5 Staff Retreat Agenda Templates For Next Meetup
You’re so close to finishing your company retreat planning. You’ve got the location picked out, the activities, and a color-coded schedule that could win an art award.
But you’ve downloaded dozens of retreat agendas and templates online, and they all seem to be missing one important element: the meetings for your retreat. Even when the templates do remember to talk about retreat meetings, they say something vague like “discuss revenues” or “finalize strategy.” You need a little more detail than that.
Lucky for you, this gap in retreat planning is just what we’re going to fix. Keep reading to see five meeting agenda templates you can use to make the most of your retreat beyond the normal schedule of meals and team activities.
Click on one of the ideas below to jump to the retreat agenda sample, or read in order to get a feel for the types of meetings you may need.
- Non-work team retreat agenda
- Company retreat agenda for brainstorming
- Team retreat retrospective agenda
- Leadership retreat agenda sample
- Strategic planning retreat agenda
- FAQ
Non-Work Team Retreat Meeting Agenda
Meeting Purpose: The value of a company retreat is for your team to get to know each other. Sure, there are team-building activities and events you can plan. But there is also a simpler option: meetings where no work is discussed. Even if talking about non-work subjects sounds a little nerve-wracking, building trust as individuals is an important (and meaningful) part of work. This non-work-related meeting schedule is a good one to plan for your retreat. It will give you enough to talk about that you won’t have time to bring up work. You might even find out the team loves it!
Suggested Length: 60 minutes
Template:
- Meeting Name:
- Date & Location:
- Attendees:
| Topic | Notes |
|---|---|
| Icebreaker
(20 min) |
|
| Learning time
(20 min) |
|
| Guest speaker
(20 min) |
|
Descriptions:
This meeting is simple and easy to administrate. Each segment has enough time padded in that the conversation can take a few twists and turns without going over the hour:
- Icebreaker: Whether your retreat is in-person or over Zoom, you’re bound to run into that awkward silence that always seems to creep up as soon as a meeting officially starts. People want to feel like they’re meaningfully contributing to the conversation, but the pressure to be insightful can cause a deer-in-the-headlights reaction. An icebreaker takes the pressure off and gives people a chance to share something silly. Icebreakers don’t have to be earth-shattering. They’re meant to get people bantering, which means they need to be low-stakes. Once everyone is talking, the team will feel more relaxed. Plan on spending about twenty minutes on this, because you never know what crazy stories the icebreaker might bring up. If you need inspiration, pick from this list of 122 icebreakers to get the discussion going. Here are a few of our favorites:
- “Have you ever had a close encounter with a wild animal?”
- “How did your parents come up with your name?”
- “What is a unique phrase in your area of the world?”
- Learning time: In the next twenty minutes, introduce some new ideas for the team to talk about. Ask your team members to each share about a good book they’ve read, a movie they’ve watched, a course they’ve taken, or something they’ve learned about recently. This topic does not have to relate to work. We’ve learned about all kinds of topics in our years of learning time: gardening, video games, voice-over work, and chickens. None of these were a part of our daily jobs (although we wish they were!), but they helped us learn about our team members’ interests.
- Guest speaker: Invite a guest speaker to teach the team about a specific topic and set aside time for a Q&A session at the end. There are tons of ways you could do this, but here are a few ideas we like the most:
- Ask team members if they know anyone with unusual life experiences or skills that would like to share. If the team gets to be a part of choosing the topic, they’ll be more invested in learning it.
- Choose a customer of your company to share about a hobby or skill they enjoy. Again, this isn’t tied in with work at all, but it helps the team get to know the client better.
- Reach out to an expert in the field. (For example, maybe your team has always wanted to learn meditation. You could reach out to a mindfulness teacher to request a workshop.) Since it’s only for twenty minutes, a lot of people will be excited to jump in and share something they’re passionate about. Plus, it’s free advertising for them!
Company Retreat Agenda For Brainstorming
Meeting Purpose: Use this meeting to generate ideas for the company to improve efficiency, offer new products, grow revenues, etc. This is a great meeting format to use when the company needs to address any problem that needs a creative solution. The basic format of the meeting looks like this: the team comes up with a handful of good ideas to pursue, ranks them as a team, and assigns them to a leader to execute. Use the detailed agenda template below to make sure the team stays on track and ends the meeting with a clear takeaway.
