Why Higher Education needs management training

As a former Higher Ed leader and a longtime consultant, I’ve been thinking about this a lot—and decided it was time to make something real from my musings.

What does it look like now?

Management in Higher Education institutions is complicated. You have a mix of full- and part-time staff (some of whom are also faculty members), interim roles, exempt and non-exempt employees as well as student employees. As a manager, you collaborate with multiple stakeholders — for example, non-academic staff work with colleagues, students, and academic staff (and sometimes alumni and outside stakeholders like employers). Managing teams, workstreams, and colleagues requires a teachable set of skills to do well (and with minimum angst!).

In addition, Higher Ed in the US finds itself in a tough place; turnover is high, with a 35% uptick post-pandemic. Many of these folks are leaving for other higher ed institutions, largely for more responsibility and the pay increase that comes with it. In other words, higher ed faculty and staff are seeking more senior roles, which almost always come with management requirements, as well as seeking more opportunities to learn. In fact, a report from Academic Impressions notes that 71% of Higher Ed employees said they would stay if they had access to more professional development. 🤯

Most glaringly, research from Gallup states that 75% of employees don’t leave organizations; they leave managers.

So what does all this mean?

Higher Ed has a management problem; or, if you see things the way we do, a management opportunity. Many university folks have risen through the ranks due to their deep academic expertise, years of experience, and/or talent and promise — but not many managers in Higher Ed have been given access to meaningful, actionable, effective professional development focused specifically on the skills and tools of management. Given what we’ve seen in the research as well as our experience working with teams and organizations across the education landscape, we believe customized manager training for Higher Ed employees can make all the difference: reducing turnover and increasing engagement and efficacy.

In other words: invest in your managers if you want to shift the culture of your institution and increase the impact of your management-level staff and faculty.

Okay, so here comes the how:

After year running Manager Training programs for teams and organizations in the for- and non-profit space, we have developed a Manager Training series specifically designed for Higher Ed employees, meaning:

• We speak the language: Our lead trainer has worked as a Department Head in Higher Ed, and our whole team has worked extensively with universities. We don’t bombard you with business jargon. We use real, relevant scenarios and we know how to adapt the training to your unique culture.

• We’ve done the work: All of our trainers have been executive-level managers; we have walked the walk and bring our experience to bear during the program

• We consider the range of reports: Our training considers not just FTEs, but the challenges of managing student and part-time employees and is designed for folks who are responsible for all classifications.

• We get your pacing: The design and implementation of the training considers the pace of High Ed and the structure of an academic year, combining synchronous and asynchronous work that is realistic for participants

• We’re informed by research: We’ve combined the best of management research (typically geared towards for-profit institutions) with our deep experience in mission-driven and education spaces to ensure that you’re getting best practices, designed for your actual environment

• We have levels: We offer a 1.0 training program for new managers and a 2.0 program for more experienced managers who want to “level up” their skills

I firmly believe Higher Ed is ready for some meaningful change. If you agree, reach out! Ashley@thegroupforward.com

Can We Debrief Your Team Retro? A Step-by-Step Guide to Reflective Learning Activities

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! It’s the annual look back and learn time of year! 

We notice that between December and January every year, our clients ask us to help them design and facilitate meaningful staff retreats and off-sites.

One of our top rated activities and most meaningful exercises is always making space for teams to reflect on the year, consider their best learned lessons and make plans for the near-term future based on those shared learnings. Some call these Annual Team Retrospectives (or Retros), Team Debriefs or Annual Look Backs.

Whatever you call it — the act of making space for team reflection exercises help pull out new shared learnings and often lead to more meaningful future actions. So here is a quick reference guide of tips and tricks for how to build in meaningful “thinking time” for your organization or team.

First, The Why

Permission to Pause: Why do we need to pause and reflect? Research shows that when we slow down and focus on fewer things at one time, we are better problem solvers and come up with more creative ideas. Not to mention, slowing down can be great for business!

Research shows that employee engagement, empathy building, exhibiting kindness, and reducing a negativity bias are all things that can happen when work cultures create time to slow down and focus sometimes. 

