25 Executive Team Offsite Facilitators in New Zealand

Your executive team nods during the offsite, agrees to the priorities, then walks out and does exactly what they were doing before.

You have watched this pattern repeat for two years now. The session feels productive in the moment. Everyone contributes. The facilitator wraps up on time. The evaluations come back positive. Then three months later it is like the conversation never happened. The same tensions resurface. The same decisions get relitigated. The same two people still cannot work together without the rest of the team holding their breath.

The problem is not the venue or the agenda. The problem is that most offsite facilitators design for the day, not for the 90 days after. They create a moment, not a shift. You need someone who understands that an executive team offsite is not a workshop. It is an intervention into a system that has calcified around unspoken agreements, avoided conflicts, and roles that no longer fit the strategy.

I put together this list of 25 executive team offsite facilitators working in New Zealand who approach the work that way.

STRATEGIC EXECUTIVE FACILITATION

The facilitators in this section work at the intersection of strategy and team dynamics. They are brought in when the executive team has the strategy on paper but cannot align around how to execute it, or when the real problem is not clarity but commitment. These are not workshop facilitators who run energisers and capture ideas on butcher paper. They are practitioners who have spent years inside boardrooms and leadership teams, and they design offsites that address the actual dysfunction, not the stated agenda.

1. Jonno White

Jonno White is the author of Step Up or Step Out, with more than 10,000 copies sold, and works with executive teams around the world as a Certified Working Genius Facilitator. He is brought in when a leadership team is talented on paper but not working together, when the offsite needs to go beyond the surface conversation, or when the real issue is not the strategy but the team trying to execute it.

Offsite design, not workshop delivery. Most facilitators arrive with a format they have run 40 times before. Jonno designs each offsite around the specific dysfunction the executive team is carrying. That means pre-work that surfaces the unspoken tensions, a structure that makes conflict productive rather than performative, and follow-through that extends the offsite into the next quarter. The offsite is not the outcome. The offsite creates the conditions for the outcome.

Working Genius as the diagnostic layer. The Working Genius model identifies six types of work that every project requires, and maps which types energise each person and which drain them. When an executive team cannot align, the issue is often that the wrong people are doing the wrong work, or that two people with the same genius are competing for the same space. Jonno uses Working Genius to make that visible, then rebuilds how the team works together around the actual talent in the room.

Pattern recognition from repetition. He has facilitated executive offsites across schools, nonprofits, and corporations, which means he has seen the same dysfunction show up in different settings enough times to recognise it faster than the team does. The principal whose deputy undermines them in staff meetings. The CEO whose two direct reports have stopped talking to each other. The exec team that rehearses the same argument every quarter without ever naming what the argument is actually about. The value is not that he has a clever framework. The value is that he has been in the room enough times to know what happens next if nothing changes.

You can reach Jonno at jonno@consultclarity.org to discuss your executive team offsite.

2. Dr. Sarah Williamson

Dr. Sarah Williamson specialises in leadership team alignment for organisations in transition. She works with executive teams navigating mergers, leadership succession, or strategic pivots where the team structure no longer matches the strategy. Her background in organisational psychology gives her the diagnostic capability to identify whether the problem is structural, relational, or both.

Her offsites are built around creating psychological safety at the executive level, which is rarer than most leaders assume. Senior teams perform civility well. They are less skilled at productive disagreement. Sarah designs offsites that make it safe to name what is not working, then builds the relational infrastructure so the hard conversations continue after everyone leaves the room.

She works primarily with nonprofit and public sector leadership teams in Auckland and Wellington, and has a particular strength in facilitating teams where one or two dominant voices have been drowning out the rest of the executive table for years.

3. Michael Chen

Michael Chen works with high-growth companies whose executive teams have scaled faster than their ability to work together. He is often brought in when a founding team that used to make decisions over lunch now sits in three-hour meetings that produce no clarity, or when a new executive hire has joined a tight-knit team and the integration is failing.

His offsite approach starts with a team audit that surfaces misalignment before the session begins. Most teams arrive at an offsite assuming they agree on priorities. Michael's pre-work consistently reveals that they do not. The offsite itself is structured around decision-making rather than ideation. The output is not a vision board. The output is a set of committed decisions with named owners and follow-up dates.

He is based in Christchurch and works extensively with technology companies, professional services firms, and family businesses transitioning into second-generation leadership.

