S3 Ep7: A Retreat Isn’t Success Until Hard Conversations Continue On Monday

A retreat can give people enough space to finally say the thing out loud. That matters. But naming the conflict is not the same as resolving it.

In this episode, Jen talks about what happens when teams come back from a retreat with good conversations, more connection, maybe even more honesty, but no real plan for what changes next. The same conflict shows back up because stress shows back up. Urgency shows back up. Old patterns show back up. And if the team has not decided how they will keep working through those patterns, people start to wonder whether the retreat actually changed anything.

Jen names why recurring conflict is often an unfinished conversation problem, not a broken people problem. She talks about what teams need after the retreat: continued conversations, clearer expectations, accountability, emotional management, and behavior changes people can actually see.

Transcript

Season Focus: Retreats & Teams

Dr. Jen Fry 0:00

Hi, welcome back to Five Friday. I'm Dr. Jen Fry. This season is all about retreats and team dynamics. Because most retreats don't fail during the retreat. They fail long before anyone walks into the room. Organizations spend thousands hoping for alignment, better communication, stronger culture. But too often teams leave and return to the same problems on Monday. This season is about changing that. We'll talk about what actually makes a retreat worth the investment, how conflict and communication shape team dynamics, and how retreats can become real turning points instead of temporary resets. If you're planning a retreat, leaving a team or wondering why your culture feels stuck, this season is for you. Let's get into

Post‑Retreat Reality Check

Dr. Jen Fry 0:38

it. Hey friends, Dr. Jen Fry here, and we are back from our retreat. We are tanned, we had some good rounds of golf, we had some good conversations, we got to know each other better. We had a good time. Now what? The conflicts, hard things that were before the retreat, were they talked about? Were they named? Were they discussed? Or are people coming back with the tan and still the burden of silence? So I think we have to really understand that we all know the conflicts that we have to talk about. The question though is, were they resolved? Were they on the path to resolving? Were they on the path to reconciliation? Or were they just temporarily paused? Were they just temporarily paused for a good time?

Conversation Is A Starting Line

Dr. Jen Fry 1:38

Because the thing about it is that if you don't go into the retreat with a real dogish mindset of we are gonna start fixing these things and be on the path to reconciliation and the path to fixing things, then afterwards those same conflicts, those same problems are gonna show right back up. And it's was it the the cycle of insanity of expecting different changes from doing the same things over and over again? You cannot go into this retreat and think just because you had the conversation that there's resolution. The conversation is the first part of resolving stuff. You have to know, especially if there are conflicts and problems that are deep-seated, it's going to take a few conversations. It's gonna take an idea of what does reconciliation look like? What is fixing it look like? It's gonna take some time. And sometimes people say, Well, we had the conversation, we should be good

Naming Problems And Accountability

Dr. Jen Fry 2:43

now, right? No, that's just the beginning of it. Because those relationships that were kind of crunchy and grappling, they're gonna be the same whenever you get back, unless there was a really focused vision of how are we gonna start fixing these things. Because the things that you don't talk about, well, okay, we had the conversation, those things, the problems, they're going to come right back up whenever stress happens, whenever tension happens. But those same problems are gonna start showing its ugly face unless you discuss the problems, unless you discussed how we're gonna start solving them, how we're gonna work on them, unless you discussed how people need to manage their emotions, their expectations, their idea of urgency. Those are the things to be talked about. Those are the things

Behavior Change Takes Time

Dr. Jen Fry 3:35

you should be putting in place once you leave the retreat. Because the reality of it is that until people have accountability, until people have those conversations, those same conflict patterns are gonna keep showing up over and over and over again. And people hopefully are going to want to talk about those hard things afterwards. They're going to want to keep a bad conversation. Hopefully that's what you built up. Because if you didn't, people are just gonna be silent, and that's gonna keep that's gonna create even bigger distrust than people who are like, let's now talk about together, let's figure this out together. You want people willing

Feeling Heard And Building Trust

Dr. Jen Fry 4:18

to figure things out together. That's really important. That's on the road to recovery and building up your teams and building up your employees. That's what you really want to see from these retreats of saying, Yeah, we all went through some hard stuff, but we went through them together and we're fighting it together. That's a key component that you really, really want. Because right now, you got problems to solve, and they took years to build, they took months to build, and it's gonna take a lot of discussions to help fix it, and it's gonna take behavior changes and people you know, maybe regressing back and then moving a few steps forward. That's just the normalcy when you're expecting behavior changes. And so the takeaway I really want for you is that if the same conflict keeps returning over and over again, it's not a people problem, it's an unfinished conversation problem. I remember back in

Work With Jen & Final CTA

Dr. Jen Fry 5:14

my when I was mediating and we would talk about how people would get, it seems all the way to the end, and they bring up the same old conversation. It feels like to revert back. And one thing that we learned was that when people don't feel heard, they'll keep going back and back and back until they feel like they're heard. And so to really ask yourself from this retreat, do people feel heard? Do they feel like they can trust us? Do they feel like we're gonna hold people account accountable? And do they feel like they're gonna start seeing behavior changes? Because those are the things that you would really want to see from a retreat. And friends, I want to help you out with that. So if you're planning a retreat or a team session between July and September and want to actually change your culture, email me at bookings at genfriedalks.com or go to my website at genfry talks.com and fill out the form. We want to help you get better with your culture. So a treat is a true reset. If this episode resonated with you, take a second to follow, rate, and share it wherever you listen. And if this conversation hits closer to home and your work, I also do keynotes, workshops, and facilitation. My goal is to help one million people have a better relationship with conflict, and it starts with you. Well, that's this episode of Five of the Fry. Y'all take what you heard, sit with it.