Retreats with Purpose and Impact

Like many of our clients, you’ve probably wondered whether a retreat could be a good thing for your organization. Maybe there’s some dysfunction on a particular team or a specific problem you know you ought to address, or you want to build excitement for upcoming changes in your organization. Perhaps you feel your team could benefit from a longer conversation about important issues, or you could really use a dedicated planning or brainstorming session that just isn’t happening within the regular workday. Whatever the reason, you’re thinking the time could be right for a retreat, but you might not exactly know how a retreat could be beneficial or what to actually do when you get there.

It’s absolutely true that a retreat can re-energize your people, foster greater trust and strengthen internal connections, expose hidden talents and boost knowledge, and trigger new and fresh ideas—but only if it’s well planned, well organized and well executed.

Facilitating Your Retreat

You don’t need an outside facilitator for your retreat, but a skilled facilitator can bring a level of professionalism, objectivity and efficiency to the event that can yield a far more dynamic, robust and lasting outcome. An internal facilitator must either forgo participating in order to lead the discussion or, at the very least, wear dueling hats as both facilitator and participant, which can be confusing, distracting and disconcerting to everyone. Further, participants aren’t nearly as likely to open up and speak candidly to “the boss” as they are to a neutral party.

Expert external facilitators come without preconceived notions and biases and know how to safely and comfortably ask tough questions and genuinely involve and adeptly manage all participants—the introvert, the minority opinion and the life of the party alike. Moreover, the best will serve as your start-to-finish planning partners in creating a retreat with incredible impact.

Before the Retreat

As you start conceptualizing and developing your retreat, you should be totally clear on why you’re doing it, who will participate and what the event might look like. The retreat specialists at Leap Solutions ask the right questions and provide all the guidance and support you need to make your retreat purposeful and powerful.

Why?

A retreat can accomplish anything you want it to: team building, leadership development, business development, planning, visioning, problem-solving…you name it! But to determine your retreat goals and priorities, you must first thoroughly examine the dynamics, characteristics and personalities at play in your organization and the complexities, challenges and opportunities you’re currently facing.

When you engage with Leap, we’ll start with the end in mind: at the end of your retreat, what do you hope to have accomplished? We then do whatever it takes to plan the ideal retreat to make that a reality. We talk to you at length, gathering information and brainstorming, to help you clarify your purpose and fine-tune your objectives and goals. Our pre-retreat activities might include community surveys, individual profiles and in-person interviews with key players. We then draft a retreat agenda that is focused, action-packed and reasonable, and we collaborate with you and your team to finalize it such that every item is tied to your desired outcomes.

Who?

When you know your ultimate retreat goals, it’s time to decide who will participate. It could be a specific team, executive team, board, staff, or some combination of the above. You might opt to include all employees, only upper management, or perhaps a vertical slice of your organization. You could choose to mix people up in order to encourage cross-department collaboration or keep them in teams to tighten cohesion. Again, Leap can be your trusted, seasoned guide, asking probing questions and helping you stretch your vision and base your decision solidly on your core objectives.

We are also committed to doing everything it takes to get your chosen group ready for their retreat. From soliciting their input and eliciting their buy-in to providing complete background materials and assigning relevant homework, we ensure that your people are eager and fully prepared to make the very most of our retreat time together.

What?

What will your retreat entail? You don’t have to go somewhere on a retreat, but a change of view can be powerfully effective toward achieving your goals. While we assure you that a retreat is a priceless investment in the outcome of your organization, we always keep your budget considerations at top of mind as we help you find and design just the right location, environment and event.

Whether it’s on- or offsite, half a day or multiple days, what matters is that your retreat is out of the ordinary, unique to your organization and has a purpose that is evident to each and every participant. A well-planned retreat feels entirely different than a usual workday—it’s less formal, it’s exceptionally engaging, and it brings about a special kind of openness and dialogue that doesn’t happen otherwise. Ropes courses and “Kumbaya” moments aren’t required—though if you’re doing things right, there will be plenty of bonding and fun!

During the Retreat

With expertise in agenda management, time management, group dynamics and crowd control, the highly experienced facilitators at Leap Solutions come thoroughly prepared and completely focused on driving your retreat toward your desired outcomes. We facilitate purposeful, thought-provoking conversations and engaging exercises, challenge your team to rethink assumptions and advance fresh ideas, bring about strategies and help set action-oriented priorities and timelines.

