Munich in May!
6 Takeaways from a Fruitful Meeting of the Minds.
Our European C-IQ Collective’s May 2023 retreat will be near impossible to top! We met outside of Munich, Germany after a three-year in person hiatus. The 3-day retreat left me feeling revived, refreshed, clear headed, and open hearted. The bonus is the abundance of significant insights and learnings that will benefit both my own growth and development, and that of my clients. I can hardly wait to begin putting some new practices into play!
Upon reflection, it’s clear that the fundamentals of our retreat can be applied to any group, team or organization as the framework for a successful conference, retreat or meeting. Allow me to share the details of six elements that contributed to the success of our tribe’s gathering:
1: The agenda was transparently co-created: We met virtually for four 1-hour sessions to determine how the three days on retreat could look. We used a Miro Board, which allowed for the flexibility to revisit between our meetings to add and organize through “doodlings”.
We started by considering:
The What: Ideas, curiosities and wishes for our time together. We cumulatively expressed a wide range of topics we wanted to learn about, and tools we wanted to better leverage. The future of our Collective, industry best practices, and A.I. were some of the sticky note topics that populated this part of our Miro Board.
The What: We also had a portion of the board inviting people to suggest topics they, themselves, would be willing to present.
The How: Ideas were shared about how to structure the retreat including free time, open space, real-time coaching, one-on-one time, and even morning yoga.
During our first two planning meetings, we teased these ideas out and then during our third session, we voted on what topics we’d focus on at the Munich in May event.
2: Ways of Working (WOWs) were explicitly defined: The kickoff activity on day one of the retreat was to create “rules of engagement” or ways of working. There are as many ways to do this as there were people in the room. For our retreat, we were led to take two pieces of paper: one green and one yellow. The green ones were used to detail what we could ‘give’ to the community. The yellow represented aspirations of what each one of us needs from the group in order to feel safe, heard and valued.
3: Inevitable friction was proactively addressed: When a group is together for an extended period of time, tension is inescapable. Right after we created our WOWs, we were prompted to be self-aware and aware of the group. When we felt friction, we could ask ourselves how to downregulate People Friction and upregulate Idea Friction.
4: Deeper connection was consistently built: …yielding creativity, fun and insights into ourselves and into others. Each of the three mornings was kicked off with an icebreaker to create a safe container and to connect as people. Our mentor, Judith E. Glaser, was a huge proponent of “relationship before task”, and each of these exercises helped to deepen our rapport with the group.
5: The practical tools/techniques were relevant and priceless!: Thanks to the luxury of time, we were able to cover a lot of ground. The subject matter varied, stimulating our minds, our hearts, and our intuitive nature.
We explored coaching techniques using Conversational Intelligence® tools plus individual favorite tools.
I especially appreciated a protocol called The Four Rooms of Change as well as a powerful coaching sequence called Thought Disruption.
We spent a good chunk of time exploring ChatGPT in many dimensions.
We co-created vignettes that now live in a shared resources library representing many of the Conversational Intelligence® essentials.
We engaged in real time coaching and were asked to look within as to how we were showing up, what we were adding to the conversation, and whether our intentions aligned with our impact.
We were challenged as a group with a task that is nearly impossible without a plan, a process, clearly defined roles, and excellent communication. We could conceivably have spent the whole three days on the learnings from this exercise.
6: Spiritual energy was sustained: There was no shortage of laugher over the full three-plus days we were together. The food at the venue was nutritious, delicious and abundant (not to mention the compelling German wines served with dinner). I took multiple walks with colleagues, some of whom I was meeting for the first time, feeling like I knew them intimately!
I even came away with SWAG! One of our colleagues brought a necklace or a keychain for each participant, while another had t-shirts created in “concert tour” fashion. The back of each shirt has “Munich in May” with a list of all of the retreat attendees. This has primed our thinking to do more localized retreats later this year, not to mention our next annual Collective retreat in May of ‘24.
If all of this has piqued your interest, I’ll be sharing more specific learning experiences each Tuesday in June. Keep an eye on your inbox!
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