Camille Rapacz: Hey George, I just came back from a team retreat. I thought we'd just do a little debriefing Q& A session on that instead of doing my usual fancy podcast episode. What do you think?
George Drapeau: I can't wait to dig into this.
Camille Rapacz: You have to have all the questions. So now you have to do all the heavy lifting on this one is basically.
I'm ready. I'm so ready for this. Just handing it off to you.
Camille: Welcome to The Belief Shift. The show that explores. What you really need to know about building a successful business.
I'm your host, Camille Rapacz: business coach and consultant who spent too much of her career working in corporate business performance.
George: And I'm George Drapeau: your co-host and her brother. I'm a leader in the tech world bringing my corporate perspective, but mostly my curiosity.
Camille: Together, we're exploring beliefs about success and how to achieve it. But mostly we're bringing practical solutions so you and your business can thrive.
George Drapeau: I have a tie for question number one, and I'm going to go with, so you've been working with this. Maybe you can give us some background on the enterprise you've been working with a little bit, maybe without naming them. And then I have a lead in question.
How about that?
Camille Rapacz: So this retreat that I just came off of I have a client that I've been working with for I think this is my third year and that's my favorite way to work with clients, by the way, is that I kind of year after year continue to help them advance and as the organizational development.
So it's great because I get to go in deeper, work with different teams. Pinpoint different areas of the organization where I can actually help them. And so this was a team that I had not had a chance to work directly with. I had worked with different members of the team, but I hadn't worked with them as a complete team.
And actually they had not come together in person as a full team ever. So this was their first time coming together. They're, they're all spread out. So there's people in Europe and they're all around, you know, east coast, west coast, us, south. So people were coming from all over the place to come be in person.
George Drapeau: That's a perfectly into my first question, which is you've been working with them for a while. At what point does it, the light bulb click and you say, retreat! I need to get these guys together for retreat. What makes that happen for you?
Camille Rapacz: That's a great question. So there's a couple of things that I look at when I'm looking at whether a team needs to retreat or not. Retreat!
George Drapeau: Not to retreat question
Camille Rapacz: to retreat. We don't have to retreat
George Drapeau: worth of the slough for the slings and arrows of cheap seats and economy class travel.
Camille Rapacz: Exactly. So what I look for. things. Does the leader feel confident that they have the right people on their team? So if they don't, it's not a good time to retreat.
And usually if leaders are resistant to the idea of taking their team, you know, off site, doing a retreat of some sort. Oftentimes, it's because and they may not know this, immediately, but if we talk through it, a lot of the reason is they don't feel like they quite have the right people. And so they don't want to invest in that, which makes sense.
If you're like, I still have some changes I need to make on the team. It's not quite right yet. So that's one reason that a, a leader may not do it. So back to the reasons why. I would want to trigger a retreat is we have the right team and it's time to start raising their performance.
Like really dive into it. If the team shows up as a lot of individual high performers, that's fantastic. But a team alone of high performers doesn't operate as a high performing team just magically. And I think that's a mistake a lot of leaders make. Like if I just put the right people on the team, the team will just work. And it doesn't work that way.
You have to build structures for the team to actually work together as a team. So that's one of the things I'll look for is if I can see, you know what, you got a lot of good people on this team, but they would operate much more effectively together as a team. If we could take them into some offsite event that focuses on that thing alone to develop.
So that's the main thing I look for. The other thing I'll look for is If there are some communication gaps, and this relates to their productivity, but if I can see that the productivity or the effectiveness of the team is because I can see they're just missing on communication.
And that usually shows up where I'll, talk to one person on the team, have great conversation. Then I go talk to the next person on the team and I realized, Oh, do you two talk? Or are, when you talk, are you actually getting into this issue? And a lot of times they're, yeah, we're talking or we're having these meetings, but there's these under the table conversations that they're not having because they don't have enough trust yet, or they may not have the communication skills to do it. Nobody really wants conflict. I know very few people who actually like it.
Very few, yeah. And so some people, they're willing to do it, but that doesn't mean they really enjoy it. And so people will avoid that at all costs. So I look for that as well. Are there places where I can see the team is just not clearly and well communicating with each other? That's another reason that I'll, call that out.
Okay.
There's a third one that I look for, which is, is there something that the team collectively needs to get around? And sometimes that is something that shows up as a reason to do the retreat. And sometimes it is the thing I look for once we've decided we're going to do the team retreat, we need to work on improving team performance.
