Please take a second to listen to my chat with Monique on her Podcast on A Chat in the Garden with Monique A.J. Smith. We talk about race, inclusions, athletics, and where are the spaces we can use to start talking about race and uncomfortable topics.
As I close this season on retreats, I want to go back to the beginning. Before the agenda, the activities, or the team dinner, leaders need to name the problem the retreat is supposed to solve. In this blog, I talk about why purpose matters, what it means to define resolution in behavior, and how to design a retreat that helps people work differently when they return.
A retreat can help a team name what has been sitting under the surface. But if nothing changes afterward, people notice. I’m unpacking why “we talked about it” is only the beginning, and why real repair has to keep going once the team is back at work.
Some retreat agendas are carrying conversations that should have started months ago. Jen unpacks the leadership work that needs to happen before a retreat, from naming accountability gaps to clarifying roles, decisions, and trust issues before they show up as surprises.
