The strongest teams don't become strong by accident.

Still Standing in Heels Consulting designs and facilitates custom executive retreats and team development experiences that give leaders the opportunity to step away from daily demands, have the conversations that matter, strengthen relationships, establish priorities, and move forward with greater clarity and alignment.

Whether you're bringing together a senior leadership team, board, department, or emerging leaders, we create an experience around your people, your challenges, and what your organization needs to accomplish next.

Executive retreats should accomplish something.

We combine strategic facilitation with leadership and team development to create experiences that are engaging, productive, practical, and results-focused.

Depending on your objectives, your retreat can focus on:

• Strategic Planning & Priority Setting
• Leadership Team Alignment
• Communication & Collaboration
• Executive Team Development
• Vision, Mission & Organizational Direction
• Roles, Responsibilities & Accountability
• Workplace Culture
• Conflict & Difficult Conversations
• Trust & Relationship Building
• Change Management
• Decision-Making
• Team Performance
• Leadership Development
• Goal Setting & Execution
• Succession & Leadership Pipeline Development

No two leadership teams are exactly alike, so we don't believe executive retreats should come from a standard template.

Before your retreat, we work with your organization to understand your goals, challenges, team dynamics, organizational priorities, and desired outcomes.

From there, we develop a customized agenda designed around what your team actually needs.

Your experience may incorporate:

Facilitated Discussions • Leadership Workshops • Strategic Planning • Team Exercises • Executive Coaching • Breakout Sessions • Communication Activities • Goal Setting • Action Planning • Leadership Assessments

Give your leadership team dedicated time to get out of the operational weeds and focus on the 

bigger picture.

Executive retreats can help leadership teams examine where the organization is today, where it wants to go, what's getting in the way, and what needs to happen next.

Topics may include:

Strategic Direction

Clarify organizational priorities and establish greater alignment around where the organization is headed.

Leadership Alignment

Make sure senior leaders understand the priorities, expectations, responsibilities, and decisions necessary to move forward together.

Communication

Identify communication gaps and establish healthier, more effective ways for leaders to communicate with one another and their teams.

Accountability

Move from good intentions to clear ownership, expectations, timelines, and follow-through.

Organizational Culture

Discuss the leadership behaviors and workplace practices influencing employee experience, engagement, and performance.

Sometimes the challenge isn't strategy.

It's how the team works together.

Our team development experiences help organizations strengthen communication, collaboration, trust, accountability, and understanding between team members.

Programs can be designed for:

• Executive Leadership Teams
• Management Teams
• Boards of Directors
• Departments
• Cross-Functional Teams
• Emerging Leadership Teams
• Newly Formed Teams
• Teams Experiencing Growth or Change
• Organizations Navigating Workplace Challenges

The goal isn't forced fun or another generic team-building exercise.

It's helping people work better together when they return to work.

When everyone is consumed by today's responsibilities, it can be difficult to make time for tomorrow.

A facilitated strategic retreat creates the space for leaders to examine the bigger picture.

We can help your team work through questions such as:

Where are we going?

What should our priorities be?

What's working—and what isn't?

What opportunities are we missing?

What needs to change?

Who owns each priority?

How will we measure progress?

The retreat concludes with greater clarity around priorities, responsibilities, and next steps so the conversation continues after everyone leaves the room.

Consultation with organizational leadership to identify priorities, challenges, team dynamics, and desired outcomes.

A customized agenda, discussion framework, activities, workshops, and facilitation plan.

An experienced facilitator guides conversations, manages participation, keeps discussions productive, and helps the group remain focused on its objectives.

Targeted leadership training can be incorporated into the retreat based on your team's needs.

Purposeful activities designed to strengthen communication, collaboration, trust, and understanding—not activities simply designed to fill time.

Transform ideas and conversations into priorities, responsibilities, and actionable next steps.

Optional executive coaching, leadership training, strategy sessions, or follow-up facilitation can help maintain momentum and accountability after the retreat.

Executive retreats and team development programs can be customized to your organization's schedule and objectives.

Options may include:

Half-Day Executive Retreats

Focused sessions around a specific organizational priority, leadership challenge, or team-development objective.

Full-Day Executive Retreats

A more comprehensive experience combining strategy, leadership development, facilitated discussion, and action planning.

Multi-Day Leadership Retreats

Designed for organizations seeking deeper strategic planning, executive development, team alignment, and organizational transformation.