Then sometimes it comes after that where I'll say, okay, let's work on the one thing that we want to get the team all rallied around. So we want one common purpose for that team to come together around. So the typical one is we now have this, plan for the year and all of these goals and we've all got to hit these goals.
Let's get really crisp on what that is and how we're going to do it.
George Drapeau: Man, oh man, this is awesome.
I'm going to make a really weird link between retreats and something else. And I'll ask you to comment on it, on the validity of it. And I can either tell you, Why make this link before or after you answer. So here it goes. Is it going to
Camille Rapacz: involve Star Trek?
George Drapeau: No, no, oddly not. Even more often than that. Oh, buddy movies.
So like if you think about like 48 hours, classic McNulty, Eddie Murphy movie, and they started as opposites. Yeah. Yeah. Cop and prisoner, basically, they go on this adventure, like some solve a goal they have together coming up with other criminal at the end of at the end of buddies, you know, they go through this adventure and they bond in a way you're telling about retreats kind of reminds me of buddy movies.
Comment on the link there and do you see similarities in purpose or not? Do you see where I'm going with this?
Camille Rapacz: I think I do. So like in a good buddy movie, you've got these two guys who in that case, they're trying to solve a case. Okay. Thanks. Let's say, right, so if it's a cop buddy movie, they're trying to solve a case, so they have a common purpose.
George Drapeau: Well, yes, They're both going after the same guy for different reasons at the beginning. And at the end, they end up coming, together. And what we may think of it was you telling me about retreats, about kind of getting people aligned around common purpose.
The retreat is a mechanism for making that happen. These buddy movies are like, you I know, you're, you're having a retreat, you're meeting people, you know, you're just having an adventure and through the course of the adventure they bond, they achieve common purpose, they find common ground, they come out together.
It seems like the retreat is like some adventure way to do that. And it also makes me think in a lot of the retreats I've been in a big companies. There's always some team building thing going on. You go to escape room, you go do something dangerous, half dangerous or whatever.
And that people wonder like, why are we doing that fun thing? It's not just for fun. It's not just for fun, is it?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, and I typically don't do those.
George Drapeau: Yeah, why not?
Camille Rapacz: It's hard to do them really well. There's two reasons why you want to do that type of a team building activity.
One is, I just want my team to have fun. Like I'm rewarding my team. I just want them to just let go and have fun. And that is a completely viable reason to do. That activity, you should bring some fun into it. And the second one is I want to do something that helps the team connect at a different level in a different way with each other.
And that's harder to, the fun ones are pretty easy to do.
George Drapeau: Top golf, whatever,
Camille Rapacz: Whitewater rafting. I don't know, whatever you want to do. Yeah. The other one is harder to do, so how do we do some activity that actually helps us work and understand each other better? So I will depending on, it depends on the team and what we're trying to do.
The challenge that I have with those is that a lot of people are, I find as I go into this more they're, been there, done that. And so if they hear we're doing a team building activity, they immediately are like kind of walled up like, Oh, here I go. I got to go do this thing. This is kind of a waste of time.
I have so many emails to answer. Like it's very frustrating for them. Yeah. So I really try to gauge closely with the team whether it's going to go well or not because me just saying we're going to go do something fun doesn't mean everybody's into it. I mean, some of the like, I don't have time for this.
So depending on the, type of team it is and what they're up against depends on whether you can really get away with that. What I have been doing the most with this particular company. This is very cultural specific as well. Right. So depending on the culture of the organization, they might be like, this is our thing.
This is what we do. This is who we are. We always do these fun events. It's an expectation. Then absolutely that we're going to do that because it fits in with the culture of that company. And other companies, it doesn't fit in with them. They just be like, well, that was fun. But you know, next time I wish we could have gotten more work done.
Yeah. Yes. That's more along the lines of the, one that I just did with this company. And the way that we do it though, is we still look to have fun in there somewhere, but often that comes the, so like there'll be a, let's just have a very casual get together and go out to dinner and have fun together and just connect.
So it was dinner afterwards. Some people just kind of split off and had drinks and hung out and just, Talk to each other, just got to know each other better. And that happened very naturally in the group because they were all really excited to come together and meet each other. They've been talking, they were, so they've been meeting over teams and, you know, having conversations, but they hadn't been in together in person.
