“The offsite created a greater sense of team & connection.”
- Participant 3, Meta
“Before the offsite, I struggled with one person’s negative attitude, and after the offsite, I saw the person in a new light.”
-Participant 12, Meta
“I met Kendall through mutual acquaintances who had gotten to experience her team building experiences and raved about it!
When I first helped connect her to my organization, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Our team met for a day of connecting and retreat. We are all social workers and therapists.
The work can be hard and isolating. Kendall facilitated exactly what my team needed. The whole experience was amazing. I have already had coworkers asking if she will be at the next retreat.”
-Karin E, MST Supervisor, Parents & Children Together (non-profit)
"That was single-handedly the most value per head of any offsite I've ever experienced."
-CMO, Outside
"I thought the offsite would be lame or forced, but it was a lot like summer camp."
-Engineering Lead, Outside
Nick from Turtle Bay Resort explains the benefits of the Executive Offsites experience for his team.
The Problem
People hide behind screens. Some colleagues don’t treat peers with kindness and respect because they won’t have to see them at the water cooler the next day.
There’s a greater need for collaboration across work sites and functions, yet a growing percentage of employees are working remotely. That’s leading to disengagement when those remote employees can’t effectively participate in collaborative work, and it’s costing employees far more than they realize in productivity, higher talent acquisition costs, and opportunity costs of great ideas that never come to fruition.
In this remote work world, companies know they have to think about how to keep people engaged.
And so far, the solutions come up short.
Does this sound like you?
Have disconnection from your teammates that you vent to your spouse about. You’re on meetings where people either have their cameras off, or if they are on, they look disengaged. You feel the sense of low morale.
You feel excluded from group decision-making. You see miscommunications happen between the same people.
Exhaust yourself with 1:1s in hopes to communicate effectively with teammates, so much so that you don’t have enough time in between meetings to even go to the bathroom, leaving you burned out and exhausted at the end of the work day?
And your results look like…
People switch teams because of relationship issues or the team not working well enough
The company’s output is not as high as it could be when people hop teams due to communication challenges
Employee satisfaction decreases as does their tenure at the company
Some things you’ve probably tried:
Team-building events in conference rooms without any windows.
Taking teams out to dinner & happy hour.
Something seemingly unique like an escape room.
“The legacy way of doing teambuilding can feel like a misfit.”
-Beth Haddock
The Solution
The truth is: the very thing you maybe don’t want to try –pure fun as an offsite that connects the team while being productive away from a stifled environment– is the very thing that will bring your team together. In this remote working world, creating team trust & productivity thru fun & team-bonding in a retreat-like location is the ticket to ensure employee satisfaction.
To be fair, the gap on why you haven’t created the team trust & communication you want is because you’ve veered away from fun to be productive & metric-driven, but the hyperfocus on productivity might be the exact thing that gets in the way of driving real authentic connection & communication. Something different happens when you cheer each other on while challenging yourself. When you have them create unbreakable bonds with one another, the whole experience just hits different.
So instead, you may be striving for these outcomes:
Better functionality and less miscommunications.
To build more team trust and have fluid communication.
A level-set to deliver on goals
A sense of belonging in this world of remote work
People feeling valued on the team and like they are contributing, increasing employee satisfaction
Momentum because of turnover isn’t an issue
Increased revenue in order to continue growing
A fluid team like the New England Patriots at their height: good people, good accountability, good communication, and a team that implicitly trusts one another
Reinvigoration for work
Improved execution & problem-solving
Team cohesion in decision-making
Better satisfaction with the team
What if you stripped away the “work persona” and actually felt connected as human beings?
Imagine where your team will be 6 months from now if that was the case…
Decision-making as a united team
Conflict-resolution skills are so good so there is never an “elephant in the room”
Real trust in your team (not just a box you check in an annual employment survey)
Our Signature Method
Q: How does this corporate experience enhance teamwork?
A: Through our proven 3-step signature method.
First, I help each team member understand and own their responsibility in creating the team dynamic they want. We examine unconscious patterns & team dynamics that may be at play and get them out in the open.
Second, we go to work and make this productive by roadmapping/planning/setting goals as a united team.
Lastly, we have real fun together that makes you feel alive and grateful to be part of this team, all the while learning from one another.
Unlock next-level productivity and collaboration. Go from a meeting-heavy, drained group of individuals on the verge of burnout to a unified team enjoying work.
Are you looking for ways to create bonding and teambuilding outside of another happy hour?
While some companies meet for drinks at the bar and call that teambuilding, evidence shows that long-term employee satisfaction favors companies that do more.
Our Expertise & Credibility
Kendall Wallace is a master at creating meaningful experiences that make you feel more alive, connected with yourself, with nature, and with one another. She creates movie-like magical moments not on a screen but in real life. The people she has worked with have described these experiences as liberating, magical, & altering the trajectory of their lives.
Having worked in many organizations where their offsites were unfulfilling and surface level, she founded Authentic Travel Adventures, as a breath of fresh air for corporate offsites. Designed to create bucket list travel experiences and corporate offsites that leave people nourished mind, body and soul .
For the past decade, she has worked with over 1,000 people across 75 groups in improving communication, uncovering blind spots, minimizing recovery time between breakdowns, defining work-life balance and making decisions more in alignment with what moves them in order to become highly effective communicators & happier people.
She has worked with companies like Meta, General Assembly and a myriad of other individuals, groups and businesses to produce breakthroughs in their connection to themselves, others and the world around them, their communication as well as create a sense of belonging.
Her mission is to have people live life to the fullest, uncovering that which holds them back or gets in the way so that they can have more joy and connection in their lives.