Legendary Away Days

The Complete Guide to Running Successful Team Events

Karen Cooley, Kirsty McEwan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317105961
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Building strong, responsive, teams is one of the key factors in putting your organisation ahead of its competitors. So why do many teams fail to deliver to their true potential? The answer is that even when the commitment and the will to succeed exist, hidden pitfalls lay in wait to foil the best intentions of managers and team leaders. This book will enable you to avoid tripping up and so produce teams able to take effective action before problems arise. Legendary Away Days is a complete and invaluable guide to planning and delivering team events suited to a wide range of circumstances including problem-solving, teambuilding, boosting morale and making decisions. Concise and practical, it covers choosing an appropriate event, organising and running the day, keeping control, using external experts and evaluating your event afterwards. Focused on best practice throughout, the book also provides help on ensuring your event is legally protected. If you want your teams to look back on their Away Days as legendary then this is the book you need.

PART ONE
Getting Started

CHAPTER 1
Organising your Thoughts

You’ve made the decision to hold a team event. Congratulations!

This exciting decision will involve a considerable expenditure of time, energy, effort, and expense on your part as well as for others. It therefore makes sense to be crystal clear about the boundaries and objectives for your event before committing valuable resources. The planning and groundwork that you put in at this early stage will not only earn significant dividends later on, but are also likely to prevent an enormous amount of wastage and embarrassment. After all, you would not hold a dinner party without inviting people, planning the menu, checking for dietary needs and preferences, would you? Imagine serving with pride plump rump steaks, only to hear your guests utter ‘sorry … we’re vegetarians!’; The result? Red faces all round, which could so easily have been avoided had you thought ahead and followed a number of simple rules about planning; in other words, had you invested the time to think about and define the parameters of your dinner party. The same rules apply to your team event.

We see a fundamental distinction between cracking the concept of your event (that is, appreciating and planning the conceptual design of the day) and planning the precise practicalities involved. The former is about establishing the general shape, outline and tone of your day and understanding why you have chosen to hold it at all, whilst the latter is about planning the fine detail of the event — what needs to happen and how you are going to make it work.

Cracking the concept can therefore be equated to pencilling in your ideas and plans for the day, which can be rewritten and finalised in ink just as you finalise the precise practicalities later on. We see it as a two-stage process, with defining the principles and concept of your event as Stage 1 and finalising the detailed logistics as Stage 2. Although in practice you are likely to spend significantly longer at Stage 2 than at Stage 1, do not be tempted to cut corners and ‘skate over’ Stage 1, as it is here that the seeds of your success will be sown.

The following checklist will help to focus your thoughts before you jump in with both feet. Think of it as a guide to help you harness your enthusiasm, collect your thoughts and successfully crack the concept of holding your Away Day:

Stage 1: Getting cracking

At this stage the areas you need to think about can be organised into four sections (see Figure 1.1):

1 Your reasons for running the event

2 The type of event you are thinking of running

3 Taking account of any constraints

4 Other considerations.

Figure 1.1 Stage 1: Essential first thoughts to organising your Away Day

YOUR REASONS FOR RUNNING THE EVENT

• Why are you running this event? Are you clear about your reasons for choosing to hold this particular event at this specific time?

• What is the intended style of the event? Is it intended to be an exuberant celebration, an information-sharing communication exercise or something more sober altogether?

• What are your required results or outputs? Are you clear about what you want to achieve from the event? After all, there is a world of difference between trying to encourage enthusiastic commitment to an eagerly anticipated and generally well-received new idea and helping people to cope with a potentially painful message, such as the need to adapt to a new situation following a number of redundancies. Similarly, you may be aiming to encourage a new team to bond and work together effectively, or working with a dysfunctional team to eradicate suspicion and mistrust amongst team members and go forward in a new, more positive atmosphere. Whatever your objectives for the team, if you don’t define the purpose of your event before you begin, you have no measure of success against which to benchmark.

• What mindset and attitude do you want your participants to have when they arrive at the event? Start thinking about this now as it will impact on your choice of venue and the tone of your invitations later on.

THE TYPE OF EVENT YOU ARE THINKING OF RUNNING

• What type of event do you want to run? A workshop, seminar or conference? An indoor or outdoor event?

• What type of event is likely to work best with your planned audience (see Part Three for event types)? What have you done before? Did it work? Do you need to make adjustments to the format previously used, to suit the current circumstances? If so, what adjustments do you need to make? Remember that groups have their own specific characteristics. Try to avoid planning for an ‘off the peg’ solution.

• Start thinking about the type of materials that will be required, as some professionally-produced materials will have long lead times.

TAKING ACCOUNT OF ANY CONSTRAINTS

• What constraints have you got? What budget do you have?

• What resources are available to you, for example staff, facilities, materials?