They're like, I can't wait to just sit down with so and so who I've never talked to in person and just get to know them better. So because that already existed, I was like, well, we just have to create a space for them to do that. That's all we need to do.
George Drapeau: I like this discussion because I mean, I think this team building stuff is a significant component of a lot of retreats, but I don't think many people explicitly think about it, what it's trying to achieve and what's the best mechanism for achieving it.
And what I'm getting from you is I completely agree with you. In this case, you're dealing with the population that is dying to get together. They already want to be together and they haven't been. And so you need minimal scaffolding to make them bond. I mean, just let's go out for drinks. Let's set aside time.
We're all going to drink. They're naturally going to want to craft around each other, but it's not always the case. And so in other cases, you've got an organization, maybe high performing people, but they don't trust each other yet because they haven't worked with each other yet. You design some activity that gets strangers to work together and there's that emotional bond of going on an adventure, but I'm not sure that many leaders think about the fun aspect versus the bonding aspect, the way you have here. And I think that's vitally important.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. And I think of it as you know, whenever you're trying to build a team's performance, it's nice to be able to do these fun events, again, there's nothing wrong with them. But if you do them at the wrong time and with the wrong team, it's just going to frustrate them.
And what I have found teams more often, what works more effectively to create the, whatever activity, right, what's the team building activity we're going to do? It's to give them the time and the space to work on real problems that they would otherwise never get to talk about in their everyday work.
Okay.
Yeah. And there's a million of those, there's always just stuff that's like, we have not had a chance as a team to sit down and talk about this one big challenge we're facing in the business. And we're all now talking about it. And it's so satisfying for them because people will say, I didn't know about that.
I'm so glad I now know about that, even though it's not directly in my wheelhouse. It does affect what I'm doing in my part of the business. I love that I know about it. Or I got to contribute to it. I have ideas. Or we don't know what other people can contribute to solving this problem because we don't know everybody's background.
And so somebody says, Hey, in a previous life, I knew some people who did X, Y, and Z that we're talking about. Maybe I can put you in touch with them. So things like that start to come up that otherwise just wouldn't. Yeah. So that's happening. We're working on real life problems. While I'm also observing the team dynamics.
I'm looking for, okay, how's the team? What's the team doing well right now? And what are their gaps that would then serve the next coming together?
George Drapeau: I totally get that. That makes sense that a big part of your role would be to be observed team dynamic. Do you ever think about delegating that to somebody else or asking somebody else to do the same thing with you.
Camille Rapacz: Yes. So typically if I am doing that, I'm asking the whoever the leader of that team is, I will sometimes ask them to not participate in the team event and observe.
But more often, I want them to be part of the team. So sometimes it's a test, like, well, how does the team work if you're not there? And if you are there, and so the team will consciously try to remove themselves. It's okay, I'm just going to not talk. And I'm just going to sit back while my team works this out.
And I'm only going to interject if they ask me for support. But most of the time the leader like I because it's about their team performing well, without them. Yeah. That's the whole goal. We want to raise team performance without the team leader having to be in it all the time. But depending on what we're talking about, sometimes I say, Hey, I want you to actually be part of the team and sit on the same side of the table as them, which is the whole point of having me facilitate is that they can then be part of the conversation.
So it highly depends on what we're going after.
George Drapeau: Yeah. I mean, I think what I'm getting out of that too, is there's these two main purposes, well, at least two main purposes of retreat, which is accomplish some goal you have agreed to do, but also assess the team dynamic. And you're talking about you're assessing the team dynamic and it's useful if somebody on the team, maybe the leader, maybe somebody else also starts picking up the skill of assessing the team dynamic, because that's going to dictate how much you can put on them.
Camille Rapacz: It also helps me to say so if I ask a leader to do some of that, you know, observation, And after the retreat, we debrief about that. We can compare notes and I can see where maybe they're have a miss. They have a blind spot that I can call for them, which is what I'm primarily looking for. Right. I'm always looking to see how can I help this team and this leader identify some of the blind spots they might not be seeing that I can see.
George Drapeau: Yeah. Super cool. Okay. Now my favorite goofy question, I'm going to give you a pop quiz. I can't wait to hear your answer. Can you remember the first retreat you've ever participated in? I don't mean leader or not the first retreat in your life you've ever participated in. What was it? I know the answer to this question.
Camille Rapacz: First retreat I participated in, you know the answer to this?
George Drapeau: Yes, I do.
