Staff Conference

Late July I had the privilege of going to the Canadian staff conference in Ottawa. I drove up with my housemates Sheldon and Hobbe and stayed at my parent's place for a the evening -- my mom cooked up quite the meal for us!

Early the next day we took a bus in to the Mariott in downtown Ottawa to join the conference. This was the first year of a new conference format, where we meet in a more local region rather than all Power to Change staff. It felt more like a series of large meetings than a conference, but that was conducive to having the many ministries collaborate and learn from each other.

The Canadian ministry is changing their name to Power to Change, Students. There's more info here. Overall, I like the new name and think it will help align the Campus Ministry with the parent organization, Power to Change.

A staff member from the business ministry presented a series on some practical ways to develop a healthy team dynamic. He showed a clip from the business "guru" Adizes who talked about how important trust is in any team, and that the only way to get to the point of trust (and thus peak productivity) is through willingness. You can't force it - people have to be willing to work through the issues. I also remember a handout the presenter gave that had a number of questions about how you're doing with building trust. Things like.. do you keep your promises? Do you only promise vague things that absolves you from real responsibility or are your promises clear and measurable? Do you feel hurt "for" other people? That can be damaging to trust and lead to bitterness because it's much harder to resolve -- the person who did the hurt doesn't even know someone else was hurt so they don't know to go to apologize and resolve it. It's also a bit controlling because it's not their position to feel hurt for someone else. I appreciated this section because it was so generally applicable - I could apply it in any team, whether work-related or in my personal life.

After conference, the operations team had their own huddle. We had some of our own meetings and even had a few "work" hours to get some tasks done since we could collaborate face-to-face. Overall a useful, productive and enjoyable staff conference.