Retreat Insider

About two thirds of the people who use All About Retreats as a resource are meeting planners and/or group facilitators. This article is for you.

In your profession or business, you are a leader. The very nature of what you do commits you to ensure the comfort and safety of the people who will attend a meeting, retreat, program or workshop, especially if it is residential or off-site. If you are a meeting planner, you will likely attend this event and manage it.

If you are a facilitator, you will not only attend, you will teach and/or lead. You carry a double edged sword, because you select or approve the choice of venue for your program; you are also presenting the content and will be in the limelight start to finish. More for you later …

Meeting planners: Have you ever been in a group hospitality setting where one or a few ’special needs children’, become the most negatively vocal person(s) in the group? You know how fast bad news travels … Here is a true (war) story:

James and I, first known as Feather River Culinary Artists, cooked for a group who met four times in a year at a Napa Valley spa retreat. The right-hand gal to the facilitator, a well-known author and teacher, selected the food service and menus on behalf of her. We were really new in our business at the time, so we didn’t challenge the request for gourmet vegetarian fare, with no nightshade vegetables (potatoes, peppers, eggplant, tomatoes) and NO SNACKS - No caffeinated coffee, few desserts, no chocolate.

There were about 50 people in the group and the first week-long retreat went pretty well. The second one got off to a rocky start. For some reason, the facilitator was in a bad mood, which she assuaged by secretly eating chocolate and drinking shots of espresso. Only one group member knew about it, because she was a sent to the kitchen to special order it. At some point, Go-for Girl got the blues and started complaining to others in the group. Before we knew what happened, people were disgruntled with the food, claiming hunger, and the NO SNACKS policy caused a veritable rebellion! One afternoon, a guy, dressed only in a sarong, barged into the kitchen demanding a snack. When I held to our service contract and told him NO, he tore through the kitchen, finding a box of apples, grabbed one and issued a famous salute as he raced away in triumph! (INsight: The participants were doing very heavy duty inner work about their sexuality and each of the four sessions was ever more demanding … the pleasure part must have come later, pardon the pun!

“This kind of thing could never happen to me … not on my watch,” you say. Is that so?

Two words: Consent and consistency.

Consent: not all of the group participants were vegetarian. Seven days is a long stretch sans animal protein for a carnivore. Plus, the absence of potatoes, a comfort food, and the other nightshades, limited our menu options. Turns out it was madame facilitator who wanted vegetarian cuisine without nightshades and everyone was a hostage to that decision. One strike.

The deprivation of familiar fare and forms of comforting sweetness, the latter covertly consumed by the facilitator, ignited a fire of discontent and mistrust. Group dynamics being what they are, it came to roost on the food and we became a scapegoat. Our inexperience in business was exposed, though we were almost flawless in preparing and serving meals on time. Fortunately, the right-hand woman was adept at handling madame facilitator’s mood swings and temper tantrums. She was so good at it, that some years later we saw her and she told us she had finally collapsed and taken a long sabbatical.

Lesson learned: Explore, ask important questions. Investigate and challenge. Thus we found a common sense approach to the practical in our business. The solution to the debacle: re-negotiate the contract and find the middle way with the food and service.

Unilateral decisions and Covert operations don’t work. Therein lies the kernel I offer you. When the shit hits the fan, YOU are the one responsible for insanity you never expected to see on your shift… and you must quickly step outside the box known as your job description, and start dancin’, your people skills and diplomacy notwithstanding.

Hello group facilitators … if you haven’t left the room yet! You are wise and fluid with the responsibility you accepted when you decided to teach in a residential group setting. In our experience, some of you are just darn masterful, teaching in a grounded way that works for all! If you are new or not really sure that you have mastered leading the way to sanity…here’s a reliable barometer for you:

…watch your students as they come to the buffet table. How do they relate to the food? Do they eat what they take? Are you brave enough to ask them about their experience with the food? Have you ever talked to the chef and inquired whether your people are behaving themselves in the dining room?

The answers will inform you and give clues you can use to masterfully craft a sane retreat experience. If you foster completion in the retreat or workshop sessions, the food thing is no thing. On the other hand, when folks feel ungrounded in deep process, or tension is unresolved within the group when it’s time to take a meal, what you observe in the dining room will be an eye opener.

Food is the last bastion of familiar comfort and well-being when all else is threatened, disrupted, confronted or otherwise unsettled AND folks are away from their habitat. You must trust me on this matter … Any questions?

Class dismissed!