Camille Rapacz: Oh my goodness. You have a way better memory than I do for these things.
George Drapeau: No, no, no. You're just not thinking about it the way I am. You're going to laugh at me when I tell you the answer if you don't get it.
Camille Rapacz: I, I can't, I don't know. I want to know what you think. Bandcamp.
Bandcamp.
George Drapeau: I mean,
Camille Rapacz: totally true. Yes.
George Drapeau: Walk me through it. What did Mel Hansen, our high school band director, was brilliant organizationally.
Camille Rapacz: He was. He was actually a brilliant leader and he was just leading a bunch of teenage kids. Get through this amazing event.
George Drapeau: When you look at it from this lens, what, you know, and observe what he did, what did he do? What worked?
Camille Rapacz: He took us outside of our regular environment, and so all we had all the time while we were there. So we'd go off site to an actual camp. So he took us away. Oh my God. So gross. It was amazing.
Right. Yeah. We did. We had it rough as kids, George. So yes, we went to this camp by the lake and we, camped like we were in little, you know, cabins and we were there for, I don't remember how many days, how many days long weekend? Like, like a long weekend. Yeah. So we go for a long weekend and all we did was band practice.
But in different ways. So you would be broken out into your different groups and then you would come together and perform together and you were just practice, practice, practice. And then you ate together, you did some fun stuff together. So yeah, that's exactly right. Yep. Go swimming together. So we were bonding as we were, coming together as a team, very large team that we're coming together as a team and we're practicing.
And literally, like all we're doing is working on how to show perform as a team. Yep. We're developing our show.
George Drapeau: The outcome of that band camp would be to learn so many minutes, not even the whole show, but so many minutes of the show. So because there were always all these basics.
And he would teach us how to rehearse so that during the school year rehearsals would be more efficient. So there's all kinds of things he packed into the band camp, not just the show, but how to rehearse together and some technique together and getting introduced to the staff and how we're going to work together.
It was brilliant.
Camille Rapacz: Yes. I remember. It was a super trip. We would learn the exercises that we were supposed to perfect, which wasn't the show. It was our practice exercises, so I remember just I'm now picturing being in the drum line and practicing those just over and over and over again.
I can hear it in my head right now as you say that.
It was awesome. I didn't yeah. I never really thought about that So i'm so glad you put that in my brain because now i'm gonna be able to use that. Thank you very much. I'm definitely going to use that analogy in my future retreats because it's you're right.
It's exactly the same concept. Yeah, it was.
George Drapeau: Perfect retreats and we worked hard And he somehow managed to figure out the timing, like when our capacity was exhausted and then we'd stop and do something else. I never thought about it then, but you know, we worked hard and we worked to capacity and we were at capacity.
We'd move on, maybe have a break, maybe fool around. And they're kids, you know?
Camille Rapacz: He was also teaching us discipline. Because we all had break gotten our things. And then, I mean, we're just practicing endlessly. And like you said, I mean, we had breaks and he timed it well, but we were definitely practicing well beyond anything we had ever done outside of that retreat.
In terms of just focusing on our instruments and our expertise and our skills. That was like maxed out practice time. The fact that he could get teenagers to do that.
George Drapeau: Was amazing. He was really, really good at it. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed that. And I totally enjoyed that.
Probably valid. Right. Absolutely. No, it is. Yes. My first
Camille Rapacz: retreat band camp when I was in high school, maybe that's where I found my love for retreats. Maybe that's what it is. And I just didn't know.
George Drapeau: Organization. I don't know. Maybe the stuff you unconsciously picked up on that, like sat well with you.
Camille Rapacz: Maybe I
have Mel Hansen to thank for all of my. draw to leadership.
George Drapeau: You were already super well organized by that point, but I could see where seeing somebody else like a competent authority figure thinking as organized as you do would sit well with you,
How do you prepare? How do you set up a successful retreat?
Camille Rapacz: Well, the first thing is to really agree with the leader, whoever the team leader is, on what, what does a good outcome look like?
That is just number one. This is a big investment for them, time and money. What does a good outcome look like? So we really focus on that first. Like, what are we trying to get out of this? And Sometimes I have to temper that a little bit 'cause they have much bigger expectations of what we can do in two days or three days than we can actually do.
You'd be surprised how fast that time gets chewed up. So that's number one. Are we in alignment about the objectives and then generally in, some of the approach to it. How much of it will be work work versus fun? What's the balance of that?
