Why Meeting in Person Works So Well: What the Research Says About Team Offsites

We started Sūtra because we believe the most important conversations a leadership team has all year happen away from the office, around one table. The research agrees.

In a study by Mahdi Roghanizad and Vanessa Bohns, written up in Harvard Business Review, volunteers asked strangers to complete a survey, either in person or by email. Asking in person was about 34 times more effective. The same ask, a dramatically better result, simply because two people were in the same place.

Researchers at MIT's Human Dynamics Laboratory found something just as encouraging. Over seven years, in 21 organisations, they measured the communication of about 2,500 people using wearable electronic badges that recorded who talked to whom, and how. Patterns of communication were the most important predictor of a team's success, as significant as individual intelligence, personality, skill and the substance of the discussions combined.

Communication, in other words, is not a soft factor. It can be measured, and the researchers found it mattered as much as everything else that goes into a team combined. Pentland's work also found that much of what matters happens outside formal meetings, in the informal conversations between them.

What this means for your next leadership offsite

If being in the same place changes how people respond, and the way a team communicates predicts how it performs, then where and how your team gathers is not a detail. It is part of the strategy. A corporate retreat is one of the few moments in the year when a leadership team has days together, not minutes, in the same room.

That is why every Sūtra retreat is designed around the conversations that matter. We find a private castle, French château, Tuscan villa or country estate your team has to itself, build the programme around how your people actually work, and plan the long dinners, walks and quiet moments where the real talking tends to happen.

How we design team offsites for connection

• Space that is yours alone. Exclusive-use venues across Europe and the UK, from castles in Scotland to châteaux in France and villas in Tuscany, chosen from our collection of more than 200 private properties.
• Every venue visited in person. We visit a property before we bring a client there, so we know which room works for a strategy session and which table seats your whole team.
• Room between the sessions. Our programmes leave time for the informal conversations the research points to, because they count as much as the agenda.
• Fully managed, end to end. From venue sourcing to on-site management, we handle every detail so your team can focus on each other.