Teamwork
By Caroline Veloso Oliveira, Deputy Director
At Community Home Trust we do a lot to bring hope to our applicants and community members on their dream regarding affordable housing.
With all the work that we do and the remote work that has happened for the past few years, it was important to connect with team members, learn and build an even deeper work relationship.
Last week CHT team had the opportunity to do a retreat, to learn about leadership and teamwork.
We were able to spend time getting to know each other, collaborating in activities, and learning from one another. Teamwork and trust were some themes discussed and experienced in the program.
Recognizing that we need each other, and we must work together, is a crucial part of our jobs, no one accomplishes things alone. I truly value the person before the employee and this experience gave us the chance to get to know each other. It was also impressive to see that the mission and willingness to help others is a common fact among all of us.
Here is what some of our team members had to say about the staff retreat:
It was such a great day! I was reminded of how inspiring this CHT team is and left the retreat re-invigorated and even more committed to the organization’s mission. The staff at CHT care deeply about the homeowners and tenants they help as well as each other and in these polarized times, that can be a hard thing to find. It was a truly inspiring day!
I really enjoyed spending time with my team at the retreat! We walked tension cables together, discovered our DISC behavioral/work styles, shared a few dance moves, and had a lot of good laughs. I left the retreat feeling more connected to my coworkers, both personally and professionally.
I enjoyed getting to know our team more on a personal level. I learned about the importance of communication in order to achieve teamwork effectively even on small tasks. I hope that the activities we did can carry over into our every day work.
I learned that we genuinely care about each other.
I am so grateful that CHT chose to prioritize the kind of work we did together at the retreat. In that 8 hours, we could have been at our computers checking tasks off to-do lists and succumbing to the tyranny of the urgent, as we so often do. Instead, we were gifted the time to invest in the growth of our team, to get to know one another as people and as colleagues in deeper and better ways, and to do work that will pay dividends in the long run. About half of our team has only been a part of the CHT staff over the past few virtual and now hybrid years, so that was essential and valuable work to do together.
