EXECUTIVE OFFSITES AND LEADERSHIP RETREATS
13 Executive Offsite Facilitators and Firms to Consider in 2026
A selected, non-ranked guide for CEOs, Presidents, CHROs, Chiefs of Staff and Board Chairs
Updated September 2026
By Mark Lefko
There is no single best executive offsite facilitator. The right choice depends on the work the leadership team needs to do: make strategic choices, rebuild trust, integrate a new CEO, improve how the team operates, or create a shared experience that strengthens connection.
This selected directory includes thirteen current practitioners and firms representing different approaches to executive offsites, leadership retreats, board retreats and leadership summits. It is not a ranking and it is not intended to be exhaustive. The descriptions are based on each provider’s current public positioning as of September 2026.
Categories and providers within each category are listed alphabetically. Nothing here is ordered by preference, quality or fee.
Disclosure: I am one of the practitioners included. I have described the other providers based on their public offerings and identified the situations in which each may be a reasonable fit, along with what each approach costs you. For a fuller selection process, see How to Choose an Executive Offsite Facilitator.
The thirteen, at a glance
Enterprise assessment and consulting
Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) · RHR International
Experiential providers
Framework and leadership development providers
Consult Clarity · Stewart Leadership · The Table Group
Independent senior practitioners
Kristin Arnold · Mark Lefko · Doug Sundheim
Strategy and decision process firms
Schaffer Consulting · SME Strategy · The Strategic Offsites Group
Enterprise assessment and consulting · 2 providers
Firms with research infrastructure, psychometric assessment and global delivery. Often considered when the engagement sits inside a wider organizational initiative, or when a board wants a recognizable name.
Center for Creative Leadership (CCL)
CCL is a nonprofit leadership development organization that has worked with organizations in more than 160 countries over fifty years, including two-thirds of the Fortune 1000. Its team development work is built around its Team Effectiveness Framework, the Direction-Alignment-Commitment model and the Team Vantage assessment, and is usually delivered as part of a broader leadership development engagement rather than as standalone offsite facilitation.
Best for: Organizations that want research-based team development, assessment and a common leadership language that can be extended well beyond the executive team.
RHR International
RHR International works with CEO and direct-report teams and Executive Leadership Teams on team effectiveness, assessment and coaching. Its approach combines behavioral science, leadership assessment and practical work on decision-making, trust, collaboration and accountability.
Best for: Larger organizations seeking psychology-informed team development, assessment and coaching within a broader leadership initiative.
What you trade in this category: cost and cycle time, and the fact that the senior name in the pitch is frequently not the person who runs the room. Ask who will actually be in front of your team.
Experiential providers · 2 providers
Providers who build the experience itself and carry much of the event burden. Often considered when connection, shared experience or recognition is a genuine part of the purpose.
BusinessOutside
BusinessOutside designs leadership-team offsites, immersive experiences and longer team-development engagements. Its facilitators are former CEOs, founders and senior operators, and its process includes team-health surveys, pre-interviews, custom agenda design, logistics, delivery and follow-through.
Best for: Teams that value facilitators with operating experience and want trust-building, experience design and logistics integrated into one engagement.
GEL
GEL combines organizational-development consulting with outdoor, simulation and experiential components. Its strategic-offsite work includes advance preparation, a senior organizational-development consultant, facilitated reflection and follow-through designed to connect the experience to workplace behavior.
Best for: Leadership teams that want experiential learning or outdoor elements without separating the activity from facilitated team-development work.
What you trade in this category: the center of gravity shifts toward the experience and the venue. These providers are strong at what they do, and they are not built for a conversation a leadership team has been avoiding for eighteen months.
Framework and leadership development providers · 3 providers
Providers who bring established concepts, assessments or a repeatable methodology. Useful when the team wants shared language that continues beyond the event.
