Rethink Your Retreat: Creating a Generative Space for Change Work
The words “staff retreat” conjure thoughts of soggy pastries, uncomfortable icebreakers, interminable slide decks, and maybe an ill-timed trust fall. For those in social impact work, these multi-day affairs can feel pointless; a waste of time compared to fighting deportations, restoring the vote, and youth advocacy. As people who have worked in these fields and even held coalitions together, we also know well executed retreats can provide a powerful opportunity to alleviate tension, prevent burnout and imagine new ways of working together. In other words, retreats have the power to improve the important work that you do. So how can you create an authentic, powerful staff retreat that offers that ever-elusive thing: capacity building?
Done well, a retreat gives people:
A chance to step out of the day-to-day
Time to grow personal and organizational capacity
Space to be honest about challenges and imagine solutions together
Why Retreats Matter
Last summer, we facilitated an annual leadership retreat for a cutting edge women’s advocacy non-profit. They had recently gone through a leadership change, mission realignment, and subsequently promoted a diverse group of long-time committed staff to managerial positions. The new leaders had high levels of dedication to the work, expertise, and belief in one another. They didn’t need to team build — they needed space to develop skills and roll out strategies for a sustainable, equitable way of working for the entire organization. By the end of our time together, people were comfortable balancing empathy with organizational goals, owning their leadership roles, and engaging interpersonal conflict in open and generative ways. Most importantly, they were aligned and nourished, ready for the next step. So, how do you make a retreat like this happen?
Altogether Now: The Power of Having Everyone in the Room
There is a deep power in gathering in the same place. One of the things that makes retreats effective is simple: everyone’s there and ideally also participating.
Virtual meetings have become the norm for many workplaces. Many of us spend all day on Zoom, Google Meet or in Microsoft Teams meetings. We’ve become accustomed to checking our phones on the sly, right out of screen, or muting ourselves to have side conversations with errant family members. Once, someone in one of my trainings even put up a looping video of themselves occasionally nodding to make it seem like they were actively attending a mandatory training! But in accessible, disability accommodating in-person retreats, we are ever-present with our work and each other. There are no in between meetings-meetings (my personal nightmare,) multitaskers, or people who duck out early. Instead, we have the advantage of reading subtle body language, picking up on group dynamics, and building connections. When everyone is fully present, it’s easier to build trust, have honest conversations, and make decisions that actually work.
A Little Distance: The Value of Being Offsite
A change of environment encourages creativity, fresh thinking, and different staff constellations that often don’t happen day-to-day. It also curbs burnout. Having an offsite offers teams the chance to get space from daily operations and focus on forming important social and organizational bonds outside of their usual team cohorts. Sometimes, it’s as simple as sitting next to someone new while having lunch and learning that you both hate pickles (gasp!) New groupings and places renew energy, create new pathways for bonding, and learning.
Inclusivity Ensures Meaningful Participation
An inclusive retreat ensures that every member of your team can fully participate. Accessible spaces that honor different ways of communicating and engaging can open the door for diverse feedback and contributions. This may mean making sure you have a thorough process for accommodating access needs, or activities that spark all learners whether they’re visual, auditory, written, or kinesthetic (VARK.) It might even mean offering activities that speak to introverts AND extroverts. This level of care builds connection and engagement across individuals and groups. When everyone can show up fully, retreats can be transformative.
Work Your Plan: Program with Purpose
We’ve all done the dreaded “privilege walk.” At its best, it’s an uncomfortable exercise. At its worst, it’s unethical. Most of the time it's poorly executed. When planning for a retreat, agendas and activities need to be innovative and highly tailored. When we partnered with a major philanthropic organization, a privilege walk was never an option. With over six billion dollars, this fund attracted experts from across the world who read and wrote books on inequity. To meet this team’s needs, we created activities that pushed them to consider how their everyday operations impacted their diverse staff. Or, how their false sense of urgency made inclusive, consensus-based decision-making impossible. Targeting these dynamics in their content enhanced cooperation and collaboration, ultimately improving their community reach. This is the power of retreats done well.
Build Something That Works
The pace and demands of your work might not ease up . For many of our clients, it’s gotten even harder since January 2025. But how you do that work, whether with greater connection to your team or more generative disagreement–absolutely can. We can help give you the tools, space, or the container you need to be better equipped to do changework. Some of our sessions include:
Healthy Feedback Loops
Transformative Communication & Conflict
Building Accountable Equity
Social & Organizational Location
Reach out if you’re interested in these offerings or something else. And believe us, trust falls are not required.