Umair Jaliawala
Founder & CEO
18 years building Torque into the room Pakistan's organisations call when the training has stopped working.
- Trainer
- Facilitator
- Speaker
- Coach
- Consultant
Retreats
Take the Team Out of the Building
Travel is a great source of learning, and the power of environment is tremendous in framing ideas, opening teams up and raising the effectiveness of learning.
Why a retreat works when a meeting does not
The same people: in a different room, with the phones further away, will say things they have been carrying for months. Our job is to make that safe, then make it useful, so it ends in commitments rather than in catharsis.
Designed around the conversation you have been avoiding
We start with interviews before anyone books a venue. A retreat agenda that does not name the real turn-off is two days of pleasant activity, and everybody knows it by lunch on the first day.
Proven at institutional scale
Torque facilitated UNICEF Pakistan's all-staff retreat in 2025: team cohesion, CRITAS values and trust-building, and has run leadership offsites and multi-day gatherings for corporate, government and development clients across all four provinces.
It ends with something written down
Candid feedback, agreed behaviours and named owners. We send the record within the week, while the room is still in everyone's head.
End to end
We Run the Whole Thing
Local and international. On our own: with our own vendors, or through partners, the venue, the travel, the production, the hosting, the lot. We have run retreats end to end, and that is a different job from speaking at one.
An event is easy to make glamorous. A good venue: good food, a good photographer, and everybody goes home pleased. Glamour is not learning. When we curate it, every part of it is doing a job, and most of those parts never need anybody to say a word.
The turf
The Ground Does the Teaching
Where a session happens is a decision, not a view. Pick the turf for what it does to people and the itinerary stops being a tourist plan with workshops bolted into the gaps.
Visioneering
A helipad
Flat, high, and nothing in the way. You see the whole of it at once, which is the thing you came up there to do.
Self-awareness
A mountain
It is bigger than the team and it does not care about anybody's title. People get honest at altitude.
Reflection
A lake shore, or any water
Still, open and quiet enough that a hard question has somewhere to land.
Touchpoints
The Parts That Are Not on the Agenda
A retreat or a conference is not the sessions. It is every moment between them, and each one either builds the thing or leaks it.
The bus
The design starts the moment they get on it, not when somebody takes the microphone. What happens on that ride sets what people are willing to say for the next two days.
The music
Chosen, timed, and stopped on purpose. There is one kind of room for work somebody does alone and another for work they do with a stranger, and sound is most of the difference.
Arrival and the check-in
Not a registration desk. A thematic arrival that tells people what kind of two days this is before anybody has explained it.
Alone, then together
Self-do and with-other, deliberately alternated. Insight happens on your own; commitment happens in front of somebody else.
Messaging in the room
A line left where it will be read at the hour it matters. Said at the right moment it lands; said from the stage it is a slide.
The giveaway
Creative and part of the design, not a branded notebook. The thing they take home is the last touchpoint, and it is still working a month later.
Local destinations
Where We Take Them
The environment is part of the design, not the reward at the end of it. These are the places we have taken groups, and the list grows.
Sindh
- Sandspit Beach, Karachi
- Mubarak Village, Karachi
- Kemari & Manora Islands
- Khairpur Mirs
Balochistan
- Kund Malir Beach
- Gwadar
Punjab & the north
- Murree & Bhurban
- Nathiagali
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
- Kaghan & Naran
- Swat
Azad Kashmir
- Muzaffarabad
The tribe
Facilitators who can hold a room
Book one of them, or let us put the right combination in front of your people.
Sarah Mashhood
Chief Operating Officer & Experience Designer
Excels in event management and communication, with a cool demeanour and impeccable integrity.
- Facilitator
- Host
- Trainer
Muneeb Ur Rehman
Applied Performance Practitioner
A theatre practitioner who develops organisations through the body.
- Trainer
- Facilitator
- Consultant
Ibraheem Ahmad
Enabler
An enabler, ten years of turning individuals and organisations on across Pakistan.
- Trainer
- Facilitator
- Speaker
Furqan Qureshi
Consultant
From systems engineer to chief commercial officer, then back to school to start again.
- Consultant
- Speaker
- Facilitator
Urooj Mazhar
Trainer & Speaker
Weaves magic with her words, and can sketch a silver lining around the darkest of clouds.
- Coach
- Therapist
- Trainer
- Speaker
- Facilitator
We wrapped up our capability plans for the year with an immersive and experiential leadership retreat. Umair Jaliawala took the teams through a process of self-discovery, aimed at raising awareness and action to foster personal, team, brand and societal leadership. Thank you for the inspiration!
Experiential leadership retreat · Umair Jaliawala
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Ask about Retreats
Tell us who is in the room and what is turning them off. We will tell you honestly whether this is the right answer.