4. Rebecca Taylor

Rebecca Taylor is a former executive coach who shifted into facilitation after watching too many coaching interventions fail because the system around the leader never changed. She now works exclusively with executive teams, and her offsites are designed to shift the team system, not just the individuals inside it.

Her particular expertise is in teams where unspoken roles have calcified. The person who always plays peacemaker. The person who always plays devil's advocate. The person who agrees in the room then reverses the decision in private. Rebecca makes these roles visible, then redesigns the team's operating rhythm so people can step out of the roles that no longer serve the strategy.

She works across sectors but has deep experience in education leadership teams, particularly independent schools and tertiary institutions where governance complexity adds another layer to executive dysfunction.

5. James Parata

James Parata brings a Māori worldview into executive team facilitation, which shifts the questions the offsite asks. Most facilitators start with strategy and cascade down to team dynamics. James starts with whakapapa, with relationships and whanaungatanga, and builds the strategy conversation on top of that foundation.

His offsites are longer and slower than the standard format, because he designs for depth rather than output volume. The first half-day is often spent in conversation that feels unstructured to teams used to tight agendas, but consistently surfaces the relational fractures that no amount of strategic planning will solve. The second day moves into decision-making, and by that point the team is working from a different relational base.

He works primarily with organisations that serve Māori communities, but increasingly with executive teams in mainstream organisations who recognise that the Western model of executive team dynamics is producing polite meetings and poor decisions.

CONFLICT TRANSFORMATION AND TEAM REPAIR

These facilitators are brought in when the executive team is not just misaligned but broken. Two senior people who cannot be in the same room. A CEO who has lost the confidence of half the leadership team. A merger where the two legacy executive cultures are still operating as separate tribes 18 months later. This is not strategy work. This is repair work. The facilitators in this section specialise in making conflict productive, rebuilding trust that has been fractured, and creating the conditions for a team to work together again. For organisations in the nonprofit sector, you may also find value in exploring nonprofit leadership retreat facilitators who specialise in mission-driven contexts.

6. Dr. Anita Patel

Dr. Anita Patel is a conflict resolution specialist who spent 15 years mediating commercial disputes before moving into executive team facilitation. She is called in when the executive team has crossed the line from tension into open conflict, and when the organisation cannot afford to lose either of the people involved.

Her offsite process starts with individual sessions before the group convenes, which allows her to map the conflict accurately and identify whether it is resolvable or whether the team structure needs to change. Most exec teams avoid naming conflict until it is unsalvageable. Anita intervenes earlier, and her offsites are designed to make the conflict explicit, productive, and bounded so it does not consume the entire leadership team.

She works across New Zealand, with concentrations in Wellington and Hamilton, and has a strong track record in healthcare and social services organisations where mission urgency often masks relational breakdown.

7. Tom Harrison

Tom Harrison facilitates executive team offsites for organisations in crisis. A financial scandal. A public failure. A leadership departure that destabilised the senior team. He works with teams who need to rebuild trust internally before they can credibly lead the organisation through the external crisis.

His offsites do not pretend the crisis is not happening. They start there. The first session is always a debrief of what happened, what the exec team could have done differently, and what the fractures are now. Only then does the offsite move into rebuilding. Tom's strength is his ability to hold the room through conversations most facilitators would shut down, and his willingness to name what everyone is thinking but no one is saying.

He is based in Auckland and works extensively with corporate executive teams, government agencies, and large nonprofits.

8. Linda McKenzie

Linda McKenzie specialises in post-merger executive team integration. She is brought in 12 to 18 months after the merger when the executive team is still operating as two separate entities, when key decisions are being made in legacy silos, and when the CEO is spending more energy managing internal politics than leading the organisation.

Her offsites are structured as integration workshops, but the real work is relational. She designs processes that force cross-legacy collaboration on real decisions, not hypothetical exercises. The output is not a integration plan. The output is a set of decisions the executive team has made together, often for the first time, and a clearer picture of who needs to stay and who needs to leave.

She works across New Zealand with a concentration in the corporate and nonprofit sectors, and has particular expertise in mergers where one organisation was significantly larger or more dominant than the other.

9. David Wu

David Wu works with founding executive teams who have grown past the stage where informal decision-making works, but have not yet built the structures to replace it. The result is usually conflict that feels personal but is actually structural. Decisions get revisited. Roles overlap. Two people end up doing the same work or neither person does it because they both assumed the other one would.