Science of Reflection: Ever heard the term “Metacognition”? Here’s a great re-cap of Metacognition, how it came to be researched as a concept and how we think about it now. But in short, Metacognition is thinking about thinking — and for adult learners, it can help people figure out how to take learning from one context and task and apply it to another.

In my master’s work I studied the concept of “transfer of training” — how someone learns something in one context and what it takes for them to apply it in another. In short, when you make space for meaningful reflection to happen (called ‘critical reflection’ in academic literature), people have the potential to learn how to get better at something. 

Start With Individual Reflection, Then Share Together

Individual Reflection: Before the group gathers to share reflections together, everyone needs to spend some solo time thinking on their own. When individuals come up with ideas first and then share them, we can avoid group-think and gain value from a diversity of ideas and perspectives. 

Not comfortable doing individual reflective work yet? Here are some tips to support you in developing this valuable skill set. Your group reflection outcomes get better when you learn how to pause and think critically first. 

Why Group Reflection: Research suggests that when people reflect and collaborate together it leads to influencing each other’s ideas for change and ways of operating at work. Work-based reflection plays a critical role in on-the-job learning. So let this be a case for why you shouldn’t only run asynchronous reflective activities, but rather push for in-person gatherings or virtual sessions that can lead to more overall engaged employees. 

A Case for Organizational Learning! And heck, maybe you’ve been trying to build a “culture of feedback” (what I might argue is the jackpot at the end of the rainbow of happy and engaged humans at work). Practicing reflection is a very healthy way to build organizational learning. It helps a workplace be more human when organizations are willing to build on learning lessons and normalize the idea that things don’t always work. No one workplace is perfect. And even if you had a “perfect quarter,” the likelihood of you repeating “perfection” is a waste of time. Instead, make space to learn together and prioritize what can be focused on next. 

What Is a Reflective Learning Activity? A Retrospective? A Debrief? 

My Current Definition: A set of questions that compel people to think about past experiences and draw out possible new “insights” from the act of reflecting. New insights might also lead to future actions.

Slight tangent, but stay with me: 

As a professional facilitator, the concept of ‘debriefing’ how I experienced a group’s progress is one of my favorite parts of the job. A good debrief with clever co-facilitators and aware clients will always result in us all learning how to design better, more meaningful gathering experiences and how to better show up to help move a group of people forward.

I’ve been facilitating groups since high school and I likely put my 10,000 hours into group facilitation somewhere in my late 20s…but in the last decade or so I’ve been hearing the term “retro” to refer to group reflective practices more and more often. It comes from the word Retrospective (to look back) and has been popularized from software development agile practices. 

My understanding is that the design-thinking-mvp-digitial-mindset-lean-start-sprint-inspired-agile-infused-software-development-innovation…ness of the way digital start-up organizations work have become more mainstream. 

By mainstream, I mean that I’m seeing more non-profits, government and educational institutions using the language of “retros” for group reflective learning sessions. Huzzah! We have done it! We have found trendy ways to promote and influence organizations of all shapes and sizes to learn together! Who cares what we call it! 

This experiential educator, group facilitator and trained professional is thrilled organizations are building their reflection + learning muscles! Call it whatever lands for your teams and cultures, or don’t call it anything and just DO the actual reflective work. 

Ok, tangent over and back to what a group reflective activity, a retro or a debrief experience can look like. 

So, What Does This Look Like? 

Answer: Questions. Context. Scope of Time.  

Questions:

So first things first — in our experience, there are 4 categories of questions that are most commonly used in a group reflective activity. These days I’m calling these the “Golden 4” in reflective activities. Consider these questions as foundational and a place to start from (you can always get more creative than this, but let’s start here).

The Golden 4 Questions

1. What’s been working?

2. What’s not been working?

3. What am I / what are we learning? 

4. What ideas do I / do we have to improve or change things in the (near-term) future?

Context:

Consider what is the right work context lens you want your team to be thinking about the questions through. You want the questions to provoke and intrigue people to think about right focus areas and topics that will render the best new insights. 

