When it comes to offsite meetings, you’ll find a bevy of articles and experts explaining why these are the best types of meetings. They also go on to share tips on where to hold the meeting and more. However, what about facilitating an offsite?
Having a beautiful venue, amazing catering services, and all the latest tech can be huge benefits for an offsite. However, that’s not really what makes for a great offsite meeting. What makes the difference? That’s what we’re going to share in this article.
The True Key to Successful Offsite Meetings: Communication
The goal of any offsite meetings needs to be communication. It’s all about communication between team members and working on strategies, goals, and more. This is the time when the team comes together to come up with new ideas, solve problems, and make decisions.
But what happens if everyone’s not in agreement on outcomes, feel as if they’re not being heard, and each person has their own agenda? The result will be an office that fails even before it begins.
Remember that each person attending the offsite is a unique individual. Each person has their own personality, a different role in the company, different backgrounds, and even their own communication styles. Your offsite needs to take all of this into consideration.
How can you get all attendees going in the same direction? How can you create a concurrence and unity to an offsite? We’ve put some tips together to help you facilitate your next offsite and ensure it’s a success.
Ways to Bring Unity & Concurrence to Your Next Offsite Meeting
Here are some tips to make your next offsite a meeting of the minds!
1). Small Groups are Best
Renting a venue for an offsite can be expensive. The temptation is to fill the venue to capacity and get your money’s worth. Another temptation is to invite anyone and anyone to the meeting. You may want to include everyone who is working on the same project. However, this is the wrong tactic to take if you want to engender communication within the group.
Instead, aim for between five to ten people. Groups under five may become too individualistic, which means not much will be accomplished. On the other hand, having over ten people make it almost impossible to reach a consensus.
When deciding on attendees to invite, there are some things to consider. For instance, choosing employees by job role, experience level, and tenure is best based on diversity. A diverse group may be able to offer better insights. Inviting employees from other parts of the company may also be a good idea. However, ensure they have the qualifications needed to be productive in the meeting.
During the meeting, it’s also beneficial to work in smaller groups for part of the agenda. After this, everyone can come back together again for a discussion. Each group can work on a separate aspect of a problem or idea, for instance.
2). Ensure Each Attendee is Engaged & Invested
Here, the meeting facilitator can work on developing engagement for the event both before and after the offsite. This can start with the agenda. For instance, the facilitator can work with each attendee to find out what they would like to accomplish during the event. They can review the agenda participant. This process doesn’t have to take long. All it needs is a five-to-ten-minute phone call. It doesn’t have to be an hour-long conversation.
During the meeting, when beginning a new section of the agenda, stop and take about five minutes to discuss what the successful outcome looks like for this item. This method helps to bring confirmation to the group and keeps each person engaged. The facilitator can also use these times to ensure the meeting stays on course and stop unproductive discussions. Getting the meeting back on center is another way to ensure everyone is headed in the same direction.
3). The Social Contract
When the meeting is not held at the office, this may be a great opportunity to diverge from the normal office culture. What do we mean? If your company has a strict business attire dress code at the office, why not make it business casual, for instance? This can do wonders for everyone’s spirits. Relaxed minds may be better able to be more productive.
Offsite agendas may also include meals, such as breakfast or lunch. These meals are wonderful opportunities to help create an informal setting for everyone. This might be a great time to go over rules for the meeting (laptops have to be closed, keep comments brief, and more). It’s also a great time to foster discussions between individuals.
There are numerous ways to help create a “social contract” with attendees. The goal is to make everyone relaxed, engaged, and invested in the offsite meeting.
4). Create a Parking Lot
Parking lots are a great way to shelve discussions that are important but off-topic. These may be essential discussions, but not for the entire group. So, be sure to write these topics down (with any pertinent notes) so they can be referred to later and not forgotten. Then the issues/topics can be addressed at a later, more appropriate time. What’s more, the individuals bringing up these topics will feel assured they will be heard at a later time.
You can use a whiteboard as the parking lot, butcher paper taped to the wall, or even a piece of paper. In this space, right down all topics and conversations that are tabled. Writing them down in this way may even allow attendees to take photos of the notes for their records.
At the end of the meeting, make sure to go back over the parking lot and choose which topics need to be followed up.
5). Agenda Sections: Problem-Solving or Making Decisions
The goal of the offsite meeting is to accomplish something, such as solving a problem or making an important decision. Consider what it’s taken to create the meeting in the first place. The planning, venue cost, catering, and more. Then there’s the work time that’s lost. Every attendee is at the meeting, rather than doing their normal work at the office. This time away is costing them. You want to make sure the meeting has been worthwhile rather than a waste of time and resources.
To help achieve a successful outcome, ensure no one wastes time with long presentations, document reviews, or lengthy discussions (that are not essential). This way, the meeting will stay on course, and there’s a higher probability of an outcome.
In Conclusion
An offsite meeting can do wonders for a team; however, the meeting must be managed and properly facilitated. The key is to encourage communication amongst the team, creating a safe space for each attendee at the offsite meeting. Doing so will ensure your next offsite is a huge success.
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