By: Mary Sahagun

Margaret Graziano has built a reputation for creating the kinds of breakthroughs organizations try and fail to produce inside their own walls. While most companies attempt to solve cultural friction through meetings, off-sites, and reorganization plans, her business, Keen Alignment’s transformational retreats, aim to foster deep alignment, self-awareness, and behavioral shifts to enhance leadership and collaboration.

Many teams remain focused on daily tasks, and even during off-sites, the existing mindset and hierarchy can persist. Transformation may require a shift in context, not just a change in environment.

As Margaret puts it, “You cannot shift a team while keeping them in the same patterns that created the friction. You have to interrupt the system or the system wins.”

Breakthrough Requires Leaving the Environment That Created the Problem

Organizations often believe they can negotiate alignment through agenda items and presentations. But leaders may find it challenging to adopt new behaviors when remaining in the same environments and pressures.

Keen Alignment removes leaders from that environment and places them into experiences that require presence and truth. Participants in these retreats engage in high-challenge activities, address communication challenges, and work on alignment. When the context shifts, people shift with it. This is the first step in Margaret’s ResponseAgility™ framework, the practice of meeting pressure with clarity instead of reactivity.

Transformation begins when leaders stop hiding behind titles and routines.

Experiential Design Where Insight Becomes Action

Most leadership programs teach concepts. Margaret builds encounters. Retreats show leaders who they are under pressure, not who they believe themselves to be. 

“When people see themselves in action, the truth hits fast,” she says. “You cannot hide your patterns when the experience exposes them.”

When someone freezes at the top of a ropes element or over-controls a group task, the experience reveals patterns that no classroom tool can match.

Participants walk away with embodied insight. They feel what collaboration requires. They see where their habits restrict flow. They understand how their leadership impacts others. Some research suggests that intense experiential moments can reorganize beliefs and behaviors faster than traditional instruction.

Insight informs. Experience transforms.

Deep Alignment Circles Create the Reset No Meeting Can Produce

The deep alignment circle remains one of Margaret’s most powerful interventions. This is not venting or surface-level bonding. It is structured, precise, and rooted in ownership.

“Once truth enters the room, everything changes,” she explains. “People stop defending old stories and start leading from responsibility.”

Leaders address behavior patterns that hinder performance, and some executives note it as the first time their teams have communicated openly.

Once truth enters, alignment becomes possible. Alignment is the foundation of a liberated workforce where people lead from purpose, not fear.

Why Companies Cannot Facilitate Their Own Breakthroughs

Internal teams may face challenges in fostering complete honesty due to power dynamics. No one tells the whole truth to their boss. As a result, breakthroughs never occur because the system does not allow them.

Margaret’s workshops focus on creating a neutral space that allows teams to address underlying patterns affecting performance.

“Liberation at work means people stop operating from fear,” she describes. “They reclaim their power to choose how they lead, how they communicate, and how they show up.”

This is the essence of liberation at work. People return with more clarity, more confidence, and more capacity to make intentional choices.

The Shift That Lasts Long After the Retreat Ends

The most important change happens after the retreat. Leaders may experience clearer communication, faster decision-making, and improved accountability after the retreats.

“You cannot talk your way into transformation,” Margaret says. “You have to experience the moment that changes you.”

Keen Alignment does not run off-sites. They run turning points and programs designed to liberate people at work.

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