• Have you thought about your venue in relation to these constraints? What will be the approximate size of the event? What can you afford? One of your biggest dilemmas about venue will be whether to hold it in-house or externally.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

We consider below some of the many issues demanding your attention in relation to your team event:

• Venue

• Length of event

• Participants and guests

• Style and tone

• Opening and closing

• Ground rules

• Evaluation.

Considering the venue

• What type of venue do you need to use for the event?

• How many attendees do you envisage?

• A large-scale auditorium, although imposing, could have the effect of either impressing or intimidating your audience?

• A small venue may not give you enough space, light or comfort. Select your venue type and location carefully: this is one of those times when size does matter!

• Much also depends on accurately matching the type of venue to your event as well as the culture of your organisation. This will often require considerable creativity: as an example, for organisations where outdoor events with plenty of fresh air and physical activity are welcomed, you might consider using a sports club, or even setting up some team games on a nearby beach if there is one.

• Will the event be run in-house or externally? Consider the following items:

– Budgetary constraints.

– Available feedback about previous venues used.

– Convenience of access for all participants.

– Whether you have access to experienced staff competent to design and run an in-house event?

– Do you have the time and competence to do it yourself? Remember that the consultation process can be labour-intensive so if you are thinking of taking on this task yourself, allow more time than you originally think will be needed for consultation and design.

– The ‘message’ you want the venue to send to your team about the importance of the issue.

– The choice of venue will send a message about how the team is valued.

– How much space are you likely to need? At this stage you just need to have a general feel for the number and size of rooms that you want. As a guide, the more space the better. Literally, room to think encourages creativity.

– Availability of refreshments. Do you want meals as well as beverages? Again, a general feel for your requirements is sufficient at this stage.

– Consider where you would like refreshments to be served. It is often best to serve lunch away from the main room so that participants get a change of scenery and are able to network. Alternatively do you want a working lunch? Stretching the legs and clearing the head provides an opportunity for people to regroup and chat to one another!

– Equipment: what do you need?

– Is there adequate on-site IT support?

– Will you need breakout or syndicate rooms?

Length of event

• What will be the length of the event? A half day, one day, two days or longer? Can you justify the length of the event if challenged? What benefits will the extra time provide? Think about any budgetary or resource constraints when planning the length of your event.

• Bear in mind your start and finish times for the event on each day. People will appreciate not having to travel to or from the event in rush hour if you can avoid it.

• The length of the event will influence whether you may need to plan evening entertainment. Think about whether you want to entertain people or will people be expected to amuse themselves? Keep in mind that bored participants quickly turn into unreceptive participants!

Your participants and guests

• Budgetary constraints may affect the number of participants and guests you can invite.

• Who should be invited to attend? Establish in principle the groups you would wish to have present at the event.

• Where will your participants be travelling from? You should consider venues in an area that is easily accessible. The Bahamas might be your first choice, but can your budget take the strain?

• Have travelling costs been taken into account?

• Will anyone require overnight accommodation? What type of accommodation will be offered and can you afford it?

Style and tone: getting the atmosphere right

• What mindset and attitude do you want your participants to have when they arrive at the event? Start thinking about this now as it will impact on your choice of venue and the tone of your invitations later on.

• What atmosphere do you want to achieve for your event? Having music playing as participants arrive for a Creativity Day might, for many, move them out of work mode and into a more creative frame of mind.

• Do you want the event to be participative and if so, how will you make that happen? Even where the event lends itself to a high level of participation, don’t assume that people will naturally throw themselves into activities. Depending on how ‘outgoing’/‘shy’/‘afraid of looking silly’ they are, they may need varying degrees of coaxing before happily taking part. You may therefore need to implement some lower-level, non-threatening activities early in the day to build trust (between participants as well as with you) to gently ease them into the spirit. See Chapter 9 for a selection of icebreakers.

• What should be the overall tone of the event? Light-hearted? Weighty? Prescriptive? Consultative?

You will also need to think about how you want the event to run on the day: how to open and close proceedings, as well as how to establish guidelines for working together (see Chapter 4 for how to set ground rules).

Opening and closing your event

• Will there be a ‘sponsor’ to introduce and close out the event? If so, who? If you can persuade a key member of your senior management team to introduce the event with a few well-chosen and genuine words of welcome, and end the day with a similarly heart-felt vote of thanks to everyone for attending, you will add extra credibility to the Day. It shows that senior managers have a serious interest in seeing the event work well.

• Are you the most appropriate person to introduce and close the event? Sometimes it is most appropriate for department managers to take this role, depending on the reasons for the event. If the Away Day is exclusively for your own team, you may well be the best person for the job.

Running the event — ground rules

• If participants stick to agreed ground rules, would this help things run more smoothly? See Chapter 4 for how to set, agree and use ground rules and Part Three ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part One: Getting Started
• Part Two: Essential Information
• Part Three: The Legendary Away Days
• Part Four: After the Event
• Appendices
• Contact details for the authors
• Index