With the end of the year rushing toward us, it’s time to plan offsite meetings for 2024 and beyond. While it’s possible to plan and execute a great offsite on your own, it may be time to bring in an outside facilitator to help you get the most out of your offsite experience.
It’s easy to get tunnel vision or focus too much on one challenge, obstacle, direction, or goal for the business. An outside facilitator can look at your entire business with a fresh vision and a high-level perspective that may help you see things in a new way.
You are an expert in your business, but that doesn’t mean you are an expert in, for example, merging two company cultures or organizational design. To tackle a specific company challenge may require specialized experience, and an outside facilitator can bring specific expertise to address your particular needs.
An outside facilitator will get an idea of what your most pressing business issues are by spending time interviewing people across your organization and looking closely at business operations as they stand. As someone with an outsider’s perspective, your facilitator can help you prepare and plan to address your biggest business issues and potentially design the right activities to address your specific needs.
It’s easy for offsite meeting attendees to talk about big goals and metrics and then allow them to get lost upon returning to the office. The right outside facilitator will help identify realistic metrics to gauge success and then follow up with the team to make sure those metrics are met.
An outside facilitator can bring fresh ideas to your offsite and drive increased participation by designing activities that engage all attendees. The right facilitator will tie the activities to your offsite goals and long-term business strategies as well.
The right facilitator can identify obstacles, challenges, and even opportunities that might go unnoticed or ignored by those who are busy with daily operations of the business. These issues might arise when the facilitator is preparing for the offsite, or the facilitator might identify them during the offsite itself. The facilitator can identify them and present them at the right time to ensure the best outcome.
It’s often easy for offsite participants to feel pressured into silence. When one is sitting with senior leaders, new colleagues, or fractious co-workers in a hotel conference room, it is all too easy to hold one’s tongue to keep things peaceful. Outside facilitators have no such restrictions and usually have more freedom to push back against participants. In addition, they can amplify and validate challenges presented by participants.
While it might be possible to generate great outputs from an offsite meeting, it can also be tough to carry those outputs over into action and results upon returning to the office. An outside facilitator can record the outputs, attach them to action items, and document everything. In addition, the outside facilitator can follow up after the event to ensure that participants are following through on action items and producing desired results.
When you engage the Stewart Leadership experts to facilitate your next offsite, you get more than just an outside leader. You get experts in business organization, leadership development, culture, and employee experience who can identify your unique challenges and opportunities and help you focus on the right direction for your business.
Your offsite meetings are too important to the future of your business to risk lackluster or non-existent results. Instead of just hoping for the best, plan for the best by hiring an outside facilitator to lead your next offsite. Whether you’re building a team or planning a long-term strategy, you’ll come away with clear action items and a strong foundation for future business success. To learn more about Stewart Leadership’s facilitation services, contact us.