What do they want to do? So we come to some agreement on that. and that of course has to align to the objective. And then I go meet with, All of the people, or at least most of the people. Typically I like to interview every individual who's going to be in the retreat because I want to get to know them before we get in the room, because it'll help me manage the room better if I understand who the individuals are and can make some connection with them.
So if I haven't met these people before I go meet with them individually, or like in this last one, I had met most of the people before, but I still went and interviewed the key people. in order to get their perspective on what would good look like to them. So I could kind of roll that up and make sure that everybody was on the same page about what we were gathering for.
George Drapeau: Let me see if I'm getting this right. I'm not being facetious about this. You're saying you don't just bring everybody in together blind. You'll take the time beforehand to individually interview people so you know what we're dealing with or they know what they're going to deal with. But what?
Camille Rapacz: Both. Both.
I'm preparing everybody for having a successful retreat. So I'm understanding what their perspective is. I'm giving them the purpose of the retreat. And then oftentimes I'm also giving them an assignment. So in this particular one, we wanted everybody in their work streams to share what they had as their priorities for the year.
This retreat happened a little deeper into the year than they wanted to, but it was still a worthwhile, thing to do. We're only a couple months in, let's talk about that. And that was so, because they don't typically work together, together.
So everybody really understood while we're all working on all these big goals, we want to hear what every individual is doing and also give them a time to, proudly share what they're working on. So it was both a point of pride for them to be able to, get up in front of the room and talk about their work.
But also was an alignment conversation. Are we all on the same page about what everybody's doing?
George Drapeau: I have to say, I don't often run into retreats where the retreat specialist is doing that much prep individually beforehand. Plenty of times where I get something from my boss, not the retreat moderator, but the boss saying, here's some hard work, prepare these things.
We're going to talk about, but they never hold us accountable for it. And so you have people literally preparing their slides during the first session when their compatriots are presenting, you know, like that. And that's, that's not helpful, but that's not you either. No, no, no, no. Yeah. So
Camille Rapacz: I, yeah. So I want to be prepared going in there because if there's any potential conflict that may come up in the retreat, I want to be able to spot that in advance if I can.
Okay. And I usually can, I can usually tell, Oh, so and so has a very different idea about how this should go. I'll either coach them through that on the prep call. And prep them for how they need to show up or I'll just notify the team lead. Here's what the dynamics are looking like. Here's where I want you to help me to keep everybody on track.
So I'll often give them some guidance and how I want them to help with the team to keep them together. It's a way to make sure that we're actually going to be able to accomplish a lot of the things we want to accomplish and that everybody comes in with the most positive energy they can into the retreat because frankly sometimes people come into these things and they're just like why am I here?
i'm so busy. I got stuff to do and and like the I gotta put slides together I don't have time for this. So I also try to do minimal PowerPoint slides. You can't avoid it, but I've been to retreats where it's just PowerPoint after PowerPoint after PowerPoint. It's just like, is this all we're doing is just watching people present PowerPoints?
It's so exhausting. So I try to limit that. And so if I do have people prepare things, I will tell them I only want one or two slides on X. That's it. And you get 10 minutes or you get 15 minutes and I'm timing them so I'm also focusing on people being really succinct in what they're going to talk about.
And then later there will be topics where we'll say, okay, we got an hour. Let's deep dive on this topic. So there's always a balance, but I make sure everybody's really clear about what that looks like. So in this case, it was, this is what I want you to talk about. Here's the three things I want you to share.
I want two or three slides. You've got 15 minutes. Make sure you get those slides to me by X time. And then everybody does it.
George Drapeau: You mentioned conflict. a couple of questions around this. I guess first, I mean, conflict's inevitable and conflict in terms of like conflicting priorities is part of what we're bringing together.
When does conflict turn into a problem at a retreat and how do you deal with it?
Camille Rapacz: When conflict turns into a problem is when somebody brings their personal agenda of what they think we should be working on and it conflicts with what we've stated we're going to work on.
George Drapeau: That sounds ugly.
Camille Rapacz: And they just start talking and they won't stop talking.
George Drapeau: Seriously.
Camille Rapacz: Oh, yeah, it's definitely happened.
They're just talking. They're like, no, I, and they just keep talking, talking, talking, talking. So I let them talk for a little bit. And then when they keep going, I will literally walk up to them and just put my hand up and say, I'm going to ask you to stop for a minute. And sometimes I have to say it a couple times, please stop talking, because. My voice will get louder, and I will get more in their face, and eventually they will stop.