Consult Clarity and Clarity Group Global
Jonno White, based in Brisbane, Australia, co-founded Clarity Group Global and facilitates executive-team offsites, Working Genius sessions, strategic-planning discussions and leadership workshops. His approach often uses Working Genius to help teams understand how different kinds of work create energy, frustration and gaps in execution.
Best for: Teams that want a practical diagnostic framework for work allocation, collaboration and team effectiveness, particularly in Australia or across distributed international teams.
Stewart Leadership
Founded by John Parker Stewart and led by President Daniel J. Stewart, Stewart Leadership provides executive offsites, strategic planning, team alignment and new-leader assimilation. Its published approach emphasizes diagnosing the organization’s needs before selecting tools or frameworks.
Best for: Organizations that want facilitation integrated with broader leadership development, executive coaching or team-effectiveness work.
The Table Group
Founded by Patrick Lencioni, The Table Group offers a two-day executive-team offsite and longer organizational-health engagements grounded in The Advantage and The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Its principal consultants work with leadership teams on cohesion, organizational clarity, meetings and communication.
Best for: Teams that want a widely recognized organizational-health framework and common language for trust, productive conflict, commitment and clarity.
What you trade in this category: the model arrives before the diagnosis. Where a team’s real difficulty does not map cleanly onto the framework, the framework usually wins the session anyway.
Independent senior practitioners · 3 providers
Practitioners who work directly with the sponsor and leadership team without a bench behind them. Often considered when the quality of the relationship, neutrality in the room, and continuity before and after the offsite matter more than access to a large consulting firm.
Kristin Arnold and The Extraordinary Team
Kristin Arnold is a Certified Professional Facilitator | Master whose practice includes custom executive-team offsites, retreats, strategic facilitation and board work. Her public positioning emphasizes helping leadership teams surface differing views, make hard strategic decisions and align around a shared direction.
Best for: Executive teams seeking a highly credentialed facilitator with particular strength in strategic conversations, alignment, board settings and high-stakes meetings.
Mark Lefko and Lefko Group
Mark Lefko is an executive offsite facilitator and advisor to CEOs, Presidents and Executive Leadership Teams. Based in Northern California and working globally, he has facilitated more than 300 executive offsites, leadership retreats and leadership summits and advised more than 150 CEOs and Presidents over more than forty years. Engagements begin with confidential one-to-one interviews with every member of the leadership team, followed by an agenda built from what those conversations surface. A former CFO and Acting COO, M&A executive, CPA and TEC/Vistage Chair.
Best for: Trust, candor, executive-team alignment, new-CEO integration, leadership transitions, post-merger team integration, and situations where the CEO wants a senior practitioner personally involved throughout.
Doug Sundheim and The Sundheim Group
Doug Sundheim advises CEOs and executive teams on team effectiveness, strategy execution, transformation and executive coaching. His work is broader than standalone offsite facilitation, making him relevant when an offsite is part of an ongoing advisory or team-effectiveness engagement.
Best for: CEOs who want continuing executive advisory and coaching around the offsite rather than a one-time facilitated event.
What you trade in this category: capacity and scale. Independent practitioners take a limited number of engagements, book further out, and have no bench to roll the work out across a large organization afterward.
Strategy and decision process firms · 3 providers
Firms strongest when the central challenge is strategic choice, decision architecture, implementation, or converting broad priorities into a usable plan.
Schaffer Consulting
Schaffer Consulting works with leaders and teams on strategy, transformation and leadership, with an emphasis on measurable results and implementation. Its long-standing practice is relevant when an offsite must create momentum for action rather than stop at planning or discussion.
Best for: Organizations that want strategic facilitation tied closely to implementation, transformation and measurable business results.
SME Strategy
SME Strategy offers a defined strategic-planning facilitation process that includes surveys and interviews, two- or three-day sessions, a strategic-plan recap and implementation-support calls. It also publishes package pricing, which is unusual in this market.
Best for: Growing and mid-sized organizations seeking a structured strategic-planning process, clear deliverables and transparent pricing.
