Transformational Leadership Retreats

How you think about, plan and conduct a retreat can create a major turning point for your organization

The way in which leaders and their teams communicate and operate profoundly impacts the culture of the organization and what’s possible in it. Investing in the right shared leadership development experiences and practices, customized to address specific challenges and goals, can accelerate establishment of a new level of energy, focus, effectiveness and results for your organization.

A strategically customized retreat can be a turning point for your organization, a transformative tool for setting a new tone and direction, impacting how people communicate, think about their roles, and the organization, and infusing new enthusiasm and commitment into how they operate and what you can achieve.

Coaching Model

The Transformational Leadership Retreat utilizes a proprietary 6-question coaching model planning process that also often impacts how the team thinks about and plans future meetings. Processes and program elements are customized to achieve your particular goals, with an emphasis on engaging members in taking responsibility for producing the desired outcome. The program includes:

  • Planning

    • Goal and outcome clarification with program leaders

    • One-on-one interviews with team members to identify what’s in place as well as issues that may thwart achievement of the goal, and to support buy-in and achievement of the outcome

    • External benchmarking or fact-gathering, as needed, to support achievement of the goal

    • Development of dynamic, customized interactive program focused on engagement of team in taking responsibility for achieving the desired outcome after the retreat

    • Agenda approval

    • Guidance/coaching for leader in communicating prior, during and after the retreat, to support acceleration of desired outcomes

    • Guidance for prework for attendees in preparation for retreat session, as needed

    • Program design

  • Professional facilitation of session and exercises day of retreat to support achievement of outcome

    • Exercises and distinctions to build or expand effective leadership communication, as desired

    • Real-time work to address challenges and issues

    • Action planning to create practices, plan, structures of support for implementation after retreat

  • Follow up conversation with leader to support achievement of outcome and any fine-tuning

This program is recommended for leaders:

  • In new roles

  • Of newly formed teams or departments

  • Who wish to set a new direction

  • Who need people to operate act at a higher order of magnitude, with more creativity, collaboration, efficiency, or customer/stakeholder focus

  • Who need to transform a situation, a culture

  • Of merged organizations

 

“Jackie did a fabulous job facilitating a one-day leadership / communication session for our global group of twenty five in-house attorneys. Jackie graciously met with us a number of times ahead of our meeting in order to ensure the content was customized to the specific challenges faced by our group. If you are looking for a seasoned presenter / facilitator who will deliver meaningful content – look no further!”

Dan Cronin, Associate General Counsel, Amcor Rigid Packaging

 

“Engaging Sloane Communications to assist in the process to transform the way we think about our work together in the Office of Advancement was a key step in our continuous improvement journey. During our staff retreat, they helped us to identify organizational and cultural barriers to success. They helped also to build a new vocabulary that supports shared accountability for improvement.”

Regina D. Biddings-Muro, Ed. D., Vice Chancellor, Institutional Advancement

“Jackie was a God-send for the staff retreat at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. I made a frantic call to her as the retreat was just weeks away! Jackie swooped in, collected pertinent information, and gave a fascinating presentation. She was engaging, professional, intuitive, and creative. Many of our staff left the retreat wanting her to return offer additional workshops. It was a pleasure working with Jackie. I highly recommend her.”

Ceciley R. Akins, Director of Stewardship and Development Operations

Optional additional subsequent after retreat program elements available include Generative Leadership Communication Modules:

 The Generative Leadership Communication Program

 How leaders address issues and hold others accountable can make enormous impact on accountability, team spirit, creativity and results.  The Generative Leadership Communication Program includes two highly interactive, brief group modules and two private one-on-one coaching sessions per participant.

This program is ideal as part of an initiative to achieve specific goals. The elements will energize group communication, and may be used as part of group work in achieving specific outcomes.

Modules

Direct Conversation as a Leadership Tool

The ability to have authentic, conversations that get to the heart of the matter, and to provide feedback in a way that generates understanding, partnership, respect and well-being has become essential to optimum effectiveness and creativity today. Yet, most people put off such communications, or work around others. This session will increase awareness of how what we communicate impacts what we can produce. In this highly interactive session, participants will:

  • Participate in an exercise that demonstrates the power of mood and how it impacts what is heard

  • Learn and experiment with a powerful communication model for having tough conversations

  • Cultivate greater skill and confidence in having generative conversations

Leadership and Generative Accountability

So much of our business lives are spent in conversation that it is practically invisible.  Yet, nearly everything happens through communication. In this interactive session, participants will:

  • Learn how to make extremely clear requests and promises

  • Learn how to improve ability to be accountable and hold others accountable in a way that generates ease and goodwill

  • Learn how to make productive, responsible complaints as a tool for generating more effective relationships, improving productivity

One-on-one coaching

  • One-on-one leadership coaching sessions, two with each participant, support direct application of communication models to achieve specific results and support continued ongoing learning. As part of the first coaching session, participants are given pre-work reading.

Group modules are each about two hours long. 

One-on-one coaching sessions, two per participant, support participants in applying the learning to real-life situations. Participants are asked to complete a brief reading on shared leadership prior to participating in the first group module.