For example, perhaps you want your group to reflect on WHAT type of work activities they deliver on. So, maybe you want the group to think about the services you offer, the products you build or the outcomes you strive for. Then you take your context (what we work on) and map your reflection to the 4 questions above (what’s working, what’s not, what’s being learned and what’s next in light of our reflections?).

Another example, say you want your group to reflect on HOW they are working together in order to deliver on WHAT they are trying to do at work. So, maybe you want the group to think about how they work together in terms of team norms, role clarity, effective meeting practices, accountability or decision making practices. In this case, you’d take your context (how we work together) and map your reflection to the 4 questions above (what’s working, what’s not, what’s being learned and what’s next in light of our reflections?).

And yes, you could absolutely ask a group to reflect on both WHAT they work on and HOW they work together in the same retro (we design for this with client staff retreats all the time). You’ll just need more time to uncover people’s perspectives and ideas since the more thinking you ask them to do, the more time you need to unpack it and make meaning of it all together. Thinking about thinking can be magical! But it deserves space and time to do it well. 

Scope of Time:

How far back do you want your group to think back on and reflect about? There’s no right answer on how to do this, but if you’re asking people to reflect on longer scopes of time (say a full year or more) you’ll likely need to consider how recency effect will weigh in the reflective insights people share. It’s not a big deal, but generally it helps when you pause to reflect at a natural point in your work-life-cycle or cadence of work activities. 

Most Common Examples of Scopes of Time For Reflections:

• Annual Reflection Activities or Retrospectives on the year — we see this most often at the end of the calendar or fiscal year for an organization. 

• Quarterly - you bring your team together to reflect every 3 months to help you do better planning for the next 3 months.

• When an organization is kicking off some kind of strategy work, be it a strategic or adaptive planning process, they’ll often pick a scope relevant to previous plans, visions and activities.

• At the end of a time-bound project, program or event where you can run a reflective learning activity with the people involved to pull out key learnings + ideas for the next type of initiative like this.

How to Run a Reflective Session/Retro/Debrief With Your Team

1. Make a case for why reflective learning as a group is valuable 

   1. What will matter to your group? Craft your argument around what they need to hear to buy-into your reflective activity ask. Science? Research? Data-driven results? Personal or influential stories?

2. Share how it will work before it happens 

   1. We call this front-loading in experiential education or managing expectations in client services work. Bring people into the process by sharing what you think it’s going to look like and feel like. How long will it take? What do individuals need to do before, during and after the experience? What can they expect during the experience? How should they show up? What mindset do people need to enter into the experience with? What will happen with the ideas the group comes up with? What happens after the reflective activity? 

3. Schedule the Reflective Learning Activity and assign pre-Work for individuals to reflect on the questions before your team gathers 

   1. Schedule a time that you’ll gather to share reflections, look for themes, build new insights, and identify next steps together. 

   2. If you are new to this — we’d recommend at least a 2-hour block of time. Teams who do have a practice of group reflection might only need 60-90 minutes together. Meet in-person when you can, virtually if you can’t. Never asynchronously. If you don’t use the 2 hours, you’ll give people time back and they’ll appreciate it. They will, however, be annoyed if you don’t schedule enough time and leave the reflective exercise unfinished so better to block more time than less to start. This is where “permission to pause” comes into play.

   3. Individual reflection pre-work — at least 15 minutes. When you schedule the reflective session, give everyone a pre-work or the homework assignment of reflecting on the questions individually before they walk into the session. They should see their individual reflection work as their “ticket” to get into the group reflection. Personally, I’m a fan of printing out worksheets to write on with a pen, but others will be fine to type out their ideas and bring them into the session. Here’s a simple sample worksheet you can use for inspiration and adjust accordingly for your context, scope of time, and specific questions to get your team thinking.

4. Facilitate the Group Reflection Activity [or hire an outside facilitator to help you do this part better]. The basic steps that will help you use your time effectively and draw out new nights and future actions are the following:

   1. Kick-Off + Housekeeping: Review the goal of your reflection learning activity. Outline the behavior guidelines for the session and review the agenda (how you’ll use your time together), roles, and expectations for the session.

