How do you know it is time for a team away-day?
Are you getting the best out of your team? You have targets, plans, and projects to deliver on: everyone is working hard. You recruit high achievers and everyone is putting the hours in. But could your leaders and teams be more effective?
This isn’t about hustle culture, longer hours or forcing everyone to be at their desk in the office. In fact, it’s the opposite.
When organisations spend all of their time in “doing” work they can become uninspired, fatigued and low energy.
There is huge value to stepping away and zooming out, reconnecting on the bigger picture and what the organisation is there to achieve. There are many ways to do this, but getting out of the office and bringing people together at an offsite can be an effective way for people to connect on purpose and values so that they return to the day job with renewed energy.
How getting out of the day-to-day can help
We have a fixed idea of what ‘work’ looks like. The number of hours we have to put in, where we are, and what we’re doing. But actually, while we’re working, we experience something called Levels of Reality.
According to Arnold Mindell, founder of process oriented psychology, and his wife Amy, there are three levels: essence, dreaming and consensus reality.
Sentient / Essence level
Everything starts in the essence level as a seed of an idea or feeling. The essence level is a feeling that can be experienced but not expressed. It is the heart of a team. It is where purpose, vision and organisational spirit exist. It is the level of pure potential and infinite possibility. This level catalytic and yet is the level that is most likely to be neglected. Organisations tend to spend too little time creating the right environment to support this level.
Dreaming level
The expression of essence level, moves to expressing what is possible. It includes hopes and fears and the dreams we hold. For teams, it is the level where we can imagine and dream up change. It is where team culture lives and where planning and goal setting happens. This is often shoehorned into an annual or quarterly process rather than being prioritised as time well spent in the business.
Consensus Reality Level
This is the level where teams operate much of the time, in the concrete and measurable actions of everyday. Agreed on project delivery milestones and daily agendas for meetings. It is where organisations deliver measurable outputs.
If we use Mindell’s work to understand the level we, our team and our organisation are operating at then we can shift between them when needed as all three levels are available all of the time.
It’s important to acknowledge that organisations and relationships need a mix of all levels to be healthy. If a team spent all its time dreaming and visioning with no execution then nothing concrete seems to get done and ideas don’t turn into anything. Conversely, when a team is always operating in consensus reality, they can lose their spark and their connection to meaning and purpose.
No one level is better or worse, or has more value. They are all necessary. It’s about balance, recognising the need to move between levels and doing so when needed.
Take a moment
As you look at these levels, reflect on you and your organisation. Which level are you operating at most of the time? What do you long for more of?
In the current environment, teams and organisations that connect on purpose and values are more able to innovate. They take time to invest in their working relationship and this alignment supports them as they spend time on dreaming.
There is a rich array of exercises that teams can work through on an away day to help you:
Focus on how you work together and not just the current project,
Reconnect on values and purpose, and,
Use time away from the office to dream-up the next new innovation.
Deciding which exercises will benefit your organisation relies on understanding your team, where you are spending your time and what more you are looking for. This can be the topic of a coaching call to explore where you are where you want to go so that any investment in an away-day responds to your team’s needs.