And then I'll correct what we're doing. It's usually something like, what you're saying, I can tell you're very passionate about, and it's very important to you, this is not what we prepared to talk about. Let's take this offline later so we can keep to the agenda that everyone else is prepared for.
Something like that, and I try to get things back on track. Sometimes people have some issue that has just been like bugging the crap out of them for a really long time. And they've never had like a, a stage on which they could talk about it.
And this is their stage. And they've just decided they're going to start talking about it. For them, it's really, really important, but for everyone else, we're all like, wait, what, why are we, it's completely derailing us into another space. And they want us to go there. Cause they want us to solve this problem with them or deal with this issue that they're bringing up, but we haven't been prepared to do it.
Sometimes what I'll do is in the break, I may then go. talk to the team leader and say what do you think about that issue? Is that something the two of you just need to work out? Do we actually need to make room for it in this conversation? And and I've had times where they're like, you know what?
I actually, he's bringing up a good point. Let's make some time for it. And then I will adjust the agenda accordingly.
George Drapeau: How do you decide on the popular who's going to be there? I'm not even sure if that's a valid question to ask at the high level.
Camille Rapacz: Well, yeah, because usually when I get into these things the leader has a defined team that they want to bring together,
so usually it's defined by, oh, here are all my direct reports. This is who my team is. That's who's going to retreat. However, Sometimes we're doing it and based on whatever the objectives are, we will add people or sometimes we'll add guests if it's something that's happening locally. So, hey, let's have so and so come in for a couple hours in the afternoon while we work on X problem because they're actually a subject matter expert on that.
So sometimes that happens, but usually it's a pretty much a no brainer of here's who my team is. And sometimes it might be a question of how deep into the team, do you want one of your team members, team members to come? And again, it will just depend on what the objective is. So like in this last one the plan was bring as many people as we can together because we've never all been together before and people need to meet each other.
So whoever is really working on this significant project, let's bring them all together.
But more isn't always better. Have had the experience with another team where the team was really large and the leader was trying to be very inclusive. And so, you know, we'd have, I don't know, at times there'd be 20 people, which is a lot of people to just be able to actually achieve meaningful work.
Then it just does become a PowerPoint reporting out kind of thing. You can't have meaningful conversation with 20 people. I would have to do a lot of breakout sessions because it gets to be, too much. That team over time, we've whittled it down. So the last time, I think it was only.
10 people. And that was the one that the team said was, they're like, this was it. This was the right number of people. We had the right conversations. We finally got down to this right size in order to really have the conversations they wanted to have. So it's all about what you want to accomplish.
If you just want to spread a bunch of information to a lot of people. Then have a lot of people in the room. But if you're trying to really strengthen a core team and really get at some key problems. So this team in particular is focused on like significant problem solving strategically. You need a small team.
And even then I'll break them into breakouts and be like, okay, five of you over here, five of you over there. Here's what you're working on. You've got, 20 minutes and then we'll come back together.
George Drapeau: Speaking of which let's talk about time management for a while. So, I find that oftentimes meetings are not time managed very well and retreats are very tricky to manage time. How do you manage time? How flexible are you about time? How strict are you about managing time and why?
Camille Rapacz: Time management. I'm kind of laughing a little bit as you say that because it is for me, it's like the hardest thing to do in a retreat.
It's very hard to keep people on time. So what, so here's how I manage it. Okay. I lay out what I think is very granular way, how much time I think we should spend on each topic. And sometimes that's down to like, we're going to do 15 minutes on this, 20 minutes on this, 30 minutes on this, I'm just, what are the topics we're going to go through?
Even if it's my own section that I'm presenting on, I'll have, I should do five minutes on this topic and then I got to move to this thing in 20 minutes, I will write that out so that I can get a sense of whether it all can even fit. And then usually I'm saying I got to take some stuff out because there's no way we're going to get to all of this.
That helps me kind of trim it out. Then what I share with the team is just general timings, I don't give them that level of detail. But I give them a, here's how the two days are going to flow.
Then when we get into it, how close we can stick to that agenda or not even though I've interviewed everybody, it's still highly dependent on now I'm watching team dynamics. And depending on how well, what, this is a gauge of, is this a high performing team or not?