   2. Step 1: Solo Reflection Review: Give everyone 3 minutes to read over their individual reflections they completed before walking into the session. Ask them to highlight the ideas they reflected on that feel the most important to share with colleagues today. [This step gives anyone who didn’t do their homework a few minutes to jump into the head space we wished they took for themselves before the session began.] 

   3. Step 2: Small Group Share-Outs + Key Themes to Share Back: Break your team into smaller groups for everyone to share their individual reflections. Tell the smaller groups that they have x time to share their reflections. Then get the group to transition from sharing to looking for common themes between reflections and to pick the top x # of themes they will surface to the full group. [Example, let’s say you have 30 people on a team, I’d recommend that each team share back their top 3 key insights from each question category. If you had a team of 10, maye you could do 5 key insights from each quest category. The more ideas folks share back, the more time you need to unpack the ideas in a full group format]. Get the group to write their top ideas onto something so they can show and share back in the next step.

   4. Step 3: Large/Full Group Share-Back, One Question at a Time: Each smaller team is invited to share their top key insights per question category. For example, you start with “What’s working” and one team shares their ideas for the entire group. All other teams are listening if any of their ideas are similar they can put them together with what has already been shared to build a quick cluster of ideas. A cluster of ideas shows us a theme or pattern is emerging. Move through each question category until all the ideas have been shared.

   5. Step 4: Large Group Reflection + Learning: Once all ideas have been shared as the group a few full group reflective questions to get them to consider the themes and patterns that have emerged so far. This step leads to new insights and new ways of thinking. Questions like: What themes are the most obvious? What are you surprised to see? When looking at all of this, what’s worrying you? When looking at all of this, where are you most engaged and excited? What clearly needs to be a priority in our work next? 

   6. Step 5: Now What: Based on What We Learned, What Will We Do Next? Based on the answers form Step 4, there are likely topics that the group identified as what needs to be worked on “next.” Consider breaking your team into smaller groups to start making plans for how to improve and change things for your near-term future. This might be a start to what will be another planning session following the reflective session. Reflection and action planning are allowed to be different sessions and mindsets. Sometimes you’ll have time to do both. Sometimes you won’t. 

   7. Wrap-Up + Next Steps for Follow-up: The most skipped, yet critical step for what happens after a team reflection exercise is…YOU NEED TO TELL OTHER PEOPLE WHAT YOUR TEAM LEARNED! Share your learnings! Socialize the new insights and ideas your team has. Socialize the challenges. Socialize the successes. Socialize that your team is learning! Socialize your ideas for improvement and change. Make a plan for how you’ll share your reflective activities. 

Sample Agenda Might Look Like This:

• 0:00 - 0:07 Kick-Off + Housekeeping Review

• 0:07 - 0:10 Step 1: Solo Reflection Review

• 0:10 - 0:50 Step 2: In Small Group Share-Out (20 minutes)

  • In Small Groups pull out Key Themes to Share Back (20 minutes)

• 0:50 - 1:20 Step 3: Large/Full Group Share-Back, One question at a time

• 1:20 - 1:40 Step 4: Large Group Reflection + Learning

• 1:40 - 1:55 Step 5: Now What: Based on what we learned, what will we do next?

• 1:55 - 2:00 Wrap-Up + Next Steps for follow-up

Excited and ready to follow these steps and get started? Or do you feel like you need a little bit more coaching? Should it help, read this to learn about 11 skills of an effective facilitator and bring these tips into your reflective learning activity with your team. 

Pro Tips for Running Reflective Activities With Your Team or Organization

Don’t rush a retro! Caution: A rushed retrospective is like paying for a 60 minute massage and only getting 30 minutes. How would you feel if this happened to you? Cheated? Frustrated? Half relaxed? If you’re going to ask your group to reflect, you need to leave enough time for everyone to share their perspectives, find common ground, build shared understanding and create new insights together.

