Fabrica
Creating moments that matter
More commitment from your employees thanks to the power of gamification and sportainment. Work hard. Play hard.
Senior teams need different fuel.
A leadership team is not a department. It is the smallest, most exposed group in your organisation, carrying the heaviest decisions and the most isolated work. When you bring them together for a retreat, the standard playbook does not apply.
They do not just need icebreakers. They do not need a workshop on listening skills. They do not need a hotel ballroom with a flipchart.
What they need is a coherent experience – content with substance, designed by people who have facilitated senior teams before, delivered in a setting that gives them permission to think, feel and decide together. The kind of two days or five days they remember when the year turns difficult.
That is what we build.
For 25 years we have designed and delivered leadership retreats and high-stakes leadership moments across continents – from Jaguar Land Rover MENA at Kempinski The Palm, to a global automotive group’s five-day journey in Fujairah, to Manuchar’s leadership in the Sharjah mountains, to Microsoft’s GCC reunion in Dubai, to a 1,000-person government townhall at the World Trade Centre. Different briefs. Different formats. The same principle: a serious investment, executed properly, with respect for the people in the room.
Not a workshop. Not a teambuilding. Something more layered.
A real leadership retreat works on three levels at the same time:
Head. Real content, on real challenges, with credible facilitators. Strategy, alignment, decision-making, communication. Senior leaders can smell a generic framework from a mile away – the content has to come from people who have been in the seats your team is in.
Heart. Honest conversations, shared experiences, recovery moments. High-performing teams rarely lack intelligence. What they often lack is connection – the kind that lets them disagree productively, support each other through pressure, and stay aligned when things get hard. Heart-work is not soft. It is structural.
Hands. Practical activities, games with purpose, physical experiences. Movement, competition, shared challenge. Not to fill the day, but to give the group experiences they can reference together six months later.
A retreat that hits only head produces a smart team that doesn’t trust each other. A retreat that hits only heart produces a connected team that can’t execute. A retreat that hits only hands produces a fun memory that fades by Monday.
When all three land together – that is when leadership teams come back changed.
Behind every retreat: an ecosystem, not an agency.
This is what separates us from event agencies and hotel groups offering “leadership retreats.”
We do not deliver retreats with the same handful of people every time. We design the retreat for your brief, then assemble the right facilitators from the Bravos ecosystem — a community of senior coaches and specialists, each with 10+ years of experience in the GCC, each with a distinct expertise.
For your leadership retreat, the relevant Bravos coaches might include:
- Inge Van Belle — author of Employee Engagement, what else?, Vice Chair Benelux Business Council, ex Senior Client Partner Korn Ferry MEA. Surveys, advisory, keynotes, leadership content, organisational culture work.
- Benoit Demeulemeester — founder of Endorphins Method UAE. Outdoor leadership experiences combining hikes, breathing techniques, ice baths, Sadhu boards, firewalks. Methods inspired by Wim Hof, Joe Dispenza, Tony Robbins.
- Maud Gaspard — equine-guided experiential workshops for leadership teams. Horses do not lie about what the leader brings into the room.
- Stephane Brismontier — culture transformation through edutainment. Theatre-based facilitation with senior teams.
- Paul Littlejohn — executive leadership coaching, senior team alignment.
- Carine Bouery — corporate happiness, well-being integration.
Plus the Hercules Alliance crew – designers, MCs, gamification architects like Yves Vekemans, operational team – who build the structure that holds the whole experience together.
When you brief us, we build the right combination of coaches and crew for what your team actually needs. Not a packaged retreat. A bespoke one.
5 real moments. 5 different shapes of leadership work.
We don’t sell a format. We design for the brief. Here is what that has looked like, five times, for five very different leadership teams:
Jaguar Land Rover MENA — Activating corporate values through gamification
When Jaguar Land Rover MENA wanted to bring their five Customer First Principles to life across their leadership team, they didn’t want another set of slides. They wanted the Principles to enter their team’s bloodstream.
