Robin Schooling

The Leadership Retreat: Are Off-Sites On Point…or Not?

Once a year – sometimes twice, if the budget is healthy – senior leaders everywhere stuff their laptops, a few branded fleece vests, and a stack of lofty intentions into roller bags and head for venues with uplifting names like Cedar Summit or Driftwood Cove. The event: the leadership retreat. The mission: “reset the vision.” The rest of the company stays behind, quietly wondering why big‑picture thinking always seems to require artisanal granola and a Wi‑Fi password that starts with WeBelieve.

That away‑team vs. home‑team dynamic isn’t just optics. It can cement the idea that real strategy only happens when leadership is physically removed from the day‑to‑day. The danger? The miles you travel geographically can become miles of distance from the realities your people live every shift.

Why Leave at All?

There are solid reasons to step away:

Focused attention. Free from calendar pings and hallway questions, leaders can wrestle with complex problems without the “meeting ends in five minutes” pop‑up.
Psychological reset. A new environment cues the brain to think differently – much like how reading on a porch feels easier than at the kitchen table.
Relationship capital. Unstructured dinner conversations (cocktails encouraged) can spark candor rarely found in the office.

Those advantages fade though, when the retreat becomes an annual rite instead of a deliberate, purpose‑built choice.

Anatomy of the Getaway – Day 1

7:00 AM Agenda: Sunrise Workshop: “Leading with Purpose”

Reality: Coffee first, purpose second.

9:00 AM Agenda: Alignment Session: Redefine our “North Star”

Reality: Didn’t we redefine it last year?

Noon Agenda: Farm-to-table lunch

Reality: This kale salad tastes like penance.

2:00 PM Agenda: Outdoor team-building exercise: kayaks, rope climb, nature hike

Reality: Collective trust means Bob doesn’t make me do all the rowing

7:00 PM Agenda: Fireside reflections

Reality: I look great in this lighting; time for some selfies!

Meanwhile, while leaders debate servant leadership by the lake, customer support reroutes calls and finance hustles to close the month. The message reads loud and clear: Regular work carries on; the big thinkers are elsewhere.

Ouch.

Left unchecked, that storyline erodes trust and strategy begins to feel like something that lives in mountain‑view chalets – far from the day‑to‑day reality of the people who make it happen.

Turning Retreats into Bridges (Not Buffers)

If retreats are here to stay – and let’s be honest, they are – they could do with a bit of a re-design. To make them connective, consider some practical moves like these:

Widen the invite list – strategically. Bring one or two frontline voices who can reality‑test ideas in the room.
Skip the gimmicks. Zip‑lines prove agility; open dialogue proves alignment. Prioritize the latter.
Publish a retreat charter. Share objectives and success metrics before departure so the whole organization knows what “good” will look like.
Commit to a 72‑hour follow‑through. Within three days of returning, circulate decisions, next steps, and accountable owners. Momentum evaporates quickly – capture it while energy is high.

Handled well, an off‑site can be a portal to success. You leave the gathering with bigger questions, stronger relationships, and a clearer path forward while returning to the office energized to test, tweak, and iterate. The distance you’ve travelled becomes a runway for ideas to land … not a wall that separates you from staff.

Leadership retreats shouldn’t feel like corporate summer camp, nor should they serve as clandestine strategy labs. They’re simply a tool – one of many – for widening perspective and tightening alignment. If your retreat ends with insights that employees recognize and can link to their work, you’ve succeeded.

One Last Favor

If you’re among the lucky few travelling to that exotic locale for the Leadership Retreat, do everyone a favor when you get back: unpack the swag, triage your inbox, and share a 200‑word “why it matters” memo with your staff – right alongside that artisanal granola recipe.

*****

Training Hiring Managers: Because “I Liked Their Vibe” Isn’t a Strategy

There are a lot of amateur hiring managers out there.

No no no – they’re not unskilled in their core roles; Claire the CFO is a killer CFO! But they’re unskilled at hiring because hiring isn’t their core role. They’re mostly making it up as they go along – blindly stumbling through interviews and hoping for a spark that something feels “right.” They’re often just winging it – with varying degrees of success.