Suggested Length: 60 minutes
Template:
- Meeting Name:
- Date & Location:
- Attendees:
| Topic | Notes |
|---|---|
| Meeting objectives
(5 min) |
|
| Ground rules
(5 min) |
|
| Review previous meeting
(5 min) |
|
| Ideas
(30 min) |
|
| Rank
(10 min) |
|
| Next steps
(5 min) |
|
Descriptions:
This meeting setup works well for a variety of companies on retreats and doesn’t overcomplicate the brainstorming process.
- Meeting objectives: Use the start of the meeting to lay the groundwork. You’ll share the problem you’re trying to solve or the ideas you’re looking to generate. Make sure you take the full five minutes to explain the issue in depth. Good ideas about the wrong topic won’t be useful, so it’s important the team understands the full picture.
- Ground rules: In the next five minutes, you’ll quickly establish how the brainstorm will run. Assign one person to take notes, and explain to the team how long you’ll be spending on each topic if you have multiple topics. Remind everyone about the rules of brainstorming:
- Each person gets to take their idea to completion without interruption.
- All ideas are welcome, no matter how out of the box.
- The team will wait to discuss the ideas until all ideas have been shared.
- Review previous meeting: This is a great way to check in on the takeaways of your last brainstorming session. Since it falls before the idea session, it gives the team a chance to address any problems that weren’t resolved last time (or didn’t work out as planned). It also reminds the team what problems have already been addressed, which will save time during the brainstorming session. Take five minutes to show the notes from the previous brainstorming session and ask the following questions:
- Which ideas were pursued?
- Which ideas were skipped (and should they be pursued)?
- Which ideas are being worked on now that don’t need to be included in this brainstorm?
- Ideas: This is where the meeting starts to get focused. Take a solid half hour to have people pitch their ideas, write them down, banter about them, and improve them. The note taker you assigned at the beginning should write each idea down. Be careful not to shut down ideas or change the direction of the conversation until each team member has been able to fully share their idea. This time is all about getting in a focused flow to generate as many ideas as possible. An off-the-wall idea might end up being the best solution. Even if you’re tempted, keep the time limit in place once you hit the thirty-minute mark. This will keep the team from getting mentally fatigued and dreading the next brainstorming session.
- Rank: Have the team rank each idea generated in order of which ones should be executed. You can use a vote, or simply discuss the order the tasks should be done in. This is all about prioritizing. You won’t have time to execute every idea you came up with, but the team should agree on which ideas are worth pursuing. This should only take about ten minutes.
- Next steps: In the last five minutes, assign each specific next step to one owner. Make sure the task has a due date and is recorded in the meeting notes. This will help you follow up on it at the next meeting.
Note: If you need additional ideas for your brainstorming meeting agenda, this article by Shannon Maloney is an excellent resource.
Team Retreat Retrospective Agenda
Meeting Purpose: This meeting is for anyone working on the operations side. It’s important to review how the team performed last month, quarter, or year. This agenda outline will help you do that without getting lost in the details.
Suggested Length: 60 minutes
Template:
- Meeting Name:
- Date & Location:
- Attendees:
| Topic | Notes |
|---|---|
| Review last month
(5 min) |
|
| Continue (what went well)
(10 min) |
|
| Stop (what didn’t go well)
(10 min) |
|
| Start (what we should try)
(10 min) |
|
| Clarify responsibilities
(10 min) |
|
| Headlines
(10 min) |
|
| Next steps (to-do list)
(5 min) |
|
Descriptions:
This meeting packs a punch by reviewing an entire time frame (usually a month) in only an hour:
- Review last month: Pull the “Next steps” notes from the previous month’s meeting into this section and spend five minutes discussing what the team committed to fixing. This is the time to find out how executing the tasks went. It’s a good way to make sure nothing fell through the cracks.
- Continue: Use the next ten minutes to discuss what went well in the previous month. For example, share if a client was happy with a deliverable, show the great reviews customers left, or discuss the projects that finished smoothly/on time/under budget. This is the time to evaluate the strengths of the business and figure out how your team can repeat those successes.