The Strategic Offsites Group
Founded by Bob Frisch, The Strategic Offsites Group focuses on the design and facilitation of high-stakes strategy offsites and executive decision processes. Frisch and Logan Chandler co-authored the Harvard Business Review article Off-Sites That Work, and the firm’s positioning emphasizes careful meeting architecture and productive executive participation.
Best for: Leadership teams facing consequential strategic choices where sequencing, decision rights and the structure of the conversation are central.
What you trade in this category: these are strategy people. Where the real barrier is that two executives have stopped speaking honestly to each other, a better decision process will not reach it.
Matching the provider to the problem
Begin with the problem, not the provider. This table is a starting point, not a verdict.
| If the real issue is | You need someone strong at | Look toward | Be cautious of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strategic choice and trade-offs | Decision architecture and sequencing | Strategy and decision process firms | Experiential providers; pure team-building |
| Alignment that keeps slipping | Surfacing the unspoken disagreement | Independent practitioners; framework practitioners | Facilitators assigned to you rather than chosen |
| Trust, candor, buried conflict | Human dynamics and neutrality under pressure | Independent senior practitioners | Framework-led sessions; venue-led retreats |
| New CEO or post-merger integration | Transition work and relationship design | Independent practitioners; assessment firms | Providers who treat it as a routine offsite |
| Operating rhythm and accountability | Structure plus behavior change | Framework providers; strategy process firms | One-off sessions with no follow-through |
| Connection, culture, recognition | Experience design and logistics | Experiential providers | Paying senior advisory rates for an event |
How to use this list
Shortlist two providers from the category that matches your problem, and one from an adjacent category as a control. Then ask all three the same questions.
The questions that sort the field fastest concern who will actually facilitate, what happens before the meeting, whether the approach fits the problem, and what follow-through occurs after the team leaves. They are set out in full in How to Choose an Executive Offsite Facilitator.
Questions leaders ask
What does an executive offsite facilitator do?
An executive offsite facilitator helps the sponsor clarify the purpose, gathers perspectives before the meeting, designs the agenda, leads the conversation without becoming part of the politics, and turns discussion into explicit decisions and commitments.
When is an independent senior facilitator the better fit?
Usually when trust, candor, executive-team dynamics, leadership transition or sensitive conflict matters more than deploying a standard framework across a large organization. The person assessed before the engagement should be the person leading the room.
Does an executive offsite facilitator need to be local?
Not necessarily. Fit and experience matter more than proximity when the stakes are high. Location matters primarily because it affects travel time, scheduling and cost.
How far in advance should an executive offsite be planned?
Six to eight weeks is comfortable for confidential interviews and thoughtful agenda design. Shorter timelines can work, but reducing preparation usually reduces the value of the meeting.
What is the difference between an executive offsite and a corporate retreat?
An executive offsite is normally a working session for the senior leadership team focused on decisions, alignment and how the team operates. A corporate retreat often has broader attendance and places more weight on connection, culture or recognition. The same provider may not be equally strong at both.
A final perspective
A provider’s reputation matters, but fit matters more. The strongest facilitator for a strategy process may not be the strongest person for a team that has stopped speaking honestly. The useful question is not who appears on the longest list. It is who can help this leadership team have the conversation, make the decisions and sustain the changes that matter now.
If your executive team is working through trust, alignment, transition, difficult dynamics or post-merger integration, I would be glad to have a confidential conversation about whether I am the right fit. Learn more about my executive offsite facilitation work or schedule a confidential conversation.
About the author
Mark Lefko is an executive offsite facilitator and advisor to CEOs, Presidents and Executive Leadership Teams. He is based in Northern California and works across North America, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and Asia. Read Mark Lefko’s professional bio.
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Corrections
This selected directory is reviewed periodically and is not exhaustive. If you run an executive offsite practice and believe you belong here, or if a description or link is no longer accurate, please write to mark@lefkogroup.net.