When Sallie Mae got together for their annual sales meeting this past winter, they had a clear message for the event: working together to bring even more success in 2016. That sounded like a call for more teamwork to us!
Sallie Mae asked us to tie in our workshop with their message.
They’d had a team building workshop in the past, with someone else. Their experience left them wanting for more, so they were clear with us that they wanted the workshop to tie in with the larger theme of their conference: creating a culture of trust.
Trust is, after all, the basis for good communication, productive collaboration, and in Sallie Mae’s case, good customer service. When customer service providers feel confident they’re working as a team and someone is there to watch their back, they’ll do a better job at dealing with their borrowers.
Those are essentially the building blocks of our team building workshops, too: trust, cooperation, communication, and respect.
Creating a culture of trust in a Rescue Buddies™ workshop.
Rescue Buddies™ is all about building stuffed bears as a way of personalizing the donations for the charity. But we don’t begin the workshop with the stuffed animal assembly.
We begin with ice breakers to establish trust and to let everyone know they’re in a judgement-free zone. That way, they’re free to try new modes of communication and to open their minds to new ways of collaborating to solve problems… just like we hope they’ll do at work once the workshop has ended!
The Ronald McDonald House Was There to Pick up Their Bears
We work with the Ronald McDonald house often, especially when we do the Rescue Buddies™ Charity Workshop. They love the bears our workshops produce because kids love them, and helping kids is what this charity is all about. They provide lodging for out-of-town families who need to travel for medical attention for their kids.
The rep from the Ronald McDonald House was on time, right at the end of the Sallie Mae workshop. She picked up the Rescue Buddies™, said a little about her charity and even brought a thank you card for the group. It was a heartwarming finale for a great workshop that succeeded on all levels that day of Scottsdale team building. Good job, guys!