What Can Be Accomplished at a Facilitated Board or Team Retreat?

Planning: More collaborative, consensus-driven strategic and tactical planning

• Examine the mission statement
• Create a vision and direction for the organization
• Develop or review the organization’s strategic plan or annual tactical work plans
• Translate complex plans into one-page strategy maps for aligning the organization, communicating to staff their role in the bigger picture

Teambuilding: Strengthen the team, its capacity to work optimally together

• Establish roles and responsibilities of board members
• Solidify and improve board and board-staff relations
• Analyze, recruit, orient and engage new board members
• Understand personalities and individual strengths

Conflict resolution: Move through conflict, strengthen peacemaking and conflict resolution skills

• Identify what conflict is
• Explore ways to prevent conflict from escalating including managing emotional responses and identifying triggers
• Assess your conflict mode
• Learn an 8 step process to resolve conflict
• Practice conflict resolution tools and skills using scenarios based on personal experience
• Create a plan for managing conflict situations

Evaluation and performance measurement: Strengthen the organization’s capacity to conduct meaningful program evaluations

• Understand different types of performance measures

• Look across your sector and populations served to better partner and evaluate collective impact together

• Build capacity to demonstrate results, clarify the purpose and audience for the evaluation, resources, methods and more

Whole-Scale Engagement: Engage all stakeholders and community partners in a participative planning, solution search, or process improvement, change readiness-type event

• Clarify processes for developing and sustaining collaborative teamwork among all project stakeholders.
• Partnering includes: shared goals, open communication, problem identification and joint problem solving, formal conflict resolution, the evaluation and feedback of team performance, developing a spirit of teamwork and cooperation.
• Potential benefits include improved project cost and timeliness as well as reduction or elimination of stakeholder conflict, claims and/or litigation.

Change the culture or focus for a board or large cross-section of management

• Develop a fund-raising or marketing plan with specific board and staff responsibilities

• Engage the board in broadening the reach of fundraising or marketing efforts
• Define cultural traditions, behavioral agreements, cultural levers for alignment

 

Optimize your time together by incorporating other educational offerings in your retreat. Select from the following topics (with a mix of learning activities and educational content):

• Building Effective Teams
• Change Resiliency/Navigating Transitions
• Developing Your People
• Effective Communication
• Employee Engagement
• Providing Feedback Effectively
• Dealing with Performance Deficiencies
• Coaching for Results
• Understanding Personalities (True Colors, Myers-Briggs, Other Tool)
• Assessing Team Effectiveness
• Running Effective Meetings