A retreat is one of the few times your entire team is in the same place, away from the daily noise, with the space to think and work together. The working sessions matter — that’s why you hired a facilitator. But the time between sessions matters just as much.
When people connect outside the session room — over a morning walk, a shared meal, or an activity that has nothing to do with the agenda — they build the relationships and trust that make the working sessions more honest, more productive, and more likely to produce outcomes that stick. When they take care of their wellbeing — moving their bodies, stepping outside, slowing down — they show up sharper and more present when the real work resumes.
After 20 years of designing and facilitating multi-day retreats, one of the most consistent recommendations I give clients is this: don’t fill every hour with working sessions. Build in intentional time for your team’s wellbeing and connection. Not as filler. Not as a reward for getting through the hard stuff. As a deliberate part of the retreat design.
Work and Play Aren’t Competing Priorities
When I’m working with a client to design a multi-day retreat — especially with a large group — I encourage a balance between work and play that also fosters networking and connection. The people in your retreat aren’t just there to produce deliverables. They’re building relationships, strengthening trust, and forming the informal bonds that make collaboration work long after the retreat ends.
The organizations that get this right don’t treat the social and wellness time as optional. They build it into the agenda with the same intentionality they bring to the working sessions.
What I Recommend to Clients
These aren’t services Vianova delivers — they’re recommendations we make during the retreat design process. Your team or event coordinator handles the logistics. We help you think through where these activities fit in the agenda and why.
Start the day with movement. For multi-day sessions, especially with large groups, I recommend some form of wellness-related activity before the meeting starts. A morning yoga session, a group walk, a stretch class — something that gets people out of their heads and into their bodies before the first working session begins. It changes the energy in the room. People arrive more present and more connected than if they’d come straight from breakfast and email.
Use extended breaks intentionally. A mini hike with an extended lunch period gives people time to have the unstructured conversations that don’t happen in the session room. Some of the best relationship-building at a retreat happens on a trail or around a table — not during a breakout exercise. If we have a scheduled early break one day, that’s an opportunity for an activity that recharges the group for the afternoon session.
Match the activity to the group. Not every team wants a boot camp or a kayaking trip. Some groups connect over a shared meal at a local restaurant. Others want something more active. The right choice depends on your team’s culture, the retreat location, and the intensity of the working sessions. I’ve seen clients pair our facilitation with everything from group fitness to wine tastings to guided nature walks — and the common thread isn’t the activity itself. It’s that leadership gave the team permission to step away from the work and connect as people.
You don’t need a big budget. Some of the most effective connection time I’ve seen costs nothing. A morning walk as a group before the session starts. An extended lunch where people eat together instead of scattering to check email. An early afternoon break where the team steps outside for fresh air. The value comes from the intentionality — building it into the agenda and giving people permission to be present with each other — not from the line item.
Why Wellbeing and Connection Aren’t Extras
Retreats are rare. Most teams get one or two a year at most. That time together is too valuable to spend entirely in a conference room.
When people share an experience outside the session room — even something as simple as a morning walk — they connect differently than they do across a table with laptops open. The informal conversations that happen on a trail or over a meal build the kind of trust and familiarity that doesn’t form in working sessions alone. For larger groups and cross-functional teams, this is especially valuable. People who wouldn’t normally interact in their day-to-day work end up in real conversation. Those connections carry back into the organization.
And when people take care of themselves physically — when they move, get outside, decompress — they show up in the working sessions more present, more patient, and more willing to engage in the tough conversations that matter.
The wellbeing and connection aren’t a break from the retreat. They’re part of what makes it work.
The Design Principle
When I’m building a retreat agenda with a client, the goal isn’t to maximize the number of working hours. It’s to design the full experience — the working sessions, the connection time, and the space for people to take care of themselves. All three are part of the retreat, and all three deserve intentional design.
The best retreats I’ve facilitated are the ones where leadership understood this. They invested in structured facilitation for the working sessions and built in real time for their team’s wellbeing and connection in between. Their teams left aligned on the work and stronger as a group.
If you’re planning a multi-day retreat and want help designing an agenda that balances all of it, let’s talk. We’ll help you build a retreat your team actually gets something from — professionally and personally.
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