We’re always watching and reading the room, making sure everyone has the chance to speak and feel heard but no one dominates, and keeping your event on track and on time. We’re also taking copious notes to document everything that’s covered, including an action list for tracking commitments, responsible parties and deadlines. It’s our mission and promise that every participant comes away feeling more productive, accomplished and motivated than ever.

After the Retreat

Your retreat isn’t over when the event is done! Afterward, we prepare and deliver detailed retreat notes to you. Then, together, we go over the notes and use them to develop an implementation plan for taking your organization to the next level. We identify and assign champions to the cause—people who won’t let your organization forget all that you’ve accomplished and how you’ve committed to moving forward—as well as owners to individual tasks and next steps. We also conduct a post mortem to inform your future retreats, including participant evaluations about individual components of the retreat and the overall experience.

Your Takeaway

Ultimately, we at Leap Solutions want every one of your participants (even the skeptics!) to feel that the time spent was truly enjoyable and wholly worthwhile. Each individual should take something away from the retreat that enhances his or her day-to-day role and distinctly and noticeably improves your organization. Moreover, everyone should leave renewed and bonded by a shared purpose and direction that can launch your organization to a level you never thought possible. These are the rewarding, tangible retreat results that bring organizations back to Leap year after year.

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Coaching Leaders to Thrive

Smart, dynamic organizations prepare their leaders for success by actively developing them, and coaching can be one of the most transformative, lasting ways to do it. Coaching helps leaders establish powerful, career-long tools for setting and achieving meaningful goals, managing with confidence and grace, and intentionally and continually creating the kind of culture that’s vital to success as individuals and as a company.

Is Coaching for You?

When you’re ready to take your leadership to the next level, you’re ready for coaching. The process can be particularly valuable for:

• Managers and executives in transition. Whether you’re new to an organization, you’re being groomed for advancement, or you’ve been recently promoted, you’re facing new responsibilities requiring fresh skill sets, and you’re likely to have more or different people reporting to you. To come this far, you’ve already proven that you’re capable and adaptable and could certainly manage on your own, but why not get a leg up? Coaching can be exceptionally beneficial during times of transition, and an investment in coaching for an organization’s most promising leaders can ensure that they’ll excel and thrive.
• Struggling leaders. Different times call for different leadership styles. What once worked beautifully for you may no longer be effective. Don’t flail and risk failing when coaching can take you where you’re at and move you to the dynamite person you know yourself to be—someone present, forward facing and vital in your role. Coaching can also help a leader to manage up or even manage out of an organization entirely if the time is right.
• Whole teams and boards. Perhaps meetings rarely start on time or stay on task, and agendas fail to encompass what members feel they should; maybe group relations feel strained, or people just aren’t working together as collaboratively and efficiently as they could. There’s a special advantage to engaging entire teams or boards in the coaching process. By working with groups, coaches can see threads between members; identify, break down, and tackle systemic issues; and guide them toward a transparency and efficacy they’ve never experienced.
• Individuals at any level wanting change. If you’ve lost passion for your job or industry, or you find yourself fantasizing about an entirely new career path, career coaching can bring you much-needed clarity and support in developing a realistic, workable plan to move you from where you are today to where you want to be. In addition, the coaching process can help you discover viable career options, build a better resume, engage in a fruitful job search, and land your ideal position.

What You Can Expect

Every person is unique and every goal is individual, so a quality coach will provide a highly tailored coaching program. The coaching relationship can be short or long term, but six months is a typical contract (renewable as desired). Initial sessions tend to be lengthier and more intense; you might meet with your coach regularly for 1 to 1-1/2 hours in person or on the phone for several sessions before easing off to every other week, every third week, or even once-a-month sessions. By then, you’ll want time between check-ins to put new ideas into practice and get a genuine sense of how you are progressing.

During the initial discovery phase, you can expect your coach to work hard to develop a deep understanding of you as an individual and of your role within the organization and what’s required to thrive in that role. The process may include a thorough exploration into your personality type and core behavioral traits; a 360-degree evaluation of your leadership competencies, including surveys and interviews with people who can provide invaluable feedback about you as a leader; and a strong situational analysis to determine the environment, culture and dynamics of your workplace and how you fit within and influence them.

Your coach will then ask the kind of questions that get you out of your own head to see a new view and develop a new interpretation of what’s possible as a leader. You’ll learn how to distinguish your perception of yourself as a leader from reality and how to leverage your natural state to manage with wisdom and centeredness. Together with your coach, you’ll determine and address the root causes of specific problems or performance challenges; weigh options and walk through decisions; role play difficult situations and challenging employee relations; and translate your own life experiences to the workplace so you always manage from a place of authenticity and strength.

