Executive Retreats: In High Demand in 2025!

How aligned, motivated, and connected does your Executive Team feel right now? Economic and political concerns, stress, personnel conflict or organizational silos can make it seem like senior leaders are working at cross-purposes. And we’ve seen this firsthand, with an increase in requests from companies for help with an Executive Retreat.

The CEOs and other senior leaders we’ve worked with are feeling the need for alignment, collaboration, and strategic focus as economic and other conditions continue to change in 2025. And they are tapping into offsite meetings to accomplish their goals.

With a yearly average of 260 workdays, using one of those days (just .3% of the year) to focus on specific outcomes is worth your time. A Quantum Workplace study found that 91% of employees who attended corporate retreats felt more motivated, and 85% felt more satisfied at work.¹ And TravelPerk found that 34% of employees feel like they have their most creative ideas on a company or executive retreat.²

Still on the fence about the value of an Executive Retreat? Or maybe you need help influencing others that this would be worth your team's time? Our top reasons—and why your team could benefit are listed below.

Team Building: Strengthening Executive Trust

According to Gartner, 67% of companies conducted offsites with team building as the primary goal. Executive team building fosters deeper understanding, trust, and psychological safety. It's about enhancing communication, resolving conflict, and reinforcing shared vision and accountability. Many CEOs request using common tools like Clifton StrengthsFinder, Enneagram, Insights, or DiSC to build interpersonal awareness.

Creating Strategic Goals: Charting the Future

Teams engage in high-level strategic planning and a long-term vision by analyzing external factors, refreshing the organizational mission, defining strategic pillars, and setting ambitious, measurable goals. This aligns the leadership team on the organization's future direction, especially if the economic factors have a huge impact on the business. Research from Harvard Business Review indicates a 26% increase in productivity among employees after participating in offsite retreats, mostly due to a narrowed and prioritized focus.³

Enterprise Leadership: Leading Beyond Silos

Breaking down departmental silos is crucial for enterprise leadership. This topic encourages leaders to think holistically, understanding interdependencies and promoting cross-functional collaboration. A retreat can reset expectations that CEOs can’t make all the organizational decisions. A retreat empowers the executive team to think and make decisions with the big picture in mind.

Focus on a Strategic Initiative: Deep Dive & Action

Dedicate retreat time to one critical strategic initiative. This allows for intense focus on project scoping, risk assessment, resource mobilization, and developing an actionable roadmap. Common topics these days: AI, tariffs, manufacturing diversity, and talent management.

Skill Building: Enhancing Leadership Effectiveness

Effective leaders excel in leading and leveraging talent. Often, CEOs have identified a specific skill the group could elevate to positively impact business results and the organization’s culture. Topics often include emotional intelligence, coaching, influencing, negotiation, strategic vision, delegation, feedback, or resilience.

Our customized Executive Retreats drive important discussions, bring humor and vulnerability, align goals and priorities, and have your team leave with the right tools and next steps for success. We’re ready to help you and your team accomplish great things in 2025.

1 https://www.quantumworkplace.com/future-of-work/importance-of-employee-recognition
2 https://www.travelperk.com/blog/back-to-business-travel-how-does-the-us-feel-about-returning-to-work
3 https://hbr.org/2024/10/why-offsites-work-and-how-to-get-the-most-out-of-them