Cambridge Leadership Retreats
Professional retreat design and facilitation in Cambridge
Working better together
Looking to create a powerful and creative leadership retreat in Cambridge? I’m a retreat specialist who lives in Cambridge. I understand the city and its rich resources. And I offer deep international experience in helping blue chip companies, educational institutions and NGOs hold powerful and engaging meetings.
Perfect for:
- Designing the event for full participation
- Facilitating reflection, sharing and creativity
- Supporting making meaningful decisions
- Finding the right space for deep work together
- Making use of the many resources and spaces available in the city
Whether you want a retreat to be loose in structure and focussed on more social connection, or to have a firmer purpose and more challenging encounters, I can help you create the event you need.
- Agreeing the creative brief for the event and desired results.
- Creating a sense of expectation for participants
- Choosing the right venue or venues to provide the right blend of stimulus and space
- Designing an agenda
- Skilled hosting and facilitation
Clients I've Worked with
Since 1995 I have worked as a facilitator and trainer in the UK and around the world, from Singapore to the Solomon Islands. I focus on creating experiential and highly participatory events to process complex challenges.
What you need to know (Q and A)
I develop the agenda for the day in consultation with you. This would include a more detailed briefing from you on:
- the issues to be discussed
- the backgrounds of the participants
- any anticipated challenges/difficulties based on past events.
Following the briefing, I will develop a proposal for:
- a recommended process including exercises and activities and preparatory activities for participants
- a facilitation agenda with timing
- a confirmation of the desired outcomes.
One of the main reasons for having a retreat is to create a different way of engaging with each other than is possible in day-to-day meetings.
We need to avoid just doing the normal sorts of meetings, only in a more expensive venue.
Awaydays must balance the need for clear outcomes with the importance of creating genuinely reflective space. They must have some structure but they must also encourage participants to take some risks to embrace more difficult conversations.
One of the greatest pitfalls is to have important-sounding conversations that actually avoid useful engagement. For example, everyone can agree that there needs to be more action, greater effectiveness or stronger teamwork – but then not be specific about the details where this isn’t happening and where people want a change. Without some creative friction, nothing really useful can happen.
The facilitator should create a space in which people feel able to take more risks and have more challenging but more creative conversations. I aim to create an atmosphere in which this feels appealing rather than merely hazardous.
To do this, it’s more about intelligently improvising based on experience than trusting in any particular technique. It involves not always playing safe when tricky topics arise, and being willing to ask more challenging questions of the group.
Secondly, I tend to avoid long sessions in which one person gets to talk and everyone else either (a) just listens or (b) competes to be the next person speaking. That involves greater discipline,, and not simply defaulting to the loudest voice in the room; and also creating structures in which people work in pairs and smaller groups for much of the time.
Although I do make use of creative activities and some more playful approaches, I do not see these as any kind of substitute for real and practical engagement with the issues you need to explore.
It’s important to create changes of pace throughout the event. Groups of people often get stuck: sometimes in quite frantic forms of conversation, and sometimes in rather sluggish ones. Having changes of pace makes it easier for all participants to engage and also to allow more creative thinking. Knowing when to press on, and when it’s better to pause and refresh, is an important judgement call for the facilitator
Why Cambridge?
Cambridge has an incredible range of spaces. Many people think immediately of the historic colleges which these days offer excellent meeting facilities and great catering. But there are also many other kinds of spaces in the city which you might also make use of – interesting rooms over pubs, in restaurants and lesser-known university facilities and libraries.
There are a range of outdoor and indoor activities, wonderful riverside walks and intriguing places to eat which can be blended to create an outstanding retreat. Not far from the city itself are more rural retreat spaces and venues for consideration. We’ll help you find the right mix of stimulation and entertainment, and the all important space and calm for deeper reflection.
About me….
I’m the author of the book Unhurried at Work and a co-founder of Creative Facilitation. I’m a visiting tutor on the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme at the Saïd Business School. I’m an occasional contributor to Fast Company magazine.
I’m a visiting tutor at the Oxford Universtiy Business School and on the visiting faculty of the Homerton College Cambridge Changemakers leadership programme.