Dr. Judi Craig, MCC
Executive Coach
Dr. Judi Craig, MCC Executive Coach |
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After
The Retreat (Business S.A., 1998) The day
you go back to your office with a workbook overflowing with great “stuff”
from the company retreat, you’re optimistic about putting what you’ve
learned into practice. Oh-0h.
That stack of work on your desk looks a lot bigger than when you left. You’ve
got to get into that catch-up mode. Priorities
in place, you tuck your retreat workbook and notes into a drawer in a special
spot where you can easily locate them later.
Back in your routine, you continue to do the same things you’ve always
done (and wonder why you keep getting the same results).
Those wonderful retreat materials gather dust from benign neglect.
When
and if you do get around to looking something up, everything looks amazingly
unfamiliar. Those great examples you
wrote in the margins to jump-start your brain now leave you cold (“Story about
buffalo”—now what the heck was that?). You
can’t read most of your own handwriting anyway. Sound
familiar? You’re not alone.
While a retreat can be extremely successful in the moment, even the best
of ideas are likely to fade quickly unless an action plan for follow-through is
in place before the retreat ends. So what
can a company do to ensure that the retreat is what it is meant to be: A great
catalyst for an ongoing process toward success? Consider
hiring an Executive Coach to provide the kind of follow-up that is most
appropriate after a retreat is over. He
or she might work (typically for six months to a year) with individual
executives or managers, or meet with team leaders—or entire teams—or
specific departments to make sure the ideas and skills initiated during a
retreat are fully developed and filtered down throughout the organization. A
retreat can be a terrific opportunity to create a vision, develop a new
initiative, increase bonding, boost morale, reinforce company values and
introduce or reinforce concepts, skills and information.
The challenge is to expand its effectiveness far beyond a stimulating day
or two! |
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