His offsites rebuild the operating model of the executive team. He starts by mapping how decisions are actually being made, not how the org chart says they should be made. Then he facilitates a negotiation where the exec team redesigns decision rights, role clarity, and accountability structures. The offsite feels more like governance design than a retreat, because that is what the team actually needs.

He is based in Wellington and works primarily with high-growth startups, professional services firms, and creative agencies.

10. Catherine Lee

Catherine Lee facilitates executive team offsites for organisations whose leadership culture has become toxic. Not tense. Toxic. The leadership team that leaks to staff. The exec table where people have stopped assuming good intent. The CEO whose authority has been so publicly undermined that half the senior team no longer respects the role.

Her offsites are the most confrontational on this list, because polite facilitation does not repair a toxic culture. She names what is happening, holds people accountable for their behaviour, and gives the team a choice point. Either commit to a different way of working together, or acknowledge that the current configuration is unsustainable. Not every team survives her process. The ones that do come out fundamentally different.

She works across New Zealand and internationally, and has deep experience in education, healthcare, and government sectors where leadership toxicity has been allowed to persist for years.

EXECUTIVE TEAM EFFECTIVENESS AND OPERATING RHYTHM

The facilitators in this section work with executive teams whose relationships are largely functional but whose operating rhythm is broken. The meetings are too long, too frequent, or produce no decisions. The exec team is spending 60 percent of its time in the weeds and 10 percent on strategy. The team has no shared understanding of what decisions sit at the executive level versus what should be delegated. These offsites redesign how the executive team works together week to week, not just how they think together once a year.

11. Fiona Grant

Fiona Grant specialises in executive team operating rhythms. She is called in when the leadership team is meeting constantly but making decisions slowly, when the exec calendar is full but the output is low, or when the CEO is frustrated that the senior team cannot seem to work without them in the room.

Her offsites start with a time audit. Every executive team member tracks their meeting load, decision-making participation, and energy expenditure for two weeks before the session. The data almost always reveals the same pattern. The exec team is spending most of its time on operational issues that should have been delegated, and almost no time on the strategic conversations only they can have.

The offsite itself redesigns the meeting cadence, the decision-making framework, and the role clarity so the executive team can operate at the right altitude. Fiona works across New Zealand with a concentration in Auckland, and has particular strength in professional services, membership organisations, and government agencies.

12. Greg Matthews

Greg Matthews works with executive teams whose meetings have become performative. Everyone has learned how to manage up in the room. The hard questions do not get asked. Disagreement happens in private after the meeting ends. The exec session produces alignment theater, not real alignment.

His offsites break that pattern by redesigning how the executive team conducts its core conversations. He introduces decision-making protocols that make disagreement explicit and expected. He rebuilds the team's operating norms so silence is treated as a red flag, not as consent. The offsite is less about strategy content and more about rewiring the behavioural patterns that prevent the team from doing its actual job.

He is based in Dunedin and works with corporate executive teams, regional councils, and large nonprofits across the South Island.

13. Maria Hernandez

Maria Hernandez facilitates executive offsites for teams drowning in complexity. The organisation has grown, the portfolio has expanded, the stakeholder map has quadrupled, and the executive team is now trying to hold 17 priorities in their heads at once. The result is a leadership team that is working harder than ever and achieving less.

Her offsites are built around simplification. She facilitates a ruthless prioritisation process that forces the exec team to name the three to five priorities that actually matter, and to stop pretending everything else is equally important. The output is not a strategic plan. The output is a short list of commitments the executive team will actually resource, and a longer list of things they are explicitly choosing not to do.

She works across New Zealand with particular depth in education, health, and community services where mission complexity often creates strategic paralysis.

14. Richard Foster

Richard Foster works with executive teams whose problem is not alignment but execution. The strategy is clear. The team agrees. But six months later almost nothing has moved. The issue is usually that the exec team has no shared accountability structure, or that the people responsible for execution do not have the authority to make the decisions required.

His offsites build execution architecture. He facilitates the creation of 90-day priorities, assigns single-point accountability for each priority, and builds a rhythm of progress reviews that makes stalled execution visible before it becomes a crisis. The offsite itself is short. The real work is the quarterly follow-up rhythm Richard builds into the team's operating cadence.

He is based in Christchurch and works extensively with manufacturing, logistics, and construction companies where execution gaps have direct financial consequences.