It’s like sending someone to build a house with a hammer and a prayer instead of blueprints and proper tools. And this haphazard approach isn’t just inefficient; it’s actively undermining your organization’s talent strategy.

Hiring isn’t guesswork – and if we want to improve the caliber of new hires (and retain them!) we have to start with one essential truth: hiring managers need training. And not just any training – they need training that equips them to hire in a fair, logical, and truly informed way.

Training managers to hire well isn’t a luxury or a “nice to have.” It’s the most direct way to strengthen your talent pipeline, reduce turnover, and ensure every candidate – successful or not – has a respectful and equitable experience.

Start with Structure

Structured hiring isn’t about rigidity (although I’m all about a consistent process!) – it’s about clarity. When hiring managers are trained to use defined competencies, meaningful rating scales, and aligned definitions of what “qualified,” “great,” or “not a fit” means in your organization, everything gets sharper.

This means:

Defined Competencies: What skills, behaviors, and attributes truly matter for each role? What does success look like in practice – not just on paper, but in the actual day-to-day of the work? Defining competencies means moving beyond vague traits like “team player” or “strong communicator” and articulating what those look like in action (the behaviors!), for your organization, in that specific job. It’s not just a hiring guide – it’s a blueprint for alignment, development, and performance over time. Get specific.
Clarified Definitions: What counts as “demonstrated evidence” for each competency? What behaviors or examples move a candidate from “meets expectations” to “exceeds”? Without shared understanding and language, rating scales become subjective guesswork, and interviews drift into personal preference. Clarifying definitions ensures that everyone – whether part of a panel or conducting solo interviews – is speaking the same evaluative language. It anchors decision-making, reduces bias, and transforms feedback conversations from vague impressions to meaningful, aligned assessments. Without this clarity, your hiring process isn’t consistent – it’s improv theatre.
Consistent Implementation: Structure only works if it’s applied consistently – across every department, every level, every hire. That means training every hiring manager, whether it’s their first time conducting interviews or they’re a VP with decades of “gut instinct” behind them. Consistency isn’t about bureaucracy – it’s about fairness, reliability, and better outcomes. Without it, you’re not assessing candidates against shared standards; you’re comparing apples to whatever arbitrary impression someone had this morning before their second cup of coffee.

Instead of gut instincts or vague impressions (“I just liked her vibe”), hiring becomes a shared, measurable process. This leads to better decisions, fewer biases, and much less time wasted in post-interview debates that go nowhere.

Selection Is a Skill

One of the most overlooked steps in the hiring process is how to make the actual hiring decision. And then, to make it worse, we very rarely teach managers how to make those decisions. We give them tools for interviewing, but when it comes time to choose, it often boils down to ephemeral and nebulous criteria.

Hiring decisions should be rooted in evidence, aligned with the job requirements, and based on a repeatable, fair process. This is where the rubber meets the road, and it should never (ever) be as basic as “I like Susie – let’s hire her.” This is when you refer back to the hiring requirements, the objective data collected during the interview process, and the rating scale and evaluation criteria. Did Susie clearly demonstrate proficiency and tangible evidence of the core competencies required for success in the role? Where did she rate on the scale? What evidence supports that subjective take?

We need to walk managers through what a sound selection process looks like – from consolidating feedback to weighing tradeoffs to avoiding knee-jerk or “yes/no” reactions.

Practice Before You Play

You wouldn’t send someone into a high-stakes client meeting without rehearsal. So why are we sending unprepared hiring managers into interviews?

Having a structured process isn’t enough; your hiring managers also need to practice before they’re unleashed upon unsuspecting applicants. This isn’t a “read the manual once and you’re good” situation but rather a process that should involve role-playing, mock interviews, and scenario-based training. Help them build comfort with the cadence and pacing of an interview: managing time, guiding the conversation, and knowing when to dig deeper or move on. Have your managers conduct practice interviews and simulations that mimic real candidate conversations to build fluency and confidence before the stakes get real.

Give them the opportunity to stumble and recalibrate in a safe environment – not in front of a live candidate whose future (and your employer brand) is on the line. Because when hiring managers aren’t prepared, the impact isn’t just awkward – it’s reputational.

