Team events are making a comeback. After years of remote work and tight budgets, companies are bringing people together again, and many are looking for experiences that go beyond the usual offsite. So should companies deliberately send their people somewhere strange, uncomfortable, and awe-inspiring, and what actually happens to a team when they do?
Petra Wille and Teresa Torres trade stories about the experiences that quietly rewired how they see the world. Petra shares the art-like, genre-bending conferences she attends for "new lenses and new angles," while Teresa recounts the World Domination Summit — and the "one year from now" exercise that led her to pack up and move to Oregon. From there they get into why awe and being fully in the moment matter, drawing on kite surfing, mountain biking, hockey, and a Formula One track day, and why learning a new sport quietly teaches you to be a beginner again.
But the heart of the episode is a caution: comfort-zone-pushing experiences only work when leaders co-design them with their teams. Push too far, and you alienate people instead of growing them.