New to reflective learning in groups? It takes some time to get good at this. But you will get better, faster, more efficient and more self-aware about your team strengths and weaknesses the more you do it. If your organization is new to running team reflective activities like this and you are new(er) to facilitating these types of group conversations, I’d highly recommend 2 hours to start. 

I know what you’re thinking — but Hannah, we don’t have that kind of time! Here’s my argument for why you can give your team permission to pause. I find that the more organizations flex their “reflection” muscle in some kind of regular cadence (be it quarterly, 2-week sprints, at the end of a project/initiative/experiment/etc.) the faster they are able to truly pause, to think, to build new insights and to identify next steps together. 

These teams tend to move into a ‘high performing’ category in team dynamics and are able to move through these types of activities faster because they do them so often and learning is the goal. 

If you’re new(er) to this, I’d recommend you give yourself extra time to make a case for WHY these reflective activities can be so powerful. It is just straight up hard to slow (the f*%k) down and make space to think individually and then together.

Running a Reflective Activity Virtually: If you are running the session virtually, use a collaborative white boarding software like Miro (personal fav), Mural or Google JamBoard. People can write in their reflections before gathering, but you’d need to give explicit instructions about what people should do, where they should write their reflections, if you want them anonymous or not, etc. If people are new to these tools, you’ll need to factor in “on-boarding” / “demo” time — but that’s an investment I’m always happy we leaned into for the opportunity cost of a meaningful participatory experience for the group. 

To wrap-up, though I tried to write a blog post that could be put to use instantly for folks, know that a skilled facilitator’s job is to figure out how to design exactly the right process your team needs to reach your desired goals for the group. 

Hopefully, you see the value in making space and time for group reflection and shared learning. That said, know that you can always hire a facilitator to help you craft and customize the right conversations you know your team needs to have. Hiring a facilitator means you can let someone else focus on the right processes while the team in the room gets to focus on the right content. 

Oh and we love it, like we really love it. Hopefully our passion and excitement for nerdy processes jump off the screen for you today…so put us to work to help your teams with reflective learning activities! 

Stop Calling It a Staff Retreat: Ideas For Virtual Staff Gatherings During a Pandemic

Ahhh, Staff Retreats. Off-sites. Team Building Meetings. Remember what it was like to actually go “off site”—somewhere different—and “away” from the normal day-to-day grind of your workplace? Maybe you even had a budget for an experience that was designed to create team cohesion, excite your staff, or show appreciation for their hard work. But now, months into a global pandemic, with many worker bees “WFH,” can you really call these types of employee experiences “retreats” anymore?  

My answer: no. They’re not retreats. There’s no “retreating” going on. In this environment, you can't promise or control for an experience where your team feels the benefits of an “in real-life” retreat. 

So should you skip your all-staff gathering until this pandemic is over? Of course not! You can absolutely design a meaningful staff experience that meets your goals; just don’t call it a retreat. Instead, figure out the purpose of the gathering, use creativity to go beyond the virtual void your team might feel in a time of cognitive load, and give it a great name. More than a new name though—your all-staff or leadership team gatherings shouldn’t feel like any typical “meeting.”

Below is a list of what nine months of designing and facilitating virtual staff gatherings have taught me. I’ve provided my top learnings in a list format first for those who don’t have the time or headspace for details and examples. If you have more time or know you’ll be planning a staff gathering soon, keep reading the fine print because this post is for you!

How to plan a virtual company retreat or staff gathering: 

1. Articulate the Gathering’s Purpose + Be Realistic: Have clear goals + Design for the virtual void.

2. Timing Matters: Break up your meeting times, Use existing blocked time in everyone’s calendar, Give staff time to process + Provide a pre-written OOO message for your team.

3. Gatherings Like This Need to Feel Different Than All Your Other Meetings: Put something in their hands + Thoughtful pre-work.

