5 Secrets to Successful Leadership Outbreaks

Lately I’ve been talking about Leadership Outbreaks and so far I’ve covered Team Building Acceleration. We started off with the 6 strands of an Leadership Outbreak and last time I covered The Journey of the Outbreak. Tuckman, Scott Peck and all the other sages of team development agree that in order for a team to get into any stages of high performance they have to go through a stage of ‘storming’, ‘pseudo community’ or ‘emptying’. Leadership Outbreaks are designed to accelerate this process by taking people out of their comfort zone.

To successfully do this without turning people completely off and achieving the very important goal of team alignment there are 5 other strands to take into consideration. Here’s a brief on each one of them.

1. Out of the Comfort Zone

One element to achieve this is through the earlier element of surprise. Participants of Leadership Outbreak Journey’s don’t know where they’re going, what they’re going to be doing, where they’ll be eating or where they’ll be sleeping. This not only forces people into communion but also to let go. At the same time it allows the facilitator loads of flexibility to adjust the program to the ever changing needs of the group.

It’s not only mental discomfort that accelerates people to open up but also physical discomfort which plays a role in this. Certainly many senior executives have never slept in a tent, shared a room with a colleague or did their private business in the most primitive conditions.

I don’t believe in discomfort for the sake of discomfort and trying to push the physical boundaries to ‘teach people an important lesson’ during the leadership outbreak (there are other programs that aim to this for a special reason). No. The discomfort level should be highest at the start of the journey and improve over time. My favorite journey’s end with a night in a nice resort on a Sri Lankan or Malaysian beach!

2. First Time Experiences

First time experiences are created to:

1. Get people out of their comfort zone,
2. Create a bond between members about something special they’ve shared together
3. Create moments that allow team members to talk about for years to come.

I try to make these first time experiences as physical as possible in which an individual is pushed to the limit and does things he/she would never have done that without the support of the team they’re sharing these experiences with. Some of my favorite first experiences on Outbreak Journeys have been:

3. Conversations Through Community Circles 

What really make the Leadership Outbreak a transformational event are the conversations that are braided with traveling and activities. The conversations relate back to the context of why the team is there, the aspirational goal they have set out to achieve or the relations they need to build in order to achieve these goals.

The conversations always take place in a ‘community circle’ and are kicked off by the facilitator asking a question that would further the topic the teams wants to address. The community circles have the standard rules as every circle:

• Reflect
• Speak whenever you want to speak
• Open up
• Listen to understand
• Build on what others are saying
• Listen for emerging trends

These conversations are the heart of the Leadership Outbreak and true transformations takes place during these sessions. Whether you are doing a personal life line or a mask exercise, a discussion on the interpersonal issues that teams are facing or how to overcome certain restrictions or obstacles as a team, the setting, the context, the journey, the first time experiences all contribute to having a depth in conversations that would never be possible in the office.

4. Fun

Towards the end of the Leadership Outbreak you will find a spirit, excitement and energy in the team that’s difficult to replicate. Fun and laughter is the glue that holds teams together and brings them to a next level.

Creating moments in which a team can relax, play and connect at a different level is as important as any of the other threads that make the outbreak such a strong and powerful intervention.

5. Inspiration and Energy

All the different components of the Leadership Outbreak inspires and energises people. They come back to the workplace rejuvenated. Team members of people who attend Outbreaks are often curious about what happened “out there” since boundaries between departments seem to vanish, issues between leadership team members disappear and a new kind of unity appear.

Keeping the Spirit of the Outbreak Alive

One health warning though: your truly transformational team intervention is only as good as how you keep it alive in the workplace. An Outbreak will profoundly change people and teams, it will start a transformation process where teams connect and commit to each other. That commitment will transcend back in the organisation, delivering results from day 1.

The key is figuring out how to sustain that momentum. Leaders that embark on the journey in the illusion that all problems will be solved and that the Outbreak is the solution are often disappointed when I speak to them 6 months upon return.

The Postcard Commitment

Another key in the build up to the journey is getting a commitment from team leaders on what they will do after the outbreak. To build personal commitment from each of the Outbreak participants I often close with the ‘Postcard’ exercise. In this I hand out a postcard of the destination we visited and ask them to address it to themselves and on the ‘message side’ write down their personal action they want to commit upon return. I then collect the postcards and send them to the participants a month after they have completed the journey. In doing so I personalize the action and create a ‘memory moment’ one month down the line.

As a Leadership Transformer I love Leadership Outbreaks. They allow me to do what I love most: transforming leadership teams whilst doing crazy activities in the most beautiful settings in this world and sharing  that with others. I’ll be continuing this topic because it’s a pretty important one and one of my favorites. Subscribe to the blog so you don’t miss out on any of the installments. If you have any questions, please leave them below!.