We designed a day at Kempinski The Palm built around five challenges, each mapped to one Customer First Principle:
- Transparent
- Dependable
- Personalised
- Make Me Feel Special
- Easy to Do Business With
Each participant completed a personality quiz beforehand. Teams were formed across nine personality types — reformer, loyalist, enthusiast, helper, leader, achiever, thinker, peacemaker, individualist — so each Principle had to be lived through different leadership styles. The MD closed the day with a recognition speech.
Result: participants came in as colleagues, left as a team. The Customer First Principles became part of how the leadership actually behaved — not a poster, a practice.
A global automotive organisation — 5 days, 40 senior leaders, Fujairah
A global lean-culture automotive organisation brought 40 senior leaders from around the world to Fujairah for a five-day leadership retreat. Their HQ and local organising partners had designed the agenda — strong content, certifications, learning objectives.
What they needed from us was different. They needed someone to weave the five days into a single coherent journey — to add what was missing without disrupting what already worked. The challenge wasn’t intellectual alignment. It was human alignment.
We positioned ourselves as wingman, not hero. We added:
- A gamified continuity layer connecting all five days
- Light, purposeful games to lower barriers between sessions
- Well-being moments to balance the intensity
- Shared experiences outside the formal workshops
- Tornea as the rhythm-keeping layer in the background
Not entertainment. Coherence between thinking, feeling and doing.
Manuchar — Special Forces mindset in the Sharjah mountains
The leadership team of Manuchar wanted to push their team further than a hotel retreat allowed. We designed a Special Forces-format leadership retreat in the Sharjah mountains, in collaboration with Benoit from Endorphins.
The format: sunrise hike with breathing sessions to regulate the nervous system, mindfulness challenges on Sadhu boards, ice baths, firewalk, structured peer conversations between physical challenges. Healthy refreshments, then an afternoon strategic workshop indoors nearby.
For a 10-person leadership group, the format works because the physical challenges expose what the leadership actually is — not what it claims to be. Then the workshop afterwards lands harder, because the team has already done something difficult together.
Best for: small, senior teams (8-15 people) who want a retreat that combines mental strategy with physical experience.
Microsoft GCC — Two days, Dubai, post-COVID reunion
After the pandemic, Microsoft’s top GCC leadership came together in person for the first time. The brief: not a strategy session. Not a training. Just two days designed to reconnect the leadership team as humans, not just as colleagues coordinating across time zones.
We delivered a two-day programme at a Dubai hotel combining:
- Strategic content sessions, facilitated by Joe Sejean, a senior Bravos coach
- Gamified challenges to break the formality
- Awards ceremony to recognise leadership through the difficult period
- Recovery moments built into the schedule
For senior leadership teams emerging from a high-pressure period, the retreat format has to read as significant without feeling heavy. That balance is the work.
Best for: senior teams who need to reconnect after a period of distance — geographic, cultural, or temporal.
Dubai Economy and Tourism — 1,000+ people, one hour, World Trade Centre
Sometimes leadership work isn’t 10 people in a hotel suite. Sometimes it’s 1,000 people in a townhall — when leadership wants its values to land across the whole organisation in a single, undeniable moment.
Dubai Economy and Tourism asked our Bravos ecosystem to activate their values and culture live, in the room, in 60 minutes, with more than 1,000 employees at the Dubai World Trade Centre.
We designed three high-energy, purpose-driven challenges followed by one collective grand finale, delivered with 50+ Herculean and Bravos crew. No spectators. No passive listeners. Everyone moving. Everyone thinking. Everyone contributing.
In 60 minutes the room shifted — energy, conversations, and the perception of what a townhall could be. Leadership showed, in real time, that culture is not a slogan. It is something you do.
Best for: leadership teams who need their values to land at scale — when “we sent the email” is not enough.
Why senior teams ask for Inge.
For most leadership retreats we deliver, Inge Van Belle is in the room.
