I have been a mid level manager of this team for over 5 years. I have now been promoted to VP last month. (Thanks to the awesome guidance from MT!!) I am looking for some direction on designing my two day staff retreat. I have secured a really great facilitator who knows our department and business well.
I am looking for direction on how to introduce the DISC model to each staff person, (we will take the test prior to the retreat). At the retreat I would like to role out a version of the emails that MTs uses to make our communication more effective. In addition, I would like to have some exercises to build our relationships within the team. I am a high D and hate these, so this is where the facilitator will be really good.
Second day we will be reviewing our annual goals, budgets, roles and strategic plan for 3 years.
What do you suggest?
Kristina
Key Points
Congrats on your promotion. Your hard work paid off!
First, I'd like to suggest the podcast on team building 101. Mark talks about culture change and how relationship building is very difficult to foster with a one time off-site retreat. Perhaps you could spend some time emphasizing the importance of one on one's. Not only between the managers and their directs but also peer one on one's (there's a cast for this). Let them know, you are authorizing the time commitment it takes (that's a common objection to the peer one on one). Instead of team building events one time on a retreat, you could set the foundation for forming long-standing meaningful relationships. If you are really bold, you could even measure schedule adherence to peer on one one's. Make them report it. In my field of process improvement, we often say 'That, that gets measured, gets done!'.
For your day 2, I'd suggest some time spent on policy deployment and how it impacts each and every person in your group. For example, our 3 year goal of sales is $10MM. Great, that's your company wide goal. Suppose you have regional managers. You would then decompose that goal for each regional manager: $3MM from East, $5MM from West, $2MM from South and $1MM from North. This way each person sees their specific contribution. You could also spend the time to break it down year by year. In year 1 we expect to grow from $1MM sales to $1.7MM sales, in year 2 up to $2.5MM and year 3 we go to $3MM in sales. This way the team sees it even further decomposed (read: controllable by them).
Next, I'd suggest to really keep a keen eye on the perception of your management team in the eye of your employees that in the trenches. In fact, I would avoid using the word "Retreat". Perhaps I'm just a stickler but when you say "Retreat", I think of cheesy team building events and "Trust Falls" (only in the states, not sure if the word carriers the same meaning internationally). Lastly, when people that are on the lower level of your organization find out you went on a retreat, they are going to be very upset the next time their request for training, overtime or a new fridge in the break room gets denied