High-Performing Teams: An Away Day Workshop for a UK Public Sector Team
At a glance
Goal
Give an established public sector team an interactive, enjoyable session that explored the practical behaviours behind high-performing teams and produced insights to apply back at work.
Scope
Members of a UK public sector team attending their team away day.
Scale
Around 40 participants working in parallel teams of 8 to 10.
Region
UK
Outcomes
Of the 20 participants who gave feedback, 18 named the session among their favourite activities of the away day and 17 among the most valuable.
Delivery
A half-day, highly interactive workshop on high-performing teams
Sector
Public Sector / Government
The Challenge
A UK public sector team was planning an away day and wanted a session on high-performing teams that would hold the room and make a difference afterwards.
Away day time is a significant investment for any team. This group had already completed development work together, so it did not want another behavioural model or psychometric. It wanted a session that was highly interactive and enjoyable, but also practical: one that explored the behaviours behind high-performing teams, gave people the chance to collaborate and challenge ideas constructively, and sent them back to work with insights they could use.
The risk with sessions like this is a familiar one. Enjoyable activities can be dismissed as soft, while content-heavy sessions can lose an audience that has heard the theory before. The brief was to deliver both engagement and relevance in a single morning.
Our Solution
Inspirational Group designed a half-day workshop based on a simple principle: people learn more by experiencing team behaviours than by discussing them. The activities were vehicles for learning. The emphasis was not on completing each challenge, but on observing and applying the behaviours that emerged as teams worked together.
Participants worked in parallel teams of 8 to 10 through three facilitated challenges, each more demanding than the last and each followed by a structured debrief. A short opening set the context, and the session closed with a reflection that turned insight into agreed action.
Opening: What High-Performing Teams Do
A short input on Katzenbach and Smith’s research gave participants a common language for high performance, without introducing another behavioural model.
Challenge 1: Collective Intelligence
Teams combined different perspectives to solve increasingly demanding problems, and discovered that collaborating beyond their own table improved overall performance.
Challenge 2: Creative Problem Solving
A progressively more complex challenge rewarded questioning assumptions, asking for help and sharing learning across groups.
Challenge 3: Prioritising for Performance
The main activity asked teams to deliver a portfolio of competing tasks within a fixed timeframe, balancing quick wins against higher-value work.
Reflection and Commitments
Participants applied the insights to their own team and agreed individual and team commitments to act on straight away.
Impact
Participant feedback showed the session met both parts of the brief. Participants valued it as enjoyable and different from their usual working day, and connected that experience directly to how they work as a team. One participant, noting that the team had taken part in similar sessions before, felt this one worked well.
The results reflect engagement and perceived value rather than measured performance change. They do, however, show that a session designed around experience rather than theory can earn its place on an away day agenda.
Key Results
- 18 of the 20 participants who gave feedback named the session among their favourite activities of the away day
- 17 of the 20 named it among the most valuable activities of the away day
- Feedback consistently linked enjoyment with practical relevance to the workplace
- Individual and team commitments agreed for immediate application back at work
What This Means for You
If you are planning an away day or offsite for a team that has already invested in development, this session shows how experiential design can deliver something people enjoy and use.
This case study shows how Inspirational Group designs team sessions that balance engagement with practical relevance to the workplace.
Teams experience high-performing behaviours rather than simply discuss them
Away day time produces practical commitments, not just goodwill
Established teams build on previous development without repeating familiar models
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