“The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.”
~ Phil Jackson, American former professional basketball player, coach, and executive.
The work week began in July like every week on a Monday. Opening the laptop to a bevy of emails, reviewing the day’s calendar for meetings, and fixing myself a cup of English breakfast, one sugar, dash of cream. Tuesday, though. Aaaahhh, yes! The start of our Marketing Team gathering. Monday turned into a day of excitement and anticipation for what was coming.
Our Tuesday
On Tuesday there were planes from Texas, Florida, and New Jersey, and a long-distance car ride from Sheboygan carrying our remote marketing staff to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, while the locals on our team simply drove to our office downtown. Our week was to be full of cross teamwork, professional development activities, sharing meals, and meeting other company employees. These special days have become an annual tradition, a necessary practice since Covid challenged all companies and their staff with the need for a renewal of company culture.
Our team got down to business with a professional activity from our favorite leadership coach, Becky Wolfe, on Tuesday afternoon. Our focus has been on the 5 Voices Bootcamp, where we are learning to engage in better communication within our team and beyond. When we communicate better, we each become better leaders, understand our workplace dynamics, become more creative in our work, and as a result, merge into a cohesive and effective team.
Tuesday evening united our team with a company-wide ECE® staff at the South Shore Terrace Beer Garden for eating, drinking, and engaging with each other. Lots of introductions for fresh staff, with laughter and chatter filling the atmosphere. Moments captured on camera of cross-team mingling and mixing. And of course, a view of Lake Michigan with fishing and sailboats made for a great evening of togetherness.
Busy Wednesday
Our day began with individual and sub-team gatherings; yet, a lively team lunch at Café Corazón offered us a chance to decompress from the morning multitude of meetings. My grilled salmon tostada was heaped with veggie goodness, and I must confess, their scrumptious burritos are huge. ¡Nuestro equipo disfrutó muchísimo de este almuerzo!
The big event, our team bonding activity, came after lunch with a tour of the Bay View Printing Co., a neighborhood design studio and letterpress print shop. As we are a nonprofit academic credential evaluation organization, it was so apropos to visit a printing shop and see how credentials were created before digitalization. Our tour leader, Scott, educated us on the various areas of the downstairs studio, and we each got to lithographically ‘pull a print.’ Each machine is named, such as Betty, and we chose our own quote to print: Nothing Matters More Than Making People Feel Like They Matter.
Some of us visited Milwaukee’s Finer Diner, Honeypie, to enjoy, yes, pie after our team event. Later that evening, our Client Solutions Managers and our Institutional Support Staff met for dinner at Tre Rivali for some Mediterranean-inspired cuisine and a cross-team discussion of continuing our customer care philosophy. The beautiful evening continued with drinks at the sky-high rooftop bar, The Outsider, with a captivating and sparkling view of downtown Milwaukee and a sublime sunset to close out the evening.
À la prochaine* Thursday
Our final day together ended with our big Team Meeting where we gathered to discuss various ‘hot’ issues, work on strategic planning, and then bid each other a fond farewell. Until next time*…life is about making memories. Teamwork is about making the dream work. And we succeeded.