Style Matters

Style matters when you’re looking for a great coach. You’ll want someone engaging and insightful, someone who inspires and energizes you personally and professionally. Look for an expert you can trust with confidentiality concerns and with whom you’ll feel confident to open up and explore strengths as well as opportunities for improvement and growth.

The coaching relationship is an open dialog. Your coach should be compassionate but direct, someone who connects with you and fits you but also challenges you and holds you accountable for the outcomes you want to achieve. A coach is your partner, working with you and supporting, motivating and strengthening you into the leader you want to be.

Your Best State                                                                                                                                 

When you’re ready to envision your best state and then develop, refine and implement strategies to make it happen, you’re ready to Leap! Leap Solutions coaches have decades of leadership development experience, and we’re eager to put our expertise to work for you. When you partner with us, you’ll come away with vital tools for identifying and overcoming barriers, strategies for meeting and exceeding objectives, and interpersonal and management skills that will make your life as a leader more successful and rewarding than ever.

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Organizational Assessment—Is it Time?

You’re probably familiar with Organization Development (OD), but you may not be familiar with Organizational Assessment, which can serve as a vital first step to truly powerful and successful Organization Development. Organization Development is a focused, organization-wide effort using sound behavioral-science knowledge to implement planned process changes aimed at increasing an organization’s effectiveness and health. But how can you make wise, well-informed interventions without first taking stock of the current state of your organization? That’s where Organizational Assessment comes in.  An Organizational Assessment is a systematic process for obtaining valid and valuable information about the performance of your organization and the many factors affecting that performance. Think of it as a check-up, a thorough examination of the inner workings of your company.

Every business is a system of interconnected pieces that can, when put together properly, function like a fine-tuned engine. If pieces are missing, damaged, or simply don’t align, the engine can’t run smoothly and efficiently.  An Organizational Assessment analyzes the fit, form and function of each working part individually and together as a whole to affirm organizational strengths, identify areas for improvement, and determine thoughtful, workable, productive ways to make your organization run like a well-oiled machine.

What an Organizational Assessment Entails

Looking beyond specific policies, projects and programs, Organizational Assessments focus on culture, structure, resources (human and other), strategy, and planning and decision-making to pinpoint issues and harness opportunities for strengthening and progress. It’s critical, for instance, that you be fully aware and genuinely understanding of your organization’s culture—its core beliefs, norms, dynamics, and ways of thinking, behaving and working—in order to determine the types of internal changes that will maximize the health and wellbeing of your business and your employees. Likewise, structural understanding is also critical, as it’s what keeps all the moving parts organized and functioning at optimal conditions. And, naturally, the human resource—the people at every level of your organization—is vital to the success of your organization.

Why You Should Consider an Organizational Assessment

Any company looking for improved performance and a better bottom line can benefit from an Organizational Assessment. It provides stakeholders with key information about your organization that can be used for more effective planning and decision-making. It delivers a realistic evaluation of existing and/or needed resources (human and other) that can lead to dramatic improvement in performance and achievement. Further, it identifies priorities and goals to be addressed with a robust action plan.

The Ideal Time for an Organizational Assessment

An Organizational Assessment is often the most telling and productive when:

• A company seems to be in trouble and/or in pain and needs to figure out how to survive and thrive;
• A company has not changed its operations or positioned itself for growth and finds itself stagnating and/or becoming irrelevant;
• A company wants to grow, but its people only know what they know and thus find it increasingly difficult to rely on their internal resources and
  instincts to move to the next level; or
• A company is in growth mode but has enough foresight and strategic thinking to realize they need help to continue down their desired path.

A quality Organizational Assessment can be an invaluable tool for informing and guiding companies in each of these situations and ultimately positioning
them for tremendous success.

How Leap Solutions Can Help

It’s not easy to figure out the true causes of issues impacting your organization, but the Leap Team has your back! With decades of organization development
experience in a vast range of industries and in both the public and private sectors, we can provide the skilled, balanced, and objective outside perspective you need.  We begin your Organizational Assessment with a series of interviews to systematically and thoroughly break down and fully and deeply understand the
many facets of your unique business. From the discovery phase, we outline a multi-pronged, custom-tailored approach to problem-solving within your company. In our implementation phase, we collaborate with you to design and develop a transformative action plan rooted in your organization’s priorities and desired outcomes.

We can’t promise a magic wand at the end of the process…but we can help and support you and your team as you knock down barriers, make tough decisions, plan, and work the plan to make impactful, positive change for growth and prosperity.