A CEO was brought into a company where he soon orchestrated the merger of his company with a complimentary organization. The cultures of the companies, however, could not have been more different.  In addition, the companies were located across the country from each other and remained in separate locations.  A prior executive retreat just after the merger failed to unite the two executive teams.  Over time, trust, respect and collaboration had become issues. 

 

We facilitated a two-day off-sight retreat, which included the following:

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• Interview with key individuals (with some casual coaching) prior to the retreat to allow executives to feel heard and assess they dynamics we were going to need to address in the retreat.

• Acknowledgement and discussion by each individual of behaviors that have felt disrespectful, behavior that have eroded trust and their greatest frustration with the leadership team.

• A team building exercise to allow executives to get to know one another on a personal basis, build connection and rapport and demonstrated how little they actually did know one another.

• A personal branding exercise on how each executive saw themselves, how others might see them under stress and how they would want their personal brand to be consistently perceived.

• An exercise on Playing with Conflict and Playing with Positivity

• A commitment statement by each individual on things they would start doing today to have a BIG impact (see GettingtoBIG.com), things they would do to improve the leadership team’s brand and how they wanted to acknowledge and celebrate team successes.

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And that was just the kick-off!   The rest of the retreat included exercises, discussions and tools to maintain the connection, momentum and camaraderie.  These included communications assessment results, a discussion on emotional intelligence and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), a social awareness tool, a discussion on positivity, a ‘ stop, start, continue’ exercise, an acknowledgement skill building exercise, a plan of action for moving forward, and finally Who Are We … When We Are BIG!

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The result was a team that valued and respected one another that moved forward cohesively and collaboratively and had the tools to address disagreements and conflicts in a productive way.