and what to focus on each day
• Candid and inspiring reflections that our employees have had about our retreats
• Taking advantage of great settings, activities, and places that will help inspire and excite your employees
• What happens when the retreat doesn’t go as planned
• Retreats as a space for your employees to connect to their own personal dreams and ambitions

Quotes:

“We really credit the retreats we’ve created, company-wide, the leadership team, and for departments, as one of the key drivers for building an extraordinary culture.” [1:55]

“Take a moment to really smell the roses, to celebrate. In this start-up game it's so easy to constantly be focusing on the next mountain to climb and never actually sit down, have a cup of tea, look back over everything you’ve already done.” [9:05]

“Get some time outside; be inspired by the natural world. We now know that being immersed in nature changes our entire brain chemistry and helps us shift gears into a different way of being.”  [25:16]

“You want to create an arc of experience. You want to create these emotional highs followed by space for integration.” [33:44]

Links:

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A.H. Maslow, A Theory of Human Motivation

Gallup Strengthsfinder Assessment

Via Character Strengths

Double Double by Cameron Herold