Virtual Executive Retreats

Professionally facilitated virtual experiences for geographically dispersed leadership teams.

Executive retreats and team development programs can be designed for organizations across industries, including:

Corporations • Small & Mid-Sized Businesses • Nonprofits • Associations • Government Organizations • Healthcare • Financial Services • Housing & Real Estate • Education • Professional Services • Boards & Foundations

A successful retreat should create clarity.

It should strengthen relationships.

It should surface conversations that need to happen.

And most importantly, it should create action after the retreat ends.

Still Standing in Heels Consulting helps organizations turn time away from the office into an opportunity to reconnect, realign, strengthen leadership, and determine what happens next.

Let's design an executive retreat around the conversations, challenges, and opportunities that matter most to your organization.

PLAN YOUR RETREAT & REQUEST A CUSTOM PROPOSAL

Executive retreats and team development experiences available nationwide.

 A board retreat or leadership workshop shouldn't simply be a day away from the office. When properly facilitated, it creates dedicated space for strategic planning, leadership development, board alignment, communication, governance training, and conversations that are difficult to have during a routine board meeting. Here are five research-backed statistics that demonstrate why investing in board retreats, executive leadership training, and board development matters.

A major meta-analysis examining 335 independent samples found that leadership training produced positive effects across every major category measured—including learning (effect size .73), transferring new skills to the workplace (.82), and organizational results (.72).

Why it matters: A well-designed board leadership workshop or executive retreat can move beyond conversation and help leaders develop skills they actually bring back into the boardroom and workplace.

Source: Journal of Applied Psychology, Leadership Training Design, Delivery, and Implementation: A Meta-Analysis.

A meta-analysis involving 46 samples and 2,136 participants found that properly conducted debriefs improved individual and team effectiveness by approximately 20%–25%.

Why it matters: Facilitated board retreats and strategic planning workshops give leadership teams something normal board meetings rarely provide—structured time to examine what's working, identify what's getting in the way, discuss difficult issues, and determine what needs to change.

Source: Research published in the Human Factors journal and indexed by PubMed.

The 2025 Board Effectiveness Survey from PwC and The Conference Board found that only 35% of executives rated their boards' overall performance as good or excellent.

Even more striking, 93% of executives surveyed believed at least one director should be replaced, highlighting concerns surrounding board skills, capabilities, role clarity, and evolving business needs.

Why it matters: Boards shouldn't assume that bringing talented individuals together automatically creates a high-performing board. Board development, governance training, facilitated workshops, board assessments, and strategic retreats can help identify gaps and create greater alignment.

Source: PwC & The Conference Board, 2025 Board Effectiveness Survey.

A Stanford Graduate School of Business study conducted with BoardSource and GuideStar surveyed 924 nonprofit directors and found that more than one-quarter did not have a deep understanding of their organization's mission and strategy.

Nearly one-third were also dissatisfied with their board's ability to evaluate organizational performance.

Why it matters: A strategic board retreat gives members dedicated time to reconnect with organizational purpose, clarify priorities, understand performance expectations, and determine where the organization is going—not simply review what happened last month.

Source: Stanford Graduate School of Business, BoardSource & GuideStar, Survey on Board of Directors of Nonprofit Organizations.

BoardSource reports that 69% of organizations use written resources to educate board members, while more interactive approaches such as training, seminars, and webinars are used far less frequently.

BoardSource specifically recommends ongoing board education and suggests that organizations schedule retreats to explore complicated issues and provide continuing opportunities for board learning.

Why it matters: Sending board members another handbook isn't the same as creating meaningful board leadership development. Interactive workshops allow members to ask questions, challenge assumptions, practice communication, work through conflict, clarify responsibilities, and learn together.

Source: BoardSource, Nonprofit Board Education and Orientation.

A board retreat shouldn't be an escape from the boardroom—it should change what happens when everyone returns to it.

Effective board retreats, executive workshops, leadership training, strategic planning sessions, governance training, conflict-resolution workshops, and team-development programs create an opportunity to move beyond routine business and focus on the conversations that shape an organization's future.

The strongest retreats aren't one-size-fits-all. They are built around the organization's actual challenges—whether that's board alignment, strategic planning, communication, conflict resolution, executive presence, succession planning, governance, leadership development, accountability, or rebuilding trust within the boardroom.