Our team day at a leading cancer charity

Back in January, Lucy Gower and I worked with Sue Collins, Director of Fundraising and Engagement at Young Lives vs Cancer to create a department away day for 80 colleagues – a newly merged Fundraising & Engagement directorate, some new team members, some who had been in the post for much longer. Sue absolutely did not want a day where staff sat being talked at for six hours, and she wanted a directorate that by the end of the day felt like a team.

Our brief was clear: design something creative and genuinely engaging, building on their ‘one team, one target’ ethos. It needed to give people a real voice, connect everyone to the cause – and make sure that engagement didn’t evaporate once everyone was back at their desk with their Teams chat channels pinging.

This is some of what we did: we mixed up sessions to play to the different learning styles in the room (a room that size will have lots of diversity in processing and learning styles) and we created space for the heads of function to be present and visible, contributing rather than having to simply present or facilitate. We heard from a colleague who could share stories about impact, we had fun exploring our preferred working styles – a great visual way of understanding each other better.

How did we do?

One attendee gave feedback that said ‘Best away day in years! Finally feels like we are all on the same page. Excited to see what happens next.’

People left feeling excited, connected, and genuinely aligned – not just with each other, but with the organisation’s direction and children and families they exist to support.

The working styles session had great feedback: on return to the office teams were already shifting how they worked – including rethinking how they used 1-2-1 meetings to make best use of time and energy – before the week was out.

The day generated ideas people were actively pushing to see actioned. And a subtle but important mindset shift landed too: innovation stopped feeling like a big scary thing and became something much more doable – incremental improvements that anyone could make.

The Engagement team got to hear properly about Fundraising plans for the first time. People were reminded why they do what they do – and went away wanting to reach out to services, ask questions, and be more curious (and curiosity leads to connection, innovation and lots more.)

Sue says:

“Jen and Lucy were brilliant. They brought a great energy to the day and kept everyone engaged throughout. The balance and variety of content was excellent and their style enabled everyone to feel confident in participation and their own voice.”

I know that there’s not always budget to bring in external facilitators, I’ve worked with enough client organisations to understand that. But if there is, then it’s such a good investment and you will feel the impact: not only do you get experts to design the day (because have you really got the time to do that right now?) but external facilitators will hold the room, noticing when energy dips and bringing it up again and you also all learn something new together. And by handing all that to an external facilitator you are allowing yourself, as a leader in the room, to fully participate in the day, so you can focus on building the relationships you need to invest in.

I think it boils down to energy – you probably hold the responsibility for creating a creative, warm, focused, determined (insert adjective of your choice here) energy for your team interactions every single other day of the year. On this day, this critical day, why not let an external expert share that load?

Do you have some time away from the office with your team booked into the diary, but no plan for it yet Are you secretly wondering if human bingo, lunch and then crazy golf counts as a plan? You know what, I think you can probably do better than that!