Leadership Strategy Days & Offsites
We consult with businesses to design and facilitate outcome-orientated strategy days and offsites
We focus on the business content while respecting and enhancing the human relationships that will make it possible.
What is a strategy day and who is it for?
Facilitated strategy days are for management boards or groups of senior leaders who are at a key transition moment. You could be re-setting the purpose of the whole organisation or your team. You could be working on the 5 year strategy and agreeing priorities. Or you could be working on the detailed planning of a transformation programme, new product/ service launch or a people restructure.
It’s a high stakes moment. You know that the thinking, behaviour and actions taken to reach the current level of success are not the same as the thinking, behaviour and actions required to reach the next level of success. You are willing to commit time and energy to leading this next phase thoughtfully to maximise impact.
In short, something different is needed and a strategy day can be the catalyst for shared clarity, voicing sensitive, challenging topics and making long term, impactful decisions. You benefit from an external third party facilitator, who isn't impacted by the groups decisions, expertly guiding the group towards the agreed strategy day objective with the option of ongoing coaching support to embed and deliver change.
Potential focus areas:
▲ A new corporate vision or set of values to drive the behaviour of all colleagues
▲ A re-set of the company or team strategic priorities for the quarter, year or next 5 years
▲ An opportunity to surface and address challenges within a group for improved collaboration and collective impact
▲ Agreeing the set of behaviours needed from this group to achieve the company vision and creating a feedback loop
▲ Setting success criteria for a new transformation programme
▲ Building trust and team effectiveness between a new peer group, based on mutual respect
▲ Bringing the senior team together to collaborate on messaging before a people restructure.
Potential outcomes for the organisation:
▲ Clarity on the company and/ or team purpose, vision and values, which becomes the central pillar for all strategic change
▲ An agreed set of 3-5 priorities where this group of leaders have direct ownership and impact
▲ A new framework for decision making based on the company purpose, values and priorities
▲ An engaged leadership group who have been heard, better understand each others drivers and have further developed their relationships
▲ Removal of any 'elephants in the room', moving on from past successes/ failures and baggage that could hinder the groups success
▲ External thinking and creativity sparked by an external facilitator, which encourages ongoing lateral thinking
▲ Honest and open observational feedback about the behaviour and interactions we’ve noticed in the room, leading to positive shifts.
Getting away from your usual office creates space to think differently and spark creativity
A 3 step plan for an impactful strategy day:
DESIGN
▲ Kat will work with a nominated senior leader to understand the business needs, agree the strategy day objective and recommend an event format to achieve that
▲ Interview members of the team to understand challenges and opportunities
▲ Set pre-work that requires leaders to reflect in advance and bring ideas relevant to the strategy day objective
DELIVER
▲ A facilitated day together as a team with discussion topics and exercises designed to achieve the strategy day objective
▲ A balance between thinking, talking and agreeing
▲ Respect and attention given to developing group relationships
EMBED
▲ A robust embedding plan will ensure change happens following the strategy day
▲ Facilitating quarterly check-ins allow us to navigate and challenges and measure progress
▲ 1-1 coaching supports leaders to positively shift their behaviour and impact.
Investment
Investment from £5,000. Strategy days are designed to a company's specific requirements with pricing that reflects the agreed objectives.
Criteria for attendees:
• Open to looking at themselves, their thinking and behaviour to evolve how they lead
• Individuals with existing management or leadership experience that we build on through peer collaboration
• Willing to build trust with Kat and contribute to a safe team environment that fosters honest interactions.
Here's what our clients say about the experience
Working with Kat
Kat is an accredited Professional Executive Coach with the Association for Coaching and a Master NLP Practitioner. She has studied neuroscience, mindfulness and resilience, often bringing these insights to her facilitation. Combined with her experience as a leader in Financial Services, Kat’s clients find her to be commercially minded, knowledgeable and positively challenging.
Kat specialises in facilitating C-suite conversations – these could be at company offsites & strategy days, at intimate peer gatherings or public conferences. She maintains strict confidentiality and is skilled at working with high profile, experienced senior leaders to ensure attending the day/ event creates value for everyone involved.
Her coaching experience means she can balance a coaching and consulting style to create an open and inclusive environment and elicit a range of opinions in the room.
Her background as a corporate banker means Kat is quickly able to understand business context, including the purpose of the conversation being facilitated and options to navigate discussions toward agreement.
Read more about Kat and the history of High Stakes Leadership on our About page.
