phone (571) 303-8096 email chris@chriskolenda.com

The Leader’s Edge Company Offsite

Battle-Tested, Business-Proven Strategies from Antietam & Gettysburg for CEOs and your Teams

Discuss Your Company Offsite

Leadership Capacity is Infinitely Upgradable and Drives Business Outcomes

This company offsite is your fast-track to developing Team-Powered Momentum

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The Leader’s Edge

with Chris Kolenda

This 5-episode podcast series provides actionable strategies from The Antietam & Gettysburg Leadership Experience company offsite.

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How can you turn volatility into advantage, ignite ingenuity, and unlock people’s discretionary contribution?

This elite 3-day executive expedition provides you with the strategies that put your teams into Unbeatable Positioning, create an Unstoppable Workforce, and lead with Unwavering Inspiration.

The historic battles of Antietam and Gettysburg inspire fresh ideas that advance your business while strengthening mutual trust.

You and your leaders will transform your intuitive genius into organized genius that you can teach and use to evaluate and improve performance.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a good visual model is worth a thousand pictures. Create an emotional connection, and the model is worth a thousand insights.
What You’ll Gain:

Inspire Buy-in & Relentless Execution

Like Joshua Chamberlain, who transformed an outnumbered regiment into a force that changed history, you’ll create the enthusiastic engagement the inspires people to go above and beyond.

Make Sound Decisions that Exploit Volatility

Like Abraham Lincoln, who saw opportunity where others saw risk, you’ll develop the upstream thinking that moves you from crisis management to decisive advantage.

Avoid Overcaution & Overconfidence

McClellan hesitated and lost momentum. Lee miscalculated and lost everything. Sharpen your pattern recognition skills to diagnose reality and take decisive action.

Encourage Bold Initiative Without Losing Control

John Buford’s calculated risk won the first crucial phase of Gettysburg. Jeb Stuart’s reckless independence left his army vulnerable. You’ll gain strategies that inspire disciplined initiative.

Delegate with Precision & Intent

John Reynolds used keen judgment to empower this lieutenants to seize a decisive edge. You’ll strengthen your leadership team to delegate like a pro so your organization moves as one—fast, disciplined, and decisive.

Project Confidence & Lead Under Fire

Great commanders ride the front lines to model courage and composure. You’ll enhance your purposeful presence that lead to clear priorities and bold execution.

Forge an Inspiring Culture that Wins

Like the Iron Brigade, known for its unyielding discipline and adaptability, your team will provide guidance with compelling clarity and foster accountability that leads to relentless improvement.

The 3-Discipline Leadership Playbook

This isn’t theory. You’ll walk away with structured visual models that turn your intuitive genius into organized genius that you can teach, and use to assess and improve performance.

Discuss Your Company Offsite

Here’s what people are saying:

The career leap forward I’ve made all goes back to that time by the lake where you did your 1mm talk. From that following week forward, I started making small changes that led to a domino effect of impactful and positive changes in my life. I’m eternally grateful.
Laurie Jarvis Detzler
Laurie Jarvis DetzlerNational General Superintendent - Amgen
The most important part of that communication circle I do is to reiterate the plan or expectation to the team members as many times as needed before moving on. Repeat it 100 times if needed, until they can repeat it back to you verbatim!! They need to believe in the goal as much as you do to be successful.
Ryan Blair
Ryan BlairSenior Project Manager - Amgen

Here’s What’s Included:

The Leader’s Edge Executive Expedition

Your leadership quality is infinitely improvable. During this 3-day expedition at Antietam & Gettysburg, you'll master battle-tested and business-proven strategies that upgrade your leadership to create deep, enduring prosperity.

Your Off-site includes:

  • Pre-Event Strategy Session – Customized clarity to maximize your outcomes.
  • Pre-Event Seminar - To set up your team for success.
  • Chris’s Book of 3-Discipline Leadership Models – Your guide for diagnosing and tackling the toughest challenges.
  • Your Executive Expedition - Create emotional connections that strengthen trust, speed communication, and boost innovation.

Post-Event Implementation:

  • 90-Day Follow-Up Seminar – Ensure implementation and sustained momentum.
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Frequently Asked Questions

What is a leadership offsite at Antietam or Gettysburg?

A leadership offsite at Antietam or Gettysburg is a three-day executive leadership experience that combines battlefield history, facilitated discussion, visual leadership models, and practical business application. At each visitation point, Chris connects a compelling battlefield story to your business objectives and guides discussions that generate actionable insights. The powerful history creates an emotional connection to both the ideas and one another, helping participants retain lessons and apply them long after the experience ends.

