Not a good time. And yet, exactly the right time.
Why teams need time to reflect together precisely when there’s supposedly no time for it.
The other day, after an offsite, my client wrote to me: “Thanks again—despite all the challenges, the offsite turned out really great.”
I had to smile because that sentence pretty much sums up what the discussion often sounds like before days like these.
Calendars are full, resources are scarce, and somewhere in the back of everyone’s mind is the question of whether they can really set aside two days right now. After all, there are plenty of other things to do.
And then a team decides to do it anyway.
What happens during those two days doesn’t sound spectacular at all. People finally have time to discuss things through to the end. Topics that were repeatedly put off in everyday life are given space. Different perspectives become more apparent. And sometimes it also becomes clear where, in the course of working together, people have long since gotten used to something that doesn’t actually work very well.
In day-to-day business, the focus is usually on what needs to be done next and who will take it on. And even when priorities are discussed, it quickly happens that, in the end, almost everything is Priority 1 again. Everyone is in reactive mode, and the sheer number of meetings competes with dedicated focus time.
There’s hardly any opportunity to take a step back and ask: Is our workload actually realistic? Where are we making things unnecessarily difficult for ourselves? Which issues have we been putting off for a while? And what do we really need to clarify together to bring back a little more ease?
This is exactly what an offsite can help create space for.
Of course, this doesn’t happen automatically just because a team spends two days in a conference room in the countryside. It requires good preparation, a clear structure, and, at the same time, enough openness to respond to what’s actually happening within the group.
Every offsite is tailor-made, and yet there are a few formats that I consider indispensable. I particularly love the impact of a “Walk & Talk.” Two people go outside together for half an hour, armed with one or two good questions. And surprisingly often, I hear afterward just how different that conversation was: calmer, more personal, more open.
You interact with the other person in a different way than you would in a normal work setting. And simply walking together often slows things down, while the dialogue fosters a new foundation of trust that carries over into everyday life.
In other cases, the focus is on topics that everyone agrees we should have tackled long ago—an innovation initiative, for example, that keeps getting pushed to the back burner in day-to-day business. Suddenly there’s time to delve deeper together, develop ideas further, and decide what concrete steps to take next. And in the best-case scenario, the energy doesn’t stay confined to the conference room—instead, the first steps forward are agreed upon before everyone returns to their daily routines.
I think it’s just as important for a team to take the time to reflect on its own collaboration. Not just when things really start to fall apart, but to clarify together: How do we actually want to work together? What are we already doing well? What keeps getting in the way? And are there things that everyone actually notices, but that no one has really talked about yet?
In the end, we don’t necessarily have to agree on everything. Sometimes we’ve already made significant progress simply by allowing different perspectives to coexist and by gaining a better understanding of why someone experiences a situation very differently than I do.
It’s precisely these kinds of conversations that quickly get lost in the daily grind. Not because they’re unimportant, but because the next meeting is waiting, operational issues are pressing, and, in the end, attention is once again drawn to whatever is making the loudest noise.
There’s probably rarely a truly good time to take two days away from day-to-day business. But if you take that time anyway, a lot can move forward.