- Stop: This next ten minutes is for talking through what didn’t go well. This is the time to bring up the task that got ignored, the project that took twice as long to complete as projected, and the one client that wouldn’t reply to your emails. Use this time to bring up the areas that need to be changed or fixed.
- Start: This section is based on the “Stop” section you just discussed. Spend ten minutes talking through new ideas and ways to operate as a team. Look for ways to address the roadblocks you identified and write these tasks and ideas down.
- Clarify responsibilities: In this part of the meeting, take ten minutes to review your company’s “Responsibility Chart” (i.e. the tasks and roles assigned to each person). Are there missing responsibilities? Is there any confusion about who is responsible for what? Use this time to make sure everyone knows what they’re in charge of completing.
- Headlines: In ten minutes, quickly summarize the biggest updates the team needs to be aware of. Which clients are in trouble? Which clients are doing great? You can also go over strategy items like the company’s ideal client type. Use this time to give the team the big picture.
- Next steps: In the last five minutes, record every action the team committed to (the ones you wrote down in the previous segments) and assign each to an owner. Team members should leave the meeting knowing exactly what they need to get done.
Note: If you want additional information on running a team retrospective on your retreat, Atlassian has a fantastic resource explaining the concept.
Quarterly Leadership Retreat Meeting Agenda
Meeting Purpose: Step out of the day-to-day to assess your organization from a higher view and tackle bigger, persistent issues.
Suggested Length: 4 hours (with breaks, or across multiple days)
Template:
- Meeting Name:
- Date & Location:
- Attendees:
| Topic | Notes |
|---|---|
| Chit chat
(15 min) |
|
| Quarterly scorecard
(15 min) |
|
| Last quarter’s problems
(15 min) |
|
| Vision & core values
(30 min) |
|
| Team grader
(30 min) |
|
| Responsibility chart
(30 min) |
|
| Problem solve
(90 min) |
|
| To-do list
(15 min) |
|
Descriptions:
This management or leadership retreat meeting provides a ton of value in only four hours. It’s an intense, problem-solving schedule, so we’d recommend spreading it out or breaking it up over two days to get the most out of it. This will let participants have time to rejuvenate and get fresh ideas.
- Chit chat: This first fifteen minutes is for people to chat openly and build trust. You might think you could cut back on the meeting time by eliminating it, but it’s a necessary part of the meeting that helps everyone warm up to each other and relax.
- Quarterly scorecard: Use the next fifteen minutes to review your company’s quarterly scorecard. These questions will help you hit the major points:
- Where did cash start and end?
- What goals were missed?
- Are we tracking the right metrics?
- Last quarter’s problems: Pull up the “to-do” notes from the previous quarter’s meeting and spend fifteen minutes going over the problems you discovered last quarter. This time is set aside to make sure the issues you discussed last quarter were properly addressed and fixed. Any important issues that weren’t addressed need to be written down.
- Vision & core values: This is where the meeting takes a hard look at your company’s values. Spend the next half hour going over your company’s vision statement and core values. You’ll want to make sure your core values help employees make decisions. You’ll also want to discuss whether the values are helping the company hire the right employees. If you discover you need to adjust the company’s vision or core values, you can use this time to start the conversation. Ask what adjustments need to be made to make sure the vision and values drive action.
- Team grader: Using the company core values, assign a score to every employee for every core value. You can record these grades and notes in your workbook so you have a record of them over time. Discuss the results. If certain employees have areas for improvement, you can discuss how to approach them and constructively help them grow. This part of the meeting should take about half an hour.
- Responsibility chart: Review the company’s responsibility chart or other documentation about who is responsible for what. Use this thirty-minute segment to ask these crucial questions:
- Are we missing any responsibilities?
- Do we have the right people in the right seats?
- Which functions are not getting the proper attention?
- Problem solve: At ninety minutes, this is the longest time block of the strategy meeting. Identify and record all the main issues that got in the way during the quarter. Discuss ways to solve them and decide on the best solutions moving forward. Once you’ve determined solutions, assign an owner to implement each solution in the “to-do list” section of the meeting notes.