15. Sophie Anderson

Sophie Anderson facilitates offsites for executive teams who have lost their rhythm. The team worked well together three years ago. The relationships are still strong. But something has shifted. Decisions take longer. Meetings drift. Energy is low. The exec team can feel it but cannot name what changed.

Her offsite process is diagnostic first. She spends the first half-day facilitating a conversation about what has changed in the external environment, in the organisation, in the team composition, and in each person's role. Almost always, the team discovers that the operating model they built three years ago no longer fits the organisation they are leading now. Thinking carefully about leadership retreat locations that support this kind of deep diagnostic work can significantly improve the quality of the conversation.

The second day rebuilds the model. Sophie facilitates the redesign of the executive team's structure, rhythm, and decision rights so it matches the current reality rather than the historical one. She works across New Zealand, with concentrations in the nonprofit and membership sectors.

STRATEGY ACTIVATION AND ALIGNMENT

These facilitators are brought in when the executive team has a strategy but cannot translate it into action, or when the strategy exists on paper but the leadership team is not actually aligned on what it means. The offsite becomes the bridge between strategy development and strategy execution. The facilitators in this section specialise in making abstract strategic priorities concrete, translating vision into decisions, and ensuring the executive team leaves the offsite with clarity about who is doing what in the next 90 days.

16. Helen Carter

Helen Carter works with executive teams who have just completed a strategic planning process and now need to activate it. The board has approved the strategy. The exec team was involved in developing it. But when it comes time to execute, the leadership team discovers they have different interpretations of what the strategy actually requires.

Her offsites translate strategy into operation. She facilitates a process where the exec team breaks the strategic priorities into decisions, the decisions into projects, and the projects into accountabilities. By the end of the offsite, every strategic priority has a named owner, a 90-day milestone, and a clear definition of what success looks like.

She is based in Auckland and works extensively with corporate and nonprofit executive teams, particularly in sectors where strategy execution is complicated by external regulation or funding constraints.

17. Paul Reynolds

Paul Reynolds facilitates strategy alignment offsites for executive teams whose members are siloed. Each person understands their own functional area. No one understands how the pieces connect. The CFO does not know what the strategy requires from finance. The COO is optimising operations for last year's priorities. The exec team is aligned in name only.

His offsites create horizontal visibility. He facilitates cross-functional strategy mapping where each exec team member explains what their area needs to deliver for the strategy to succeed, and what they need from the rest of the table to deliver it. The conversation consistently reveals dependencies no one knew existed and resource conflicts no one had surfaced.

He works across New Zealand with a particular focus on organisations in growth or transition phases where functional silos have become a barrier to strategic execution.

18. Karen Liu

Karen Liu works with executive teams whose strategy is clear but whose culture cannot execute it. The organisation has always been relationship-driven, and the new strategy requires performance accountability. Or the organisation has always moved fast, and the new strategy requires governance rigor. The gap is not intellectual. The gap is cultural, and the exec team is caught between the strategy they have endorsed and the culture they have built.

Her offsites surface that tension and force the executive team to choose. Either redesign the strategy to fit the culture, or commit to shifting the culture to match the strategy. Most exec teams want to avoid that choice. Karen does not let them. The offsite becomes the moment where the leadership team decides what kind of organisation they are actually willing to lead.

She is based in Wellington and works primarily with legacy organisations navigating digital transformation, generational leadership transition, or significant strategic repositioning.

19. Mark Stevens

Mark Stevens facilitates offsites for executive teams whose strategy has stalled because the team cannot agree on trade-offs. Every priority is important. Every stakeholder group matters. Every initiative is essential. The result is a strategy that tries to do everything and delivers nothing.

His offsite process is built around forced prioritisation. He uses a range of frameworks to make the exec team rank priorities, allocate resources, and explicitly choose what they are not going to do. The conversation is uncomfortable, because it requires the leadership team to disappoint stakeholders, defund initiatives, and accept that some good ideas will not get resourced.

He works across New Zealand with depth in membership organisations, industry bodies, and government agencies where competing stakeholder interests create strategic gridlock.

20. Emma Phillips

Emma Phillips works with executive teams implementing strategy in environments they do not control. Schools responding to policy shifts. Nonprofits navigating funding cuts. Corporations dealing with regulatory change. The exec team has a strategy, but the external environment keeps shifting underneath it.