4. Session Design Should be Responsive: Ask for feedback early + often. Respond and design for what you hear.

5. A Small and Mighty Planning Team: Work with a team that can make quick decisions with full authority and autonomy.

6. Teams that Meet Should Eat: Spend money on food for your team during the gathering.

7. Content Matters: Read on for helpful themes and topics I’m seeing across different organizations for all staff + Leadership team gatherings.

8. Hire an Outside Retreat Facilitator to Do It All for You: You’ll be able to focus on your team and a skilled facilitator will do the rest.

That’s the short list! If you have time, keep reading for more details and examples.

1. Articulate the Staff Gathering’s Purpose + Be Realistic:

• Have Clear Goals: What are your goals for the staff gathering? What does success look like at the end of the experience? What are your experiential goals—how do you want people feeling leading up to, during, and as a result of gathering together? Answer these questions clearly and you’ll be able to focus your planning time. These answers will also help you name or brand the entire experience better: It’s not a retreat, but rather a… (session, meeting, conversation, experience, gathering, convening).

• Designing for the Virtual Void: Based on how you answer the above questions, make sure you acknowledge that some elements of your session won’t translate to the virtual void. For example, it can be difficult—no matter how good you are at facilitating—to design a “casual” experience on Zoom. Spontaneity has a different context. And, because things tend to take longer in the virtual realm, your office retreat agenda should be spacious. Cramming too much into your agenda means you’ll end up cutting people off or cutting sessions you promised. Instead, keep your retreat agenda tight on topics and generous on time.

  Examples for designing for the virtual void (this is all about engaging for your participants): 

• The sessions themselves need to have at least a 5-10 minute break every 60 minutes or a 15 minutes break every 90 minutes.  These are absolute minimum requirements on breaks. Every time we trim back or skip a break—I regret it. 

• You should add elements of movement into your session design—like a walk of some kind (and with some creativity you can connect a walking activity to content of your staff retreat like a guided mindfulness stroll or partner prompt walk and talk activities).

• Make it “analog” in some way, so invite folks to engage with drawing/sketching or physical props that match the activities and conversations you’re planning to have.

• You have to have to have “camera off” portions of your session. You need to prompt “you can go off camera for x amount of time” or invite folks to be on camera for only specific activities. No one is supposed to be “on” (tv!) for 8 hours a day. No one!

2. Timing Matters:

Okay—I hope it’s obvious to us all now, but just in case, I’m going to say it: No, your staff gathering should not run from 9am to 5pm with two 15-minute breaks and a one-hour lunch. These are not normal times—even “Work From Home” doesn’t mean the same thing as it did before the pandemic so know that your session design should look nothing like the typical corporate staff retreat or regular meeting. In my experience, staff gatherings should last no longer than four hours in one work day.  Therefore, I recommend spreading your staff gathering over two or three days, creating both momentum and space. Articulate how the sessions thematically fit together, but design for space and generous timing in your agenda.

• In those four hours, one hour should be dedicated to community/team-building activities that are both casual and intentional (check out skill 9 in this blog article on facilitation I wrote a few years ago for some specific company retreat ideas). 

• Two out of the remaining three hours should be designed for individual reflection, pair conversations, or small breakout group work to deepen personal learning + connect insights to team oriented action + future work. Virtual breakout groups for the win!

• One hour maximum can be “talking at” staff in some way—but I recommend breaking that up into smaller chunks of time. If you do any version of “talking at” your staff, stick to “rule of 5”—find a way to create engagement every 5 minutes. Engagement in virtual session design can be things like virtual polling tools, word cloud feedback or prompt questions and wait for responses on a shared chat platform (like Slack, Teams or Zoom chat). 

Examples of great session designs with thoughtful time considerations:

• Break the sessions up: You don’t have to run your sessions concurrently; you can spread them out over a few weeks Session 1— Week 1, Session 2—Week 2, Session 3—Week 3, and so on). Go for momentum and build an experience/narrative arc that your teams can follow. Show the group how all the sessions fit together to meet your goals, even though they are spread out over time. 