How it Pays Off

Training your hiring managers isn’t about checking boxes. It’s about setting a higher standard. The result? Better hires, stronger teams, and a smoother process for everyone involved.

Ultimately, investing in robust training for your hiring managers isn’t an HR nicety; it’s a strategic imperative. It’s how you build better teams, foster a fairer culture, and ensure that every new hire adds value.

Stop enabling amateur hour and start empowering your managers to hire like the pros you need them to be.

*****

Situation cloudy. Precipitation expected.

Sometimes, you can sense the shift before it becomes visible. The mood in the office – or across the virtual grid – tightens and conversations flatten. There’s a hesitancy in tone, a retreat behind polite professionalism, and an unmistakable heaviness that settles into the rhythm of the day.

It’s not one event, but a collection of cues. Subtle at first, then unmistakable. Trusted colleagues begin to leave, and not just at the entry level. Leadership changes are announced with carefully chosen words that say very little. Benefits are quietly scaled back and team events are postponed or vanish altogether. Communication grows sparse, and the familiar cadence of alignment and clarity is replaced with a kind of organizational static.

You notice that decisions take longer and that initiatives once championed with enthusiasm are now left adrift. There’s no dramatic explosion – just a slow accumulation of pressure, like a sky thickening with storm clouds. And even if no one names it directly, everyone knows: something is shifting.

This is the prelude to disruption. A brewing instability that precedes a larger unraveling.

The question is: how should HR respond when the signs are there, when the internal forecast suggests precipitation is not only possible – but likely?

HR prepares – not with panic, but with discernment. It moves toward clarity rather than speculation and creates intentional space for honest dialogue – spaces where concerns can be aired before they calcify into disengagement. HR becomes the steward of organizational coherence, working to realign not only structures but relationships, trust, and the day-to-day cadence of how work happens.

It begins by reevaluating the organization’s internal climate – not through data alone, but through dialogue, observation, and contextual listening. What are employees experiencing in this moment? Where is silence replacing feedback, or fatigue replacing engagement? What unspoken narratives are shaping morale?

HR asks the right questions – not only of employees, but of leadership. It challenges vague messaging, presses for transparency, and advocates for decisions that are not only operationally sound but emotionally intelligent.

Above all, HR refuses to ignore the signals. Because the role of HR is not to weather the storm in silence – it is to name it, prepare for it, and guide others through it with steady hands.

There will always be organizational storms. But when HR leads with foresight, presence, and courage, the forecast – no matter how cloudy – becomes navigable.

*****

Real HR: The Book Launch

This is a milestone day for me.

Real HR: What It Is, What It Can Be, and How to Get There is officially out in the world.

I didn’t write this book because I had all the answers. I wrote it because I’ve spent years navigating the contradictions and complexities of this field – balancing strategic goals with human realities, decoding executive intent, and trying to make sense of systems that often feel more performative than purposeful.

This book is for the HR professionals who think deeply and care fiercely. For the ones who see the cracks and are still committed to building something better. It’s for those who want to approach this work with integrity, clarity, and a sharper sense of direction.

Real HR is part field guide and part personal reflection. It’s grounded in real experience and decades of observation – with a bit of nuance, critique, and a NSFW word or two (maybe three). It’s the book I’ve needed at several points in my career – and it might be the one you need right now.

Inside, you’ll find reflections on:

what HR is, and what it’s capable of becoming
the profession’s recurring identity crisis
how systems shape our actions – and how we shape them in return
what it means to remain fully present in the work

There’s honesty. There’s insight. And there’s an unwavering belief that HR can be better – not in theory, but in practice.

If you’ve ever found yourself rewriting the script while everyone else sticks to the bullet-pointed orthodoxy, this book is for you. If you’ve ever wanted someone to say out loud what you’ve only muttered under your breath in the breakroom, this book is for you. And if you’ve ever questioned whether you’re the only one doing this work with your whole brain and a working moral compass – this book is definitely for you.

You can grab your copy here and I’d love to hear what resonates.

Here’s to what’s real. Let’s keep building it.