The more off the agenda we go, the lower that team performance is. And that's because what I'm seeing is, oh, they're having conversations that they've never had before that I wasn't planning for them to have here. So I'm trying to identify already what conversations do they need to have that they're not having in other venues or not having as deeply.
And that's what we're here to have in the retreat. If other conversations pop up, then I'm like, oh, They just brought up a problem that I thought they would have solved already, but they haven't. That's an issue. Why isn't there another place where you're solving? Because usually they're going deep into some very nitpicky operational problem.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: And I'm trying to pull them up a level. Because we're all in this big team event. So what usually happens is somebody go, they start problem solving or they start going too far into the, cause you know, everybody wants to just like, well, what about this? What about that? And they just go off on a tangent on some really small little aspect of the conversation that isn't helping, or it's three people that are doing it and the rest of us don't care.
And so I'll have to stop and be like, Hey, you guys need to take that one offline and work on that separately when the rest of us don't have to listen to you do it.
So the hardest thing for me to do is to really gauge whether this is the right venue for this conversation or not.
The better I know the team and the organization, the easier it is for me to do that. The first time I'm doing it, it's really hard for me to gauge. And sometimes I'll ask them, I'll stop and I'll say, are you getting what you need out of this conversation? Like if there's somebody else who it's their lead topic.
Are you getting what you need out of this conversation? And like, I asked this in the last time and she said no, and I'm like, fix it. She's like, okay, guys, I need us to talk about this. So she was leading a problem solving discussion on a problem she owned. And so I'm usually kind of coaching from the side when that's happening.
If I'm leading the discussion, it's very easy because I know what I'm trying to accomplish. And I'll just say, that's a good point. Let's table that for later and I'll just move people through. I will usually allow for, in the agenda, I build in time where I'm going to do certain things in the agenda, which is kind of these buffer zones in between their discussion topics.
So, for example, when we're going to go into problem solving, I'll do a conversation around what does it look like to do a genuine problem solving versus firefighting? And I walk them through a problem solving model that I want them all to keep in mind when we get into the discussion so they don't solution jump because that's what we do all day.
But I want them to do root cause first. So I'll present that model. And so how much time I spend in there, I can kind of flex it. And that's how I will get us back on track.
I don't know if I'm really answering your question, but usually what happens is that we do not ever stick to an agenda. We stick to the overall objective and agenda, but usually I am making changes to it like on a constant basis as I'm watching the conversation flow.
George Drapeau: Yeah, you answered very well, and it brings up one follow up, and I'm, I guess I'm toward the end of my questions here, actually, but so even with all that, I know for me, I've been plenty of retreats.
I'm sure you've done this where at some point you realize we're not going to get through all the agenda. It's just not going to happen. You've got a decision to make either start cutting short time for the remaining agenda topics, or you cut out agenda topics entirely. Walk me through how you've made that kind of decision in the past.
Camille Rapacz: Specifically, I remember this happening, maybe it was like a year and a half ago, I was in a retreat and I could tell the team really grabbed onto a very specific issue in the organization that they clearly just had not talked about, but needed to.
And so I said, okay, let's take, we're going to take a break, everybody. and I always prep the team leader for I'm going to pull you aside and be ready for me at any moment to pull you aside for any adjustments to make. They know this could happen. before we even get in the room.
Okay. So I'll pull them aside and I'll say, here's what I'm seeing. Here's some options. We could do this instead of that. And so I'll immediately adjust things and present options to them and see if that fits with what they're seeing and what they want to do. So in this instance, I was like, Hey, I think what would be better is instead of going to this topic, we were going to talk about let's table that it's probably not nearly as important as the thing they just brought up.
Let's talk about that one. Let's do blah, blah, blah. And they're like, yep, that's the right thing. Let's do that. And then we'll come back and I'll tell the team, now that you brought this up, we realized this is the priority. It hadn't come up in the prep conversations, but now that we see it, we're going to adjust and go for it. And a team actually appreciates that.
Cause they're like, yeah, this is the most important thing to us. Don't make us talk about other stuff. This is actually what's important.
But also, what's happening there is they didn't know to even raise that as an issue until they got in the room together. Individually, it didn't come up, but once they started talking, they realized, Oh, this is actually a core problem that we're challenged with, that we didn't recognize till we started having this conversation, which is entirely the point of coming together.
Let's come together to figure out what we should work on that we're missing because we're not working as a team. When we're working individually, this issue doesn't show up when we work as a team. This absolutely shows up as something we should tackle. So let's, let's go do that because that's why we're together.
