Here's all of us taking a healthy dose of our own medicine as coaches and development professionals.
This weekend was our annual h³ retreat, where we made our own team of five the sole priority for four days.
These retreats are a vital part of h³'s recipe. We develop teams and organisations, and so we thought it might be a helpful window into that work to share how we approach our own team development; we looked at it through four questions:
- We reminded ourselves WHY we are a team in the first place:
We looked back on the achievements, highlights, impact, challenges, successes, a on the last 12 months; and we talked about our hopes and fears for the coming year, including the work we want to do for our clients, with one another and for our own growth.
- We agreed WHAT we will focus on this year.
We shared our areas of focus and from that identified three team priorities for the next 12 months, defined a vision for each, committed to them explicitly and began a shared creative process for each of them.
- We agreed HOW we will work together this year.
We made requests of one another, set boundaries, clarified what others could and could not expect of us in the next few months, and reviewed our existing collaborative behaviours.
- We made space to strengthen WHO we are as individuals and as a team.
We nurtured our relationships and understanding of one another, and made space to connect. We broke bread, popped corks, played games, cracked jokes and told stories. We sea-swam, board-walked and trail-ran together.
We ended yesterday re-energised (and in need of a good night's sleep!), with strong relationships, clear purpose, shared intent, and explicit accountability in our carry-ons.
Which of the four questions - why, what, how, and who - might your own team be asking right now?