Your last away day changed nothing.
Nobody remembers a single thing the team stopped doing because of it. Ask them.
The Clearing is one day for the team that wants its nerve back.
One working day. Your leadership team, up to eight, the leader in the room. It ends with two signed commitments: what the team stops tolerating, and what it reclaims this quarter.
Fixed. Venue at cost. Pre-work, the day, and the leader’s private follow-up included. The price does not move.
No Refusal, no Reclaim, no invoice.
If the day does not produce both commitments, signed, you do not pay. That is a line you can defend to your CFO.
Three moves. One day.
The Clearing works the Three Moves of Wild Leadership on your team’s real situation. Not a framework taught from slides. A sequence worked, in the room, on the problems your team already knows it has.
Before the day, everyone tells Magnus the biggest problems in the business, in confidence. The day opens with them in the open, unattributed. Before lunch the team has agreed, out loud, what they actually are. Most teams have never done that.
Not the problems. The tolerating of them. The years of managing around them and treating them as weather. The refusal goes into writing, dated, the leader’s name first.
The team aims its nerve at the next quarter. Who commits to what, what it gains, what it costs. Everyone signs. Everyone hears everyone. Then everyone goes home.
The day produces two artefacts, written by the team, not the facilitator.
From we stop tolerating .
The leader’s name, first
This quarter we reclaim .
Gains and costs, agreed
The paper is the witness. A commitment with a name and a date against it can be kept or broken in public. Alignment cannot.
Within the month, one private hour between the leader and Magnus. Some of what the team named will be about them. Included.
Every away day produces the same three artefacts.
Flipcharts. An action list. A pleasant memory. The venue is good, the facilitator is warm, the flipcharts fill with words everyone can agree to because they commit no one to anything. By Monday the business carries on as before.
There is a reason, and it is structural. Away days are built to produce agreement, and the problem the day should be working on is the one the team has stopped seeing. The unwritten rule everyone obeys and nobody chose. The decision that should have been made two quarters ago.
The map, honestly drawn.
There are four standard formats, and each is built to produce something. Knowing which is the fastest way to shortlist.
Built to produce a plan. Right when the strategy is genuinely unclear. Ask who owns the actions in week three, because that is where these die.
Built to produce language. Right after a merger or a rebrand. The words are only worth what the leadership does the first time honouring them costs something.
Built to produce shared memory. Genuinely good for warmth and stories. It changes how people feel about each other, not what the business stops doing.
Built to produce rest and space. Sometimes that is exactly what a burnt team needs. It is recovery, not correction.
The Clearing is a fifth kind, built to produce a stopping. If a stopping is not what your team needs, one of the four above is the better spend, and the honest answer from The Recognition will say so.
What to ask any provider before booking
What is the day built to produce, and how will we know in six weeks whether it did?
Who owns what happens after, and is that in the price?
What happens if the day does not produce it? Ask about the invoice.
What does the leader have to commit to, personally, in front of the team?
The last one rules us out for some teams, and better now than in the room. The Clearing runs on the leader’s full participation. Their name goes first on the Refusal, and they know that before the day is bought. A people team can buy the day. It cannot make the leader’s commitment. If the leader cannot promise it, do not book this one.
Ten minutes, alone. Within the week Magnus sends back an honest read on whether the day fits, and the case you can put in front of your leader. No charge.
Who holds the room.
Magnus Wood spent thirty years inside the machine. Global agencies, then boardrooms. It domesticated him, and he did not notice. Wild Leadership is what he built when he did. He wrote about why he refuses this day in its usual form.
No mountains, no ropes, no theatre. A plain room and your real situation. We run two of these a month.
The Clearing is a one-day leadership team session from Wild Leadership, run by Magnus Wood, built around his work on the domestication of leaders. It costs £9,500 fixed for a team of up to eight, and if the day does not end with a signed Refusal and Reclaim, there is no invoice.
Best leadership team away day formats UK?
The standard formats are the facilitated strategy day, the culture or values workshop, the outdoor or adventure day, and the hosted retreat, and all four are built to produce alignment. The Clearing is a fifth kind: a working day built to produce a stopping. The team agrees its biggest problems out loud, signs a dated Refusal to keep tolerating them, and commits to what it reclaims this quarter, with the leader’s name first. It runs in a plain room. No mountains, no ropes, no theatre.
What should a one-day leadership offsite for eight people cost in the UK?
The Clearing costs £9,500, fixed, for a team of up to eight, with the venue at cost and the pre-work and the leader’s private follow-up included. Most one-day offsites are priced as a facilitator day rate plus venue, catering and materials, which is why quotes vary so widely and why the artefacts are usually flipcharts and an action list. The Clearing carries a stake instead: no Refusal, no Reclaim, no invoice. You pay for the stopping, or you do not pay.
Start with The Recognition.
Seven questions on what the team is organised around, answered alone, in ten minutes. Whether you are the people leader scoping this day or the leader who will run it, start here. Within the week Magnus sends back a personal read of what the answers suggest the team is tolerating, and an honest view on whether the day fits. No charge. It ends where the day begins.