  Example: Team Gathering - Name: Our Shared Past, Present and Future

  • Session 1: Reflect on 2021 - what’s been working + what needs work

  • Session 2: Current State - inventory of tools, structures + processes

  • Session 3: Vision for 2022 and quarterly planning 

  Examples for how to use time to fit your team culture:

  • Use existing calendar meeting time: Consider using time for your staff gathering that everyone is holding in their calendar for an existing meeting. Sure, you might need to add some additional time to the “standing meeting” times but people will appreciate not taking more time away from their regular work schedule.

• Give staff time to process: A bold idea: On the days where you run staff gatherings, ask your staff to take the rest of the day off, or offer them flexibility to take time off later that week. The sentiment comes from what an “off-site” can feel like when team members get extra time off between sessions, travel to the venue or home, or extended time off. If you can, give permission to your team to unplug on the days of the department retreat. 

• Make OOO easier: During your opening remarks, forward everyone an “Out Of Office” email they can copy and paste. It will give your team permission to not have to multi-task and focus on the sessions you want them fully present for.  

3. Staff Gatherings Like This Need to Feel Different Than All Other Meetings:

The brain craves novelty, so design your staff gathering to be different from the virtual norms and typical meetings, no matter how well you’ve mastered effective meeting planning. Your team is craving something different. Give it to them! It will help your team and will elevate the content you’re focusing on.

Examples for how to make your virtual staff gathering feel different then your typical meetings:

• Put something in their hands: For a few clients, we put together staff care packages with a personalized note inside of each package explaining how we would use its contents. We include materials for the specific activities we planned, nutritious and sugary snacks, fidget tools, and company swag. We send the packages to the team members in advance of the sessions and tell them to keep the packages close by. These packages make the sessions feel different (there’s the novelty factor), help build community (since everyone received the same package), and help team members feel appreciated (the packages were accompanied by a hand written note of appreciation). 

• Thoughtful Pre-Work: Be thoughtful about asking your team to prepare anything for the gathering. If you ask them to do pre-work, make sure it’s compelling, a light time commitment (nothing more than 20 minutes total), and energizing instead of draining. 

• Pre-Work Example: In a recent staff gathering, the organization wanted to reflect on their “Work From Home” norms and approaches. The pre-work was to interview someone in your life (outside of your workplace) to learn how they are approaching work from home. We provided a guide that included interview questions to prompt inspiration. Team members were instructed to bring the interview insights to the session and be ready to share what they found interesting. Asking the group to empathetically listen to someone in their life who is experiencing something similar yet different than them created a more engaged and intrigued team ready to think about new ways of working.

4. Session Design Should Be Responsive:

What if you only planned some of your sessions and left some to design in response to real-time staff feedback? While this structure is bold and even a little scary, it works. In a time where you can’t really get the same “finger on the pulse” that in-person experiences can give you, it pays to respond to current needs. So run the sessions you know you need to run, but solicit feedback early and often, and let your team know that the feedback they provide will influence the design of the future sessions. We can all agree that the reality of working from home in the pandemic brings stress and boredom, so ask your team how they're doing and give them what they need. Figure out what can’t change, then identify and plan for the flexible elements of your design, solicit feedback, and be responsive. It will go a long way in boosting team morale when you ask people what they want and then give it (even some of it) to them. 

Example of responsive facilitation design:

• You set the objectives of the sessions + the times (Example: Day 1:2 hours, Day 2:2 hours)

• Day 1 if fully planned and scheduled. Day 2 is 50% planned. The remaining 50% is open for one of 3 different options you’ve planned

• At the end of Day 1, you can solicit feedback you’ll use to choose the plan for Day 2 (maybe you offer voting on the 3 options, maybe you ask generally, maybe you’re flexible enough to design something new based on what your team says they need).

5. A Small and Mighty Planning Team:

When designing a staff gathering, work with a small, dynamic team who are hungry to show up and give their colleagues a meaningful experience.  The best work retreat ideas come from committed teams. Ideally, your planning team is made up of folks who have the authority to make quick decisions. To get started, the planning team should ask staff questions that will inform the design of the gathering, things like: When is the best time to meet (dates and times of day)? What do team members need most this week/this month/at this point in the pandemic?