Her offsites build adaptive execution capability. She facilitates scenario planning so the executive team has pre-agreed responses to the most likely external disruptions. She builds decision-making frameworks that allow the team to pivot without relitigating the entire strategy. The offsite prepares the exec team to execute in uncertainty, not just in the ideal conditions the strategy assumed.

She is based in Hamilton and works extensively with organisations in education, health, and social services where external policy environments are volatile.

GOVERNANCE AND EXECUTIVE INTERFACE

These facilitators work at the intersection of governance and executive leadership. They are called in when the executive team and the board are misaligned, when role clarity between governance and management has broken down, or when the CEO is caught between a board that wants one thing and an executive team that can deliver another. These offsites often include both the board and the executive team, or they prepare the executive team to have a more productive relationship with the governance layer above them.

21. Alan Whittaker

Alan Whittaker specialises in offsites for executive teams reporting to boards where the relationship has become strained. The board does not trust the exec team to execute. The exec team feels micromanaged. Papers are being rejected. Decisions are being second-guessed. The CEO is spending half their time managing board anxiety instead of leading the organisation.

His offsites rebuild the interface. He facilitates a conversation between the board chair and the executive team about role clarity, information flow, and decision rights. Often the tension is not about competence. The tension is about a governance model that was never clearly defined, or that has drifted over time as board composition changed.

He is based in Auckland and works extensively with nonprofit and cooperative governance structures where the line between governance and management is particularly prone to blurring.

22. Rachel Green

Rachel Green facilitates joint board and executive offsites for organisations in transition. A new strategic direction. A leadership succession. A financial recovery plan. These are moments when the board and the exec team need to be deeply aligned, and where the normal meeting rhythm does not create the space for that alignment to form.

Her offsites bring both groups into the same room and facilitate the hard conversations about risk appetite, strategic priorities, and the trade-offs required. The output is not just alignment on the strategy. The output is a clearer shared understanding of how the board and the executive team will work together to deliver it.

She works across New Zealand with particular depth in organisations transitioning through governance or leadership change, including independent schools, health providers, and large charities.

23. Stephen Moore

Stephen Moore works with executive teams preparing for board engagement. The exec team is about to present a significant strategic proposal, a major capital investment, or a restructure that will be contentious. They need to align internally before they go to the board, and they need to anticipate the questions and objections the board will raise.

His offsites are strategy rehearsals. He facilitates the exec team through the business case, stress-tests the assumptions, and role-plays the board conversation so the team is prepared for the hard questions. The offsite often reveals gaps in the exec team's thinking that would have been exposed in the boardroom, and gives them the chance to fix those gaps before the proposal goes forward.

He is based in Wellington and works primarily with corporate and government executive teams navigating high-stakes governance approvals.

24. Jennifer Walsh

Jennifer Walsh facilitates executive offsites for organisations where the board and the executive team have fundamentally different theories of change. The board believes the organisation needs to pivot. The exec team believes the strategy is sound and the issue is resourcing. Or the board wants rapid growth and the exec team is worried about operational risk.

Her offsites surface that misalignment and create a structured process for resolving it. She brings both groups into dialogue, facilitates the articulation of each perspective, and builds a decision-making process that allows the organisation to move forward even when full consensus is not possible.

She works across New Zealand with particular expertise in mission-driven organisations where values-based governance often collides with operational pragmatism.

25. Andrew Bell

Andrew Bell works with first-time CEOs building their executive teams while also learning to manage a board. The CEO is new to the role. The exec team is new to working together. The board is watching closely. The risk is high that early missteps at the executive or governance level create a credibility gap the CEO cannot recover from.

His offsites focus on building the foundations. Role clarity within the exec team. Operating rhythm. Decision-making frameworks. Communication protocols with the board. The work is less glamorous than vision-setting, but it is the work that prevents the new executive team from imploding in its first year.

He is based in Christchurch and works extensively with newly appointed CEOs in education, nonprofit, and small-to-medium corporate settings.

Your executive team does not need another offsite that produces a nice feeling and no change. You need a facilitator who understands that the offsite is the beginning of the work, not the end of it. Someone who can surface the unspoken tensions, make conflict productive, and build the structures that keep the executive team aligned long after the session ends.

The facilitators on this list approach the work that way. They design for the 90 days after the offsite, not just for the day itself. If you are also thinking about planning a leadership retreat, start there to get the framing right before you select a facilitator. Your next step is to reach out to the facilitator whose expertise matches the specific dysfunction your executive team is carrying, and to book the conversation before the dysfunction calcifies further.