What is your perspective on multi-day team offsite retreats?

Our reader poll today asks: What is your perspective on multi-day team offsite retreats?

• They’re an invaluable way to build team cohesion and get work done 18.48%
  
• Sometimes they’re effective at team building but sometimes they’re wasteful 52.87%
• They’re usually minimally effective and mostly wasted time 21.65%
• They’re complete wastes of time and resources 7.00%

Offsites are as valuable as you make them. 70% of you think multi-day team offsites can be effective but their value can be questionable (especially for the 30% of you who see them as a complete waste of time). An offsite can only be as effective as the facilitation, purpose, and execution. I’ve seen too many “Let’s have an offsite! What should we talk about/teach there?” situations. Let purpose drive offsites. It should be something like “we need to reassess our strategic plan – let’s do it as an offsite” or “we need to build xyz skills – let’s train those at an offsite.” When offsite comes ahead of purpose, it’s often a waste of time. Additionally, cramming too many topics into too short of a time makes all the topics ineffective. Opt for fewer topics but go deeper on them if you really want to get something out of that time away from the office.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

Did you enjoy this post?  If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog.  It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!).  SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 240,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.