- To-do list: In the final fifteen minutes, record every action the team committed to during the meeting. Make sure each action is clearly assigned to an owner. In the next quarterly meeting, you’ll hold each other accountable for those tasks in the “Last quarter’s problems” section.
Note: If you want more information about how to plan a strategy meeting for your leadership retreat, check out the book Traction by Gino Wickman. A lot of the terms and structure for this meeting template were inspired by it.
Strategic Planning Retreat Agenda (Multi-Day)
Day 1: Goals & Celebrations
Meeting Purpose: Step out of the day-to-day to assess your organization from a higher view and tackle the big, persistent issues.
Suggested Length of First Meeting: 4 hours (with breaks, or across multiple days)
Template:
- Meeting Name: [First Day]
- Date & Location:
- Attendees:
| Topic | Notes |
|---|---|
| Chit chat
(45 min) |
|
| Session goals & agenda
(30 min) |
|
| Goal achievements
(15 min) |
|
| Client headlines
(15 min) |
|
| People celebrations
(15 min) |
|
| Vision & mission
(60 min) |
|
| Core values
(60 min) |
|
Descriptions:
This meeting focuses not only on analyzing what your company stands for but also on celebrating what your team has achieved. It’s a company reset. It reiterates the company’s values to help the team feel connected and reinvigorated. This is part one of a two-day strategic planning meeting.
- Chit chat: Leave unstructured time open for people to talk and catch up. You want everyone to get a chance to form connections. Especially if your team is remote, these forty-five minutes can be an important part of building team trust. After all, team members who trust each other are more likely to speak up and ask questions at work.
- Session goals & agenda: For the next half hour, review the goals for the strategic planning session and the multi-day agenda. This time will be used to get everyone on the same page about what you’ll be covering. Outline the meeting schedule and explain the purpose of each section. You can use the bullet points in this section to share the purpose, or simply provide an overview of the outcomes you’re expecting. (For example, you could share the big picture of both meetings. Meeting one is for celebrating past wins and reiterating company values, and meeting two is for planning and analyzing/updating company strategy).
- Goal achievements: Use the next fifteen minutes to focus on the good stuff. What goals were hit in the previous quarter or year? What is currently going well? It’s important to share the headway you’ve made as a company, not just the challenges you’re facing.
- Client headlines: For this fifteen-minute segment, share some great client stories you want to celebrate. This is the time to bring up the stories you have from the last year or quarter and to share the good customer feedback you’ve received.
- People celebrations: Shine the spotlight on the team members who have been doing great work. In this quarter-hour, celebrate all the cool things employees have done. Highlight what they did and why it’s so great. (Example: “Katie did a great job making sure the client was happy last month. She scheduled a meeting to talk through their concerns. The client later told me it helped them feel like we have their best interest in mind. Thanks to Katie, the client decided to sign on as a monthly retainer client last week!”)
- Vision & mission: For the next hour, discuss the company’s future. What is the company’s vision for three years from now? What about five or ten years from now? Talk through the company’s mission statement and whether it is still relevant. This is the time to bring up any changes or tweaks that need to happen to keep the company vision and mission statement useful for decision-making.
- Core values: After you’ve discussed the company’s mission and vision, use the next hour to discuss whether the company’s core values align with the mission. Ask questions like these:
- Do our core values inform behavior at the company?
- Are there any core values we aren’t following that we should be?
- Are there any core values that are no longer relevant for making decisions?
- Do we need to update or adjust any core values to make them more helpful?
Day 2: Analysis & Planning
Meeting Purpose: Step out of the day-to-day to assess your organization from a higher view and tackle bigger, persistent issues.
Suggested Length: 4 hours (with breaks or across multiple days)
Template:
- Meeting Name: [Second Day]
- Date & Location:
- Attendees:
| Topic | Notes |
|---|---|
| SWOT analysis
(1 hour) |
|
| Strategic priorities
(1 hour) |
|
| Scorecard (goals & KPIs)
(1 hour) |
|
| Strategy map
(1 hour) |
|
Descriptions:
After laying the groundwork in the first meeting, this second meeting officially switches into strategic planning mode. In roughly four hours, you’ll jump headfirst into strategy, focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of the company, opportunities that have developed, and goals for the future.
