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Team building has come a long way since those cringe-worthy trust exercises urged employees to catch their colleagues as they fall backwards. It’s also moved beyond throwing your staff into an escape room and calling it a day.
Today, those collaborative activities you do on corporate retreats need a strategy. A recent report by WorkTripp revealed that corporate retreats and offsite events have evolved from tired annual traditions into crucial tools that foster productivity, connection and a sense of belonging designed to lead to long-term success.
The report notes that smart team-building exercises can not only address specific challenges and pain points within an organization, but can also improve employee engagement, develop trust and build conflict resolution skills. In fast-growing companies, offsite activities can create space for tactical thinking and decision-making while promoting stronger company culture that drives results.
Move Over Forced Collaboration, Make Room for 'Transformational Fun'
Remember those office motivational posters that pronounced nuggets like, “Teams that play together stay together” or “A team that laughs together stays together”? Those statements often have the opposite effect, limiting an activity’s potential impact by focusing only on entertainment, said Marc Merulla, president and lead facilitator for TBMOQ, a company that helps organizations develop experiential learning activities.
Instead, Merulla suggests organizations invest in enjoyable experiences that achieve important, sustainable alignment and growth so teams can perform better. And while many use terms like “team bonding,” “team building” and “team development” interchangeably, it’s important to understand the distinction.
Team bonding is informal fun, said Fahd Alhattab, CEO and founder of Unicorn Labs. “You get some time together, laugh at how silly you are, make some mistakes and enjoy a dinner afterwards. There’s the premise of friendship and relationship‑building, which is necessary, but that doesn’t solve any problems.”
Team building features more structured, purposeful activities where employees can explore and implement skills or ideas during a facilitated challenge, noted Merulla. “I call this ‘serious fun,’ where you have learning objectives, messages and behaviors you want to be practicing as a team,” he said.
Finally, team development or strategy — including training and continuous improvement programs — helps employees understand an organization’s mission and values and provides them with the skills and knowledge they need to accomplish their work.
The most effective offsite collaborative activities tie all three concepts together by transforming the experience into relevant, insightful and actionable fun where participants accomplish something as a group rather than simply do something as a group, said Merulla.
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Rock the Boat. It's Part of Team Building
People often associate offsite events with the chance to get away from the office, unwind and maybe get brainstorming done. Both Merulla and Alhattab see clients who hesitate to bring up pain points, thinking they’ll bring down morale. However it’s important to use a corporate retreat to address sticky situations that are difficult to address in an office setting, such as work styles or project management, said Alhattab.
“At a retreat, we can label things: We want to build trust on this team and create psychological safety that helps us use words to label behaviors we want to see. There’s a benefit in that shared vernacular,” he said.
Merulla said rocking the boat is part of the process.
“People come with a certain expectation when they're brought in to do team building; they’re looking forward to seeing how things could improve, and if you're not ready to address the real issues, you risk building resentment as opposed to building a better culture,” he said.
Related Article: Courage Coach: How to Light a Fire Under a Slow Moving Team
A Little Planning Goes a Long Way
When building programs, Merulla considers psychologist Bruce Tuckman’s four stages of team development: forming, storming, norming and performing.
“The forming stage is where they're first coming together as a team, or with new members, processes or policies,” explained Merulla. “The storming stage has a lot of doubt, apprehension, resentment and finger-pointing.”
He said that’s the stage where teams have to work on their communication skills, accountability, active listening, problem solving and how to manage change. “Those are the key things that tend to pop up.”
For the norming stage, facilitators can conduct psychometric tests and evaluations. Once people understand how they and others communicate or solve conflicts, teams can adjust. Team development and strategy can then involve a design thinking exercise like a client journey map, Merulla added.
“It’s like a relay race where we’re passing the baton between teams to identify the friction points of what’s not working,” he explained.
Related Article: Building and Leading Collaborative Teams
How to Get Employee Buy-In
When designing a retreat, don’t just introduce changes and force workers to adopt them, said Alhattab. “No one wants to hear from the outsider that they’re having communication issues. But if I put people in a game scenario, I can get them to analyze themselves, take some key lessons and then put those into the team strategy.”
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Once he gets emotional buy-in, Alhattab introduces data about communication barriers by sharing a study or article backed by behavioral science.
“We teach through self-discovery because if someone comes to their own solution, they’re five times more likely to implement it than if an outsider gave them one,” he explained.
Then, using design-thinking principles, flip-chart paper and markers, cross‑functional teams identify communication barriers in their organization. Finally, Alhattab and the group co-create a model by sharing ideas for solutions, such as improving feedback, or introducing a brain trust.
“We’ve now taken them through that whole journey over a three-hour-period, from identifying the problem, feeling the problem, identifying solutions and then choosing solutions to work with,” he said.
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Do You Need a Corporate Retreat for Team-Building?
Alhattab has seen an uptick in demand for offsite activities, especially by organizations that have hybrid teams.
“People are more productive when they’re at home working from an execution perspective, but collaboration and exploration is better done together, so we bring teams together to explore potential projects and ideas,” he explained. “We set some paths, and then they go and execute.”
An intentional retreat that blends team bonding, building and strategy can satisfy the negatives of online work and fully remote work, while benefiting from the positives of fully remote, he said.
Merulla said some companies are reluctant to make offsite team-building mandatory but believes leaders should insist on it. “Because team building is more focused on a long-term strategy, attendance shouldn’t be optional. If it’s important enough for a company to invest in this time with the employees, then it should be mandatory, otherwise it slips back down to team bonding,” he said.
Leaders shouldn’t get a free pass, either, said Alhattab.
“If we, as employers, are asking our team to be at a retreat for mandatory team-building, then we [must] also engage because if management believes the team is greater when they come together, they’re going to need to earn that trust,” he said.
And if you're going to invest in bringing everyone together, make it worth their while so they don’t wonder if the whole event could’ve been a Zoom call instead, said Merulla.
“Do something memorable that would not be as impactful if you did it virtually, like a design challenge,” he said.
Some leaders are apprehensive to do something that’s going to create insight and actionable lessons, he observed. They want to keep it light so that people don’t get upset. “Don’t be afraid to rock the boat.”
