The Offsite Advantage: Crafting High-Impact Meetings with Coach.Win Episode

Are your offsites productive, or are they disasters waiting to happen? Join Coach.Win founders Rob Simons and John Lund, who have facilitated thousands of meetings, as they reveal the critical anatomy of a great meeting room. Learn how optimizing space, technology, logistics, and comfort ensures high-energy, distraction-free planning sessions

1. Ensure Critical Planning Success by Eliminating Distractions: Leaders should insist on holding important quarterly or annual planning sessions offsite because even a great room on-site can lead to challenging distractions once participants step out of the meeting space.

2. Boost Team Vibe and Physical Engagement: Learn best practices for room layout, such as choosing a facility that is at least double (or even triple) the size of the group, and setting up U-shaped tables. This setup provides crucial space (like three feet behind chairs) that encourages team members to move around, utilize whiteboards, and post notes without disturbing neighbors, thus keeping the energy higher.

3. Prevent Meetings from Being Derailed by Technical and Environmental Flaws: Discover how subtle issues like nonstop noisy air conditioning (the "fog horn") or a lack of self-control over heat/AC can ruin comfort. Also, understand the importance of flat walls for sticking post-it notes and planning to bring your own power strips to avoid exorbitant venue charges and guarantee laptop power access.

4. Master Complex Logistics and Travel Planning: Avoid the red flag of trying to order food during the meeting; instead, learn to pre-order food, account for all dietary restrictions (gluten-free, vegan, etc.), and arrange meals in a separate room to mix things up. Additionally, leaders must account for potential construction or traffic (like a two-hour ride to the airport) to set realistic start and end times, preventing participants from scrambling and ruining the close of the meeting.

5. Seamlessly Integrate Remote Participants into Offsites: Prepare for the "gotcha" scenario where a last-minute remote attendee joins due to illness or travel issues. Leaders must know to bring necessary equipment, such as a conference microphone or a meeting owl, to pick up everyone’s voice, especially if recording or transcribing the session. Furthermore, if 25% or more of the team will be remote, the best practice is often to make the entire meeting remote to avoid mixing in-person and virtual facilitation challenges.