Corporate Workshop in Nazaré

A Corporate Workshop in Nazaré with a Management Team

A management team spent several days at our event location at the harbour of Porto de Nazaré: a multi-day corporate workshop in Nazaré with their own working sessions, a keynote by Freddy Olander, an open discussion and full catering throughout. The team had the venue to themselves for the whole stay, which meant they could run their own agenda and use the rest of the programme around it. The theme running through all of it was the one question every leadership team recognises: how do you decide which waves to commit to, and which ones to let pass?

The team outside the Big Wave Experience at the Nazaré harbour.

Arriving at the Harbour

The group arrived straight from the airport into the working port of Nazaré and made the venue their base for the next few days. That setting does something a hotel conference room cannot. There is no carpet, no partition wall and no identical meeting space in every city. There are boats, jet skis, boards and the Atlantic at the end of the quay. People change their posture within ten minutes of arriving, and that is half the work of an offsite done before anyone has said a word.

The Keynote: Preparation, Trust, Judgment, Commitment

Freddy Olander has surfed the biggest waves in the world for over 20 years, at Praia do Norte and at big wave breaks across the Atlantic and the Pacific. The keynote does not translate that into metaphor for its own sake. It stays on the mechanics of how decisions actually get made when the stakes are real, the information is incomplete and the window is short.

The themes the group worked through:

• Not being overwhelmed by the giant waves of opportunities and demands. There is always another set coming. The skill is not catching everything, it is choosing.
• Navigating uncertainty. You never have complete information about a wave. You act on the best read you can make with what the ocean is showing you.
• Making decisions under pressure. The decision window is short and the cost of hesitating halfway is higher than the cost of not going at all.
• Preparation. Everything that makes a wave survivable happens in the months before it arrives, not in the eight seconds of riding it.
• Resilience. Every surfer gets held under. What matters is the routine you have for coming back up.
• Which waves to commit to, and which to let pass. Knowing when not to go is a professional skill, not a failure of nerve.

Keynote and open discussion in the event location at the Nazaré harbour.

The session moves between the keynote itself, the real equipment used at Praia do Norte, and footage from the big wave sessions. Seeing the board, the inflation vest and the sled that are genuinely used in 20-metre surf, and then watching what happens when they are needed, does more than a slide ever could.

The Open Discussion

The part that makes the format work is what comes after the keynote. An informal Q&A, no stage, no structure imposed on it. Teams bring their own waves into the room: the decision they have been circling for months, the opportunity they are not sure they should take, the thing that went wrong and what they did next.

What the Team Took Away

The CEO of the visiting management team summed up the day afterwards:

“You can’t eliminate risk. You can only prepare for it. While every wave is different, the fundamentals still apply. You need a team you trust, in Freddy’s world quite literally with your life. And you need to recognize that there are some waves you simply shouldn’t ride. But once you’ve assessed the conditions, made the decision and committed to the wave, hesitation is no longer your friend. Stick to the plan and go. Preparation. Trust. Judgment. Commitment. And one final lesson that can get lost in all of the above: enjoy the ride.” CEO of the visiting management team

A wave forces commitment. You can study it, discuss it and prepare for it, but eventually you decide whether to paddle or not. Once you do, the outcome depends less on perfect planning and more on commitment, adaptability and execution.

Catering Across All Days

Catering runs through the whole stay and is handled in house: breakfast and fresh fruit through the morning sessions, hot lunch on the quay with boats on one side and the Atlantic at the end of it, coffee and snacks in between. Nobody has to leave the site to find food, which keeps a multi-day group together and the agenda intact.

The long table outside is not a break in the programme, it is part of it. Some of the best conversations of a corporate workshop in Nazaré happen there, after the formal part is over and people have stopped presenting themselves to each other. Dietary requirements are covered, and the setup works for anything from a small leadership team to a full company group.

Booking a Corporate Workshop in Nazaré

The event location at Porto de Nazaré hosts groups from small leadership teams to full company offsites, for a single day or across a full week. A corporate workshop in Nazaré can be built from any combination of the following:

• Keynote: 45 to 60 minutes on resilience, performance under pressure, risk and decision making, in English or German
• Workshop and Q&A: half day or full day, working on the team’s own situations
• Breathwork and performance coaching: practical sessions drawing on Oxygen Advantage methodology
• Big Wave Experience on the water: guided jet ski tours through the big wave zone at Praia do Norte
• Workation: multi-day formats combining the team’s own working sessions with the ocean programme
• Full venue hire: exclusive use of the event location with projection, sound and the harbour terrace
• Catering: breakfast, lunch and refreshments across all days, handled in house

Groups travel to Nazaré from across Europe, and the location works equally well for strategy offsites, leadership programmes, team building and brand or media days.