6. Teams that Meet Should Eat!

It’s simple: Make sure your team is fed during your session. Budget for your team members to expense food delivery and healthy snacks to eat during your staff gatherings. Better yet, re-imagine how your team can virtually “share” a culinary experience. The sentiment here is to share something that is “in real life” even though you are meeting virtually. 

Example from a recent client all-staff gathering The Group Forward designed:

• Context: The organization had remote and distributed teams across the US (with different time zones too).

• Activity: We sent a survey out to all attendees asking them what cuisine they would want to indulge in for a virtual team dining experience; the top choice was our food “theme” for the gathering. We chose a time that worked (some were eating breakfast while others were eating lunch); each participant ordered the same type of food, and the teams were able to share a tasting experience together. 

• Recipe share activity: To further solidify food as a team-building experience, each team member shares a family recipe related to a recent holiday. We compiled all the recipes in a shareable document, which generated excitement to try out new recipes. 

7. Content Matters:

Since I don’t work where you work, it’s hard to make all the relevant recommendations in this space (as you’ll notice, most of what I’ve written here so far is about the process, set-up, and experience design…). That said, your staff gathering content also needs to kick ass. 

Here are some helpful, relevant and inspiring content topics that I’ve seen come up for all-staff and leadership team gatherings from multiple organizations:

• Learning Organizations are Healthy: How has your team been doing under virtual working conditions? And how are you getting ready for a hybrid work-place reality? Could you run a team retrospective to learn what’s been working, what hasn’t, and what’s next?

• Make More Progress with Diversity and Inclusion Work: How does DEI + REI show up in your 2022 annual planning? What’s most important to the values of your organization and your team’s priorities? 

• Walking the Talk on Wellness, Mental Health + Burnout: How can your gathering incorporate best practices, tools, and skills around these themes?

• Operating on a Shorter Planning Cycle: “Back to normal” is unknown, so how are you adjusting your strategy? 

• Your Organizational Pivot: How have we pivoted during the pandemic, and what’s our next move?  How do we continue to build in resiliency into our structure, processes, and culture?

• Community-Building: How is your organization connecting? What do they need from each other to do your best work in 2022? Maybe its skill sharing, talent mapping, curated breakout groups, or intriguing “get to know you” activities? 

8. Shameless Plug: Hire an Outside Facilitator to Do It All for You:

Obviously, I can’t remove my bias here, but let me put it this way: Professional facilitators love designing and facilitating these types of staff experiences. We love love love this stuff like a wedding planner loves spreadsheets. Like America loves “Friends” reruns. Like when your baby sleeps through the night for the first time. You get the point—facilitators live for this stuff. And, let’s be honest here—you’ve been at this unrelenting and all consuming (dare I say unsustainable?) work pace for over two years. You’re a human being, and you’re really tired. You have a lot of “business as usual in a new normal reality” to manage. Stop dragging your feet and hire a facilitator who will breathe new energy into your staff gathering and design sessions your team will appreciate. 

I can spend a lot of time listing out the benefits of hiring someone like me and my team of facilitators to design and run your staff gathering but I wanted to start with how we make it easier for you to do your job. So, once you hire a facilitator to run your staff gathering, it means you can a) stop worrying, b) give yourself permission to really participate in the experience and let someone else guide the process, and c) focus on everything else you need to focus on in your organization. Oh and plus, you can afford us—you don’t have to spend any money on travel or venue rentals! Instead, spend the money on a facilitator who can help.

Conclusion: 

So there you have it. Plan your all-staff gatherings to have purpose, and be realistic with what you can accomplish in the virtual void. Give it a good name. Design the timing of your gathering with staff input and don’t overstretch your team.

The brain craves novelty, so make sure your design feels different than any other meetings you’re currently running. Be responsive—ask for feedback and use the feedback you get, even if you don’t agree with it. People love food; send them some or expense their food delivery. Make sure the content you are digging into is meaningful and high value. 

Oh, and hire someone who loves this stuff to help you.