[S5] Belly-to-Belly Retreat Camp

Course Description

This is a mindset and strategy reset designed for senior executives. In the office, leadership teams are often constrained by hierarchy, daily demands, and familiar patterns of interaction. The conversations that matter most can therefore be the hardest to have.

This executive retreat takes place away from the noise of everyday work, in the mountains or by the coast. Through a deliberate shift in setting, or Set Shifting, participants are invited to lower their defences, suspend assumptions, and enter a more open space for dialogue. In the stillness of nature, we use Belly-to-Belly, face-to-face facilitation to address strategic differences, build psychological safety, and strengthen alignment within the decision-making team. The aim is to ensure that annual priorities are not only agreed upon, but carried through with clarity and commitment.

Three Highlights

1. Set Shifting and mindset unlocking: move into the stillness of the mountains or the coast, where the change in setting helps senior executives step away from daily complexity, and make space for deeper thinking and more honest dialogue.
2. Strategic alignment at the executive level: clarify annual priorities, surface the issues that are often difficult to raise, and ensure that the core team is aligned in both external messaging and resource allocation.
3. Leadership narrative and influence: practise empathetic leadership communication in an informal setting, and translate corporate strategy into a vision that people across the organisation can understand, feel, and act on.

Modules

In this training, we cover:

• Set Shifting: mindset unlocking and immersive context
  By moving into a natural setting, such as the mountains or the coast, senior executives are given the conditions to step out of habitual office dynamics, lower their defences, and enter a more reflective state. Scenario-based business challenges help reveal potential strategic differences and value gaps that may emerge as the organisation responds to global change.
• Core dialogue: Belly-to-Belly facilitation
  A high-trust dialogue process is facilitated to help senior executives address the topics that are often left unsaid, avoided, or delayed.
• Vision co-creation: annual strategy alignment
  The group aligns annual priorities and resource allocation, ensuring that departments understand the vision consistently and speak with one voice. Strategic data are translated into leadership stories that create stronger recognition, ownership, and momentum for change.

Course Objectives

1. Executive-level strategic alignment: build a clear, high-commitment agreement around the organisation’s annual priorities, away from the pressures and politics of the office.
2. Psychological safety within the senior team: use the natural setting to create space for trust, shared language, and more resilient decision-making.
3. An action blueprint with organisational commitment: turn the consensus created during the retreat into concrete records and action plans, so that transformation can be carried through from the top with consistency and precision.

Who is it for? Who is it NOT for?

This course is for: Mid-level and senior executive teams, core decision-making groups, board members, and leaders responsible for annual corporate strategy planning.

This course is not for: Managers looking for a one-off recreational activity, leaders unwilling to face real cross-departmental tensions, or those who believe that strategy should be driven by command and control alone.

Professional and Organisational Impact

For individuals: participants strengthen senior leadership capability, strategic translation skills, and their influence in leading change in a global business environment.

For organisations: the retreat improves execution efficiency and decision-making transparency, produces a high-commitment action blueprint, and reduces resistance during transformation.

What are we going to do in class?

1. Immersive environmental facilitation: an off-site retreat and carefully designed scenario scripts create space for reflection beyond daily operations.
2. Co-creation through focused questions: a professional facilitator leads critical conversations, helping senior executives build shared understanding and commitment around core values.
3. Strategic alignment record: Canvas tools are used to turn dialogue into tangible outputs, followed by a symbolic commitment signing.

Words from Your Guide

Irene Wu

Hello, I am Irene. In the process of helping more than 20 listed companies navigate change, I have come to believe that, in an age of intense global competition, the real breakthrough lies in a leadership team’s ability to keep pace with change, cross organisational, disciplinary, and generational boundaries, and build genuine communication and shared commitment.

I designed this executive retreat to begin with a shift in setting. We step away from the patterns of daily work and enter the mountains or the coast. Drawing on my facilitation experience across industry, government, and academia, together with Design Thinking, I help senior teams reach deeper alignment in the stillness of nature.

Through a more considered form of dialogue, we build leadership teams with psychological safety and the capacity for co-creation, so that organisations can lead through change and define success on their own terms.