- SWOT analysis: Use the first hour to systematically analyze your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Strengths and weaknesses are considered internal factors, while opportunities and threats are external factors. This in-depth analysis is called a SWOT analysis, and it helps you understand the big picture of where your company is positioned in the industry and what chances there are for growth. (This article has a fantastic step-by-step breakdown of how to create your own SWOT analysis.) Even if it gets gritty, it’s important to take the time to assess broken processes or poor quality at your company. This will give you time to change course before it affects sales.
- Strategic priorities: Once you’ve finished the SWOT analysis, use this next hour to decide what the company is going to focus on to achieve its mission and goals. This may tie in with the opportunities (or risks) you discovered in the SWOT analysis. Your company doesn’t have the resources to focus on everything, so use this time to decide which actions will make the most difference. This conversation will need to whittle down the actions you could take to a workable amount that the team can execute.
- Scorecard (goals & KPIs): In this hour, decide on what metrics you’ll be measuring. How will you know when the company has been successful? You’ll need to decide on the target number for each metric and how often you’ll review the goals. You may also want to set a date to review the metrics you’ve chosen, in case there are other metrics that would be a better indicator of how close the company is getting to its goals.
- Strategy map: A strategy map is a framework that lets you see the goals of the company and how the company is meeting these goals. (You can create a strategy map for your company with one of these templates.) In this part of the meeting, you’ll take an hour to determine what the company must do well in order to execute its strategy. This means looking at the company’s strategy map and ensuring the company is hitting the targets it has set up.
Note: This schedule for a strategic planning meeting is a great starting place, but if you need other ideas for how to structure your strategic planning meeting, these templates and agendas can help. Beyond planning the meeting, this article gives an exhaustive breakdown of the strategic planning process. We’d highly recommend reading it before your retreat to make sure you craft a strategic planning meeting that meets your company’s needs.
What is the agenda of a retreat?
A retreat agenda is simply a preplanned schedule of everything you’re going to fit in during the retreat. Usually, retreat agendas are scheduled in time blocks that include times for travel, meals, sightseeing, and work and team activities. In this article, we cover an often-missed element of the retreat agenda – the retreat meeting.
How do you plan a retreat agenda?
When planning a retreat agenda, you’ll want to decide on the goal of your retreat. Is the retreat for company team-building? For strategy? For discussing current challenges? Once you know what needs to be accomplished on the retreat, build the agenda around this goal. Use one of the meeting templates in this article to make sure you discuss the right topics. You’ll also want to plan in padding for your agenda since no plan goes exactly as scheduled. Finally, make sure you include downtime for the team. No one can produce good ideas if they’re in back-to-back meetings for the whole retreat!
How do you structure a staff retreat?
Structure a staff retreat to include time for team-building activities, meals, meetings, and possibly even sightseeing. (Sightseeing is a must if your company hosts the retreat in a destination location. It’d be a shame to fly the team out and then not have enough time to explore the area.) Whether the goal of your staff retreat is strategy, team-building, or something else entirely, you’ll want to plan meetings that support that goal. This article shares retreat agenda templates you can customize. Don’t forget to schedule some downtime so team members have time to recoup!
What do you talk about at a leadership retreat?
The purpose of a leadership retreat is for the company’s decision-makers to get together to focus on strategy. The group should discuss the current company mission and vision, where the company is heading, and how well the company is hitting its goals. This is also the perfect place to discuss challenges the company is facing and come up with an action plan to address them. (This leadership meeting agenda can help you plan your retreat meeting to get results.)
Conclusion
It’s great to block off time for meetings during your retreat, but don’t stop there. Planning the outcomes (and the schedule!) of the meetings will make sure you get results. Use one of the staff retreat agenda samples above, or mix and match the templates for a custom meeting format. Either way, the goal is to get actionable outcomes from your retreat. Armed with a plan, you’ll be ready to do just that.
Have another meeting type or agenda format to suggest? Leave a comment below. We’d love to hear from you.
Want to make sure you’ve planned everything correctly for your retreat? This in-depth guide will help you check that you aren’t missing anything.
Header image by J. Collier from the Library of Congress.