These offsites are designed for CEOs, executive teams, founders, senior leaders, and management teams who want to strengthen relationships, improve execution, and elevate leadership performance. Organizations often choose this experience when they want to create a more unbeatable market position, build an unstoppable workforce that rises to challenges and innovates, and develop leaders who inspire people to give their very best.
Antietam and Gettysburg provide emotionally resonant examples of leadership, decision-making, initiative, accountability, and teamwork under pressure. The stories create lasting impact by strengthening trust, accelerating shared understanding, and giving participants common frames of reference they can use for years to come. You simply do not get the same effect from slides in a conference room.
Battles, like businesses, are human endeavors. The stakes are different, but the leadership challenges are remarkably similar. Organizations must position themselves for advantage, build teams that overcome obstacles and innovate, make sound decisions amid uncertainty, and inspire people to execute with commitment. The battlefield stories provide a powerful lens through which leaders can examine these challenges and develop practical approaches that apply directly to their business.
No. This is a leadership workshop conducted on historic ground. Rather than passively listening to lectures, participants actively engage in discussions, co-create visual leadership models, and develop practical action steps tied directly to their business objectives. The battlefield provides the setting and emotional resonance, but the focus is always on helping your team achieve meaningful business results.
Chris begins by understanding your organization’s objectives, challenges, and desired outcomes through pre-event conversations and participant input. He then customizes the experience around those priorities. At carefully selected points on the battlefield, Chris shares stories that illuminate specific leadership themes and guides participants in co-creating visual models that strengthen shared understanding. As Chris often says, if a picture is worth a thousand words, a visual model is worth a thousand pictures because everyone can see the movement from their current situation to their desired future.
The experience can support virtually any leadership objective because the stories are selected based on your organization’s priorities. Common themes include strategic thinking, decision-making under pressure, delegation, accountability, initiative, innovation, organizational alignment, change leadership, and team effectiveness. Rather than imposing predetermined lessons, Chris customizes the experience to help strengthen the leadership capabilities that matter most to your organization.
Organizations use this experience to address challenges such as executive team alignment, organizational change, strategic execution, leadership development, succession planning, communication breakdowns, decision-making effectiveness, innovation, and culture improvement. Every discussion is oriented around your business objectives, making the experience highly relevant to the issues your team is facing right now.
Organizations typically leave with a common picture of their most important objectives, a shared understanding of how to achieve them, and accelerated execution because everyone sees the same movement in relation to one another. Participants co-create visual models that become powerful diagnostic tools for future challenges. The emotional resonance of the experience creates durable impact, helping teams recall conversations, lessons, and action steps long after the offsite has concluded.
Start by scheduling a conversation to discuss your objectives, challenges, and desired outcomes. Based on what you want to achieve, Chris will help determine whether the experience is the right fit and explain how the offsite can be customized to help your team achieve meaningful and lasting results.
I have new frameworks to think about leader diversity and what natural inclinations people bring to the table. It’s also helped me communicate more effectively and develop action plans with my team and our clients.
Karen Seitz
Karen SeitzFounder and Managing Director, Fusion Partners Global
We now have a framework ... as we build commitment to a common culture. This is already benefiting our retention, engagement, and morale.
HON Michèle A. Flournoy
HON Michèle A. FlournoyCEO West Exec, former Under Secretary of Defense
We’re creating a culture that feels more aligned and inspirational. Everyone's getting on the same page. The ABCs of Accountability, Buy-in, and Clarity are transforming our team. It’s the kind of change that sticks.
Jon Massey
Jon MasseyExecutive Director, Amgen
I have a new and richer set of experiences to draw from when making decisions under stress and uncertainty.
Douglas Silverman
Douglas SilvermanManaging Partner and Co-Chief Investment Officer, Senator Investment Group
Chris provides practical leadership behaviors within a collaborative and positive atmosphere that have helped me lead more strategically, gain buy-in, solve problems, and boost innovation
Mark Chappel
Mark ChappelGurtz Electric
Gain buy-in like Chamberlain; encourage people to take initiative like Buford. This inspiring experience is giving me new tools and stories to develop leaders.
HON Dick Gephardt
HON Dick GephardtFormer Congressional Majority Leader, CEO, Gephardt Group

Secure Your Spot

Upgrade your capacity to create deep, enduring prosperity

Exploiting a critical opportunity, igniting ingenuity, and unlocking people's discretionary effort mean this company offsite pays for itself many times over.


P.S. I do off-site at other battlefields and national parks, too.

Discuss Your Company Offsite

2.5 days: A day at each battlefield, plus a ½ day workshop to create accountabilities that get results.

You’ll stay at a terrific hotel, dine at superb restaurants, and strengthen trust and communication among your team.

Follow-up seminar to build on your strategies and support your action steps

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