Retreats + Planning Sessions

Graymake partners with individuals, executives, managers, and teams to create inclusive, engaging experiences that help employees succeed and organizations thrive. As we explore the unexamined pains preventing your organization from achieving its best work, we uncover where things have gotten stuck, what needs might be unmet, and what’s already working.

We believe self-care and use of self are foundational to good work. Good health and keen awareness are paramount to working with others and to delivering best results; we therefore thread these practices throughout our offerings.

Graymake’s retreats and planning days offer a refuge from the norm. Designed for leaders, teams, select small groups and task forces, or whole organizations, retreats are a powerful sanctuary for resetting, regrouping, and realignment. They offer your teams an opportunity to practice rest and relaxation they might not otherwise access, or the best environment for focusing on the completion of tasks often left for later.

Conflict Creeps

Conflict is a natural and healthy part of every organization, and those who claim not to have it are likely in denial, in the dark, or experiencing unnecessary embarrassment. So, like everything in an organization’s life, it should have a proper strategy. In these planning sessions, participants will question where conflict has woven itself into the fabric of the organization. You’ll map your conflict patterns and explore how negotiation, assumption-making, communication, reconciliation, decision-making and value alignment are taking place. You’ll discover what’s working well and how to build on it for the future. Select organizations will write a strategic plan specific to the conflict or weave this element into their current documents.

Bimonthly, Monthly, Quarterly Team-Building

Depending on your organization’s culture and goals, you may choose to engage in team-building as a one-time event or a regularly scheduled occurrence. Team-building may include various events and processes whether in person or virtually. Circle processes or agile inspired rituals to proactively build community, continuity, and strong culture while honoring differences are a specialty of ours and a terrific way to collect data on what’s working. Other terrific options include teaming activities such as cooking, exercise classes, themed happy hours, speakers of interest, or book clubs. Whether as simple as incorporating a check-in question, or as new to your group as the implementation of tools like multimeter or liberating structures, Graymake works with you to find what works for you now.

Equity Throughout Series

Is your organization a culture of belonging? No matter where you are in that journey, Graymake can walk with you. A series of two-and-a-half-day retreats are meant to be iterative and occur several months apart. The design is simple: rather than a linear structure, the idea is to jump in where your organization is and continue onward knowing that some are starting from the beginning and others have been working this way for years but need a tune up. As the people in your organization diversify, the culture will continue to expand.

 Series focus:

1. Equity Throughout: Exploring a Culture of Belonging

2. Equity Throughout: Choosing a Culture of Belonging

3. Equity Throughout: Co-Creating a Culture of Belonging

4. Equity Throughout: Living a Culture of Belonging

5. Equity Throughout: Assessing a Culture of Belonging

6. Equity Throughout: Expanding a Culture of Belonging

7. Equity Throughout: Celebrating and Refining a Culture of Belonging

Alignment and Goal-Setting

Every aspect of your business should relate to its organizational mission, vision, and values. Are they up to date? Do your employees know what you stand for? If you’ve got strategic planning work on the horizon, this retreat or planning day is for you, as well as if you’re considering succession planning, ethics, or the future of work at your company.

Elephants and Rainy Days

All of us fear certain conversations. With Graymake’s help, this session helps you to address those elephants taking up too much space in the room, as well as and to choose which risks to finally spend your “rainy day” resources on. By exploring avoidance, resistance, uncertainty and readiness—for specific matters, overall culture, or in relationship between certain leaders—your business will finally move forward.

The fundamental hypothesis of restorative practices is, in fact, that people are happier, more cooperative and productive, and more likely to make positive changes in behavior when those in authority do things with them rather than to them or for them.

In our experience—backed by research in numerous fields—this shift to group decision-making and accountability creates results that are more restorative, transformative, and holistic; creating positive cultures and reducing the likelihood of future negative incidences
of harm.

Restorative work says that achieving these objectives requires:

• Those who have been harmed are involved in the process and complete it feeling satisfied

• Those who have offended understand how their actions have affected others and take responsibility for them

• Any outcomes help to repair the harm (or harms) done and address the reasons for the offense

• Both those who caused harm and those who were harmed gain a sense of closure and are reintegrated into the community

At a time when most of us are experiencing little to no separation between work and home life, in the era of #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter, #COVID19, massive uncertainty, loss and conflicts in politics, religion, and more in the workplace, we must equip employees at every level with more tools and help them hone them. By increasing communication, conflict, and awareness of one’s impact on self and on others, we can create workplaces where everyone can thrive.

 Graymake offerings are available in-person, online, or as a hybrid. We work to meet your needs.