At the risk of stating the obvious – we are not exactly a run of the mill location here at Lonsdale Villa Retreat. If you are reading this then you have presumably already seen our gallery and seen how beautiful our house and grounds are (if not, you may want to pop over here for a few minutes). There is no question that it is a fantastic environment, but does that actually make a difference during a team research or development retreat?
The importance of the venue during training and development
When you sit down to plan your next training event, or perhaps plan your forthcoming development or research days, you probably have several items jostling for importance at the top of your agenda. There is a lot to think about, so it’s not unusual that the actual location of the event is often a secondary consideration. Worse still, it is also sometimes relegated to just a last-minute ‘tick box’ exercise about facilities. Are there enough bedrooms? tick, is there a projector and whiteboard, tick, and so on.
It’s understandable with all the pressure of arranging your event that this happens but it could be a major mistake because the location of your event can make a huge difference to a successful outcome.
Focusing on the goal
When you take your team away from the workplace (or perhaps gather remote workers together) what you really want is for them to be focused on the goals you set. Ideally then, whatever your aims, you want the attendees to have every opportunity to focus. The fact is that location of your gathering can have a huge influence on how long, and how well, the attendees remain connected with a task. Lonsdale Villa Retreat offers more than just a break from the workplace, it is also a unique combination of natural surroundings, comfort, and space. The resulting mix enhances focus in a way that a more sterile location such as a chain hotel function room or your workplace simply cannot.
Facilitating creative growth
There has been a growing awareness over the last few years of the importance of fostering creativity in employees. Unfortunately, the workplace itself can be a barrier to this. The importance of meeting the expectations of a job role, the pressure to meet targets, the demands of colleagues, and so on, all create friction points that inhibit creativity. Once you take a specific team out of the workplace and into a relaxed, welcoming environment, you become a bubble of creative, free thinking, development. That’s why all our rooms are comfortable and unique. The décor and furnishings are there to generate the feelings of freedom and comfort that will enhance the creativity and talent in your team.
Creating the perfect away event for your team.
Let’s take a scenario and look at how the right environment can make a difference.
Imagine you are leading a 3-day session focusing on training your team in a series of new products and then developing an approach to market. Ideally, you will want them to take in the information, and then use their individual knowledge and skills in a collaborative effort to produce something extraordinary.
Obviously, you want to meet the basic needs. They need somewhere to sleep for the three days, somewhere to work, somewhere to perhaps hold breakout sessions, and so on. These are relatively simple to achieve. You could arrange them in the workplace and let the participants head home each day. Alternatively, you could use a chain hotel and rent generic training areas and bedrooms. In theory, in both these situations you would have what you need to run your session. It will sort of work for you, but the environment itself is not conducive to excellence. What experience will tell you is that you often will end up with just another, run of the mill, event with mediocre results.
Now, let’s take a step back for a moment.
We all know that relaxed, happy, engaged employees, make for a productive workforce. Research also shows that even small changes to the work environment, for example, the addition of natural elements such as plants, can make a difference. Combined with more formal actions such as insisting on breaks and comfortable workspaces, you can increase job satisfaction and encourage creativity and productivity.
What if you added those elements to the scenario above? What if the attendees were not just in an office meeting room, or surrounded by the beige walls of a chain hotel? What would happen if they were somewhere inspiring? A place where windows look out onto our beautiful gardens. A place where a break-out session is not stuck in the hotel bar, it is in our snug surrounded by works of art. Perhaps it becomes a discussion that happens during a walk to take in the view?
With the right surroundings, you can move effortlessly from highly focused to free-ranging breakout sessions and back again. That helps boost your attendees focus.
Now perhaps add to this some team building activities. Include the fact that your colleagues are a step away from spectacular views and yet also just a few minutes away from everything from local pubs to restaurants serving the best cuisine. It’s rather like that focus and drive you have when you return from a relaxing holiday. Only that drive, that creative burst, is happening and developing in real-time as your team is working on your tasks. Finally, think about all this being available to you as sole occupiers so you can plan the event you want to run without restrictions.
As one guest who came here to run a development session put it
‘We visited Lonsdale for a research team retreat, and it was exactly the type of venue we were hoping for – gorgeous location, beautiful decor, and loads of breakout spaces to do group thinking…’
Work combined with comfort, inspirational surroundings, a wide range of leisure activities, and the flexibility of having a space to use your way, simply makes for a more productive, engaged, and focused team event. That means stepping away from the ordinary and into the potential for excellence.
That is the Lonsdale Villa Retreat effect.