So I'll just change the agenda entirely.
George Drapeau: I think that's worth restating. Like to me, if you ask, what do you want to get out of retreat? It's an illusion to think that we know a hundred percent the outcomes.
Because part of the point of the retreat is to get people together. And when that happens, if they're truly engaged, unknown things will come out that are of value.
And that's what you're trying to set up. You're trying to set up the conversation for things you can't predict and a good leader like yourself is able to watch and recognize when that happens and. Deprioritize the standard things that you set up that were really just, I mean, sure there are valid topics, but they're also a mechanism to get these people to talk.
Camille Rapacz: Yes, and I think if you go into any of these retreats with an agenda, and you think your job is to just force that agenda on them, it is, is a complete fallacy that, that you could a plan an agenda so perfectly that you can actually pull that off.
George Drapeau: Not even you!
Camille Rapacz: No! The only time that works is if the only point of us coming together is just to hear report out after report out and not have discussion.
Which, why are you bringing the team together if you're going to just do that? If you want the team to have a conversation, if you want to address conflict, if you want to have meaningful discussions that tackle big problems, which to me is the whole point of a team, then I don't know what's going to show up because there are people involved and people involved.
Are complicated, so I need to leave room for all that complicated stuff to show up because now we can actually go resolve some of it or improve how they're interacting. But I can't do that if all I let them do is read a PowerPoint slide to each other and then they're like, yay, thanks for telling me. I mean, that's not really raising the performance of a team.
So, yeah, you got to leave room for all of that to happen and be ready to adjust the agenda . You're still trying to get that same objective. It's just realizing, Oh, I'm going to go about it a different way than I originally thought. Now that I know what I know.
George Drapeau: Yeah, it's cool.
I have like six hours more questions to ask you, but I think I should put a lid on it.
One thought. I don't know if it's worth you discussing now or just what, but retreats are expensive. Sometimes people with budgetary travel controls will cut out originally. They'll say that we wanted to do this. We're not going to have people travel for internal meetings only or whatever. And so no more, I can do the retreat.
Do you have a thought about that?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, my thought about that is I think we highly underestimate the value of how it increases employee engagement, productivity, morale, all of that, that a retreat does for a team. That investment is so important. People are so grateful to get time to be together as a team when you do retreats well.
George Drapeau: Yes!
Camille Rapacz: Don't take that out of your budget if you can all help it. The other thing I want to say about this is what I find organizations do now more often is they don't cancel the retreat. They just take it virtual and you cannot have the same agenda that you have for an in person two to three day retreat and just put it on Teams or Zoom or whatever your virtual meeting thing of choice is.
You have to completely change how you're going to approach that agenda because it's hard enough to keep your energy up when you're in person, in a room with your team all day. It's impossible to do it when you're just looking at a screen and faces on a screen.
So when I've done this with teams in the past, we'll break it up. I'm like, instead, let's just do like three half days. And we're going to do two hours. Then we're going to take a 30 minute break and we're going to come back for then two more hours. And no more than like, that's max that you can do and expect them to be focused and present in that type of environment, because I'm missing the energy I get off of being around the other people.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: I don't have that anymore. So you have to take that into account. I know people are like, Oh, you can put them in breakout rooms on teams. It is not the same as sitting around a table with four people and hashing out a problem together or working on ideas together.
That is very different from putting them in a team's room together. And the leaders that recognize that, they're killing it. They're making, they're really building high performance teams. So I think a virtual tree treat is only if you have to, but you've absolutely got to change the way that you approach it.
George Drapeau: Yeah. Agreed. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Wow. Yeah, this was fun. I love how you think about it.
Camille Rapacz: Thank you. Well, and I thought since it was all fresh in my brain and I had just done it, that it was a good time to just kind of walk through that process. Thanks for being the Q of my Q and a session.
George Drapeau: It's my pleasure.
Camille Rapacz: Thanks for hanging out with us while we talk about retreats. If you want any help with retreats, You know what to do. Maybe you're just thinking about is it a good time to do a retreat for your team? That we can definitely talk about.
Go to CamilleRepaz. com slash book a call I do free consultation. So we'll chat for a whole hour. We'll just chat about it and see what, going on with your team.
All right. Thanks everybody for listening. We will be back in your ears next week.
George Drapeau: See ya.
