Years ago I took a leadership team down the Salmon River for four days of white water (see full story below in Fast Company for a trip down memory lane.) I had spent two months before we touched the water figuring out what was actually wrong. It was not morale. They liked each other fine.

It was the CEO, and how he brought out their best (or not.)

He was well liked. He asked for everyone's input. From the outside he looked like the most collaborative leader you could want. But he could not let anyone truly own anything. He would hand you a decision, let you carry it ninety-nine percent of the way, then take it back at the last second. People stopped trusting their own authority, because experience had taught them it was not real.

A company cannot move like that. It pinwheels. Everyone waits. Nothing lands.

On the third day it broke open on a sandbar, in an argument that was supposed to be about how to carry the boats and was actually about who gets to decide. One of his people finally said it out loud.

The mood went hot. For once, nobody was being polite.

That night the CEO lay awake until dawn. Not because of the argument. Because he had finally felt the truth of it. The whole thing rode on him, and it rode on him because he would not let it ride on anyone else.

They did not need a trust fall or a team cheer. Morale was never the problem.

They needed three things.

Courage, from the leader, to actually let go. To give someone real authority and stand behind the decision even when he would have made a different one.

Clarity, for everyone, about who decides what. Not the illusion of consensus, but the real map.

Interdependence. Not control dressed up as collaboration. The kind of mutual reliance where people move fast because they trust each other to own their part.

By the last morning they had written their own norms. The first one still gives me chills: "We trust people to make and own their decisions."

Everyone thinks they need to "team build." The truth of what they need is usually much more nuanced, complex, and systemic than that generic term.

That is the whole idea behind a Team Advance.

A retreat moves backward. An Advance moves you forward, on purpose, toward the thing that is actually broken. Usually it is not the team. It is the courage, the clarity, and the interdependence underneath it.

I've built a guide to help you plan your next off-site. It is yours first.

Let's Go!

-Moe

P.S. Oh the memories I have of teams Advancing. Check out a few. And here's that Fast Company Article from the way back machine.