S3 Ep6: A Retreat Can’t Carry What Leaders Avoid

A retreat can’t carry everything leadership has been avoiding.

When leaders wait until everyone is in the room to finally name the real issues, the retreat starts from defense instead of honesty. People are surprised. They get guarded. And now the thing that should have been part of an ongoing conversation becomes the thing everyone has to manage for the next two days.

This episode is about the conversations leaders avoid before retreats: peer accountability, performance gaps, role confusion, decision authority, and trust that has been wearing down over time. Because if leaders are holding everyone else accountable but not each other, people notice. If no one knows who owns the work, things get dropped. If decisions are made by habit instead of clarity, people keep passing the buck.

The work is to say it earlier. Say it clearly. Prepare people for the conversation instead of surprising them with it once they arrive. A retreat should help a team keep moving through the hard work, not become the first place leadership finally says what has been true for months.

Transcript

Season Focus: Retreats That Work

Dr. Jen Fry 0:00

Hi, welcome back to Funda Friday. I'm Dr. Jen Friday. 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, leading a team, or wondering why your culture feels stuck, this season is for you. Let's get into it. Hey friends, Dr. Jen Fry here, and on this episode, we're going to be talking about the conversations that leaders avoid. Many times retreats are built for everyone else, except for the leaders. The fun stuff is built for the leaders, right? The golfing, the spawning, but not the hard stuff. That's built for everyone else. And so we need to really dive in to making sure that these retreats also hit some really critical boxes. The first box is problematic leaders. Leaders want to hold everyone else accountable except for themselves. And that can be really problematic because how are you going to expect employees to hold each other accountable? How are you going to expect employees to do the right thing if leaders are not doing the right thing? And so that tends to be a conversation that leaders avoid is holding the other ones on their same level accountable. And that causes so many problems because you can't be in this kind of situation of do as I say, not as I do. And you have problematic leaders doing things and they're not being held accountable. The next thing is performance gaps. I spoke on a podcast and I mentioned that a person should never be going three and four years in a job and then all of a sudden they're they're not doing well and being fired. There should be performance reviews that you talk about the gaps and how to make them better. There should be consistent conversation about individually but also as a team, also as a department. Those retreats should be talking about those gaps. The next thing is role confusion. It's this thing of if it's everybody's ball, it's nobody's ball. And so when you have role confusion over who does what, then what we tend to see is balls get dropped, and it's the idea of, oh, that was somebody else's, that's not mine. And so how do we talk about the places the most that we see the the balls being dropped, the most role confusion, and starting to attack that so that we can get clarity on what jobs we believe this role should be under, and why is that, and maybe what role should this job actually be under. But if you're not actually talking about this stuff, you're not gonna be able to get that role clarification that's absolutely needed. The next thing is decision authority. Who makes that final decision? And it can't just be, well, this is the way it's always been. There has to be better, more practical, thoughtful ways of who gets to make these certain decisions. Because, like above, if it's everyone's balls, it's no one's ball. If it's everyone's decision, it's gonna be no one's decision, they're gonna pass pass the buck. Who has that final say and why do they have that final say? Next thing is trust eroding. You are gonna have to have conversations on why is trust eroding, where is it eroding, what's the reason for it, and get a detailed explanation of this. It's really critical because if you don't understand why your employees don't trust each other, you can't fix it. And there's gonna be massive problems at really important moments that show that your employees don't trust each other. And you can't have that when you're working with people that the cracks start to show where there's a lack of trust amongst employees. And then the last one is that why are these leaders even delaying these hard conversations until the retreat? When you get to the retreat, it should be a continuation, not the first time you're hearing it. So now you're sitting there thinking, crap, I got two more days of this retreat, and it's just gonna be me getting pounded on about this thing. And so it's really important, just like a performance review, that you're not leaving all the major hard stuff until the retreat, but that people have an understanding of what's gonna be talked about. It should not be that they get there, they get this itinerary, and everyone's shocked. It should be, well, we've already talked about we knew the things that were gonna be discussed, and we were able to be prepared. If you're not preparing people, it's a power move to just get people to be super defensive because they don't know what's going on. The thing we want is to make sure we're saying it early, saying it clearly, and we're all on the same page about this. Because if we're not on the same page about this, the cracks are gonna show at the most important times. And so the takeaway should be that delayed conversations become retreat agendas, and that can be very problematic in itself because everybody's shocked about what's going to be talked about. 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 genfrytalks.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 with Fry. Y'all take what you heard, sit with it.