Inge co-founded Herculean Alliance with Yves Vekemans. She wrote Employee Engagement, what else? — the book behind our methodology, with the UAE as the main character. She was a Senior Client Partner at Korn Ferry Middle East, advising regional C-suite teams on leadership, culture and organisational design. She currently serves as Vice Chair of the Benelux Business Council. In 2024 she was selected for the 50 Under 50.
For C-suite buyers, this matters. Most leadership retreat facilitators are either:
- Event facilitators — strong with the room, light on the content
- Pure consultants — strong on content, light on the activation
Inge, and Yves, sit between the two. She knows what your team is dealing with because she has sat at the same tables. And she knows how to translate that into an experience that actually changes how the team operates. He knows how to run it effectively.
For leadership work where the stakes are high, where the audience is senior, where the room needs gravity as much as energy — Inge is the lead facilitator, Yves the integrator.
They also sign your proposal.
The way we work.
One conversation first. Before any proposal, we have a real conversation with you. 60-90 minutes. We want to understand the people, the moment, the brief, the stakes. Inge or Yves is in this conversation. Often both.
A custom design, not a package. A few days after the conversation, we come back with a proposal. Not a brochure. A design. Format, agenda, facilitator combination, venue options, logistics. Everything specific to what you told us.
Pre-work that earns its place. We can run pre-work like surveys, personality assessments, team-readiness diagnostics. Your leaders arrive having already done the thinking, not having to start cold in the room.
The retreat itself. Whatever combination of head, heart and hands the brief requires. Inge or another senior Bravos coach facilitates content sessions. Hercules crew handles logistics, gamification, well-being elements. Photographers capture the day discreetly. You stay in the room with your team.
A follow-through, not a goodbye. After the retreat we deliver: a structured impact report, the photo and video library, follow-up resources from the facilitators, and – for ongoing work – access to the Bravos ecosystem for further sessions. The retreat is the catalyst, not the entire intervention.
Frequently asked questions.
How small or how large can a leadership retreat be?
We deliver leadership retreats for teams as small as 8 people (intimate senior team work) and as large as 1,000+ when the work expands into company-wide culture moments. The sweet spot for a focused leadership retreat is 12-50 people. Below 8, the dynamics get too intimate for retreat format. Above 50, retreat becomes leadership conference — a different format.
How long should a leadership retreat be?
Anywhere from two hours to five days, depending on the brief. Most of our work falls in the half day to one day range. One-day formats work for tightly-scoped activations. Five-day formats are reserved for major strategic alignment moments — the Fujairah retreat we delivered for a global automotive group is an example. We help you decide.
Where do you run leadership retreats?
Anywhere the brief takes us. Most of our work happens in the UAE — Dubai hotels, Fujairah mountains, Sharjah, Ras Al Khaimah, Hatta, Abu Dhabi. We have also delivered retreats internationally and can travel with you. For UAE retreats we can help coordinate venue selection based on group size, content needs and budget.
Who actually facilitates the content sessions?
It depends on the brief. For most senior retreats, Inge Van Belle leads the strategic content sessions. For specific specialty work (well-being, equine, executive coaching, culture transformation) we bring in the relevant Bravos coach. For gamification and team activation, Yves Vekemans and the Hercules crew lead. You always know in advance who is in the room.
Can we bring our own facilitators or do you provide everyone?
Both work. Several of our larger leadership retreats run alongside the client’s own L&D team, HR partners or external consultants. We design a wingman role — adding what is missing without disrupting what already works. The Fujairah five-day retreat is an example of this approach.
What is the difference between a leadership retreat and a senior teambuilding?
Teambuilding focuses on connection, energy and shared experience — often without specific content overlay. A leadership retreat integrates content (strategy, alignment, decision-making, communication) with the experience. Different audiences, different goals, different formats. More info on teambuildings here.
Can leadership retreats include partners or family?
Generally not — leadership retreats are designed for the team itself, with the privacy and focus that allows. For events that include partners or family, see our Family Day page.
How far in advance should we book?
Senior retreats with content design and pre-work typically require 4-12 weeks of preparation. The further out you book, the more facilitator availability we can offer.
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