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Being a remote based team, the annual opportunity to get together in December is a focal point in our calendar. Scheduled for the first week in December, it’s always been an opportunity to connect and share, celebrate and reminisce – as well as update the team on plans for the year ahead.
This year’s festive team day (last Thursday) was made even more exciting as it was the first opportunity for the Leading Edge Performance merged team to come together since Leading Edge and Performance Edge were integrated in September.
We themed this day around Performance Reflections which gave us space to
- Explore our own Performance Wellbeing and make some commitments that will sustain us
- Hear about some of the diverse global projects that various team members are working in (and share the High 5 moments from these projects)
- Give each other feedback and recognition for the support received throughout the year – all while wearing our Christmas jumpers for Save the Children’s annual fundraising event
But the real highlight this theme afforded us was in the form of being joined by two really interesting guests.
Sarah Hunter, CBE (England’s all time most capped player, and now Red Roses Coach) and Meg Jones (a 16-time cap Red Rose who has also starred for England Sevens and Team GB) spoke to the team and shared their insights into the impact of coaching, culture, team and leadership– and how that contributed to success in the inaugural WXV tournament (they even brought the trophy!)
We regularly work with high performance sport professionals and can easily forget how privileged we are to be able to see first-hand the impact coaching, leadership and team development can have on performance on a global event stage like the WXV.
It’s so tempting (given that we only get together a few times each year) to over fill days like this with updates and information, new processes, learning, and presentations. It’s the same challenge many of our clients face when bringing global/ remote teams together. The desire to get ‘good value’ from every moment of the event often drives packed agendas and over-ambitious outcomes.
We kept our focus for the Performance Reflection day on enabling greater connection, providing a space for reflection and thinking around balance and wellbeing, and to inspire our team with the very real impact the work they do has. Interspersed with the agenda were some rounds of Intro Bingo, a festive film poll (Love Actually and The Holiday tying for first place) and a questionable array of festive knitwear.
The Drawing Board lunch saw Meg and Sarah joining us and table rotations enabled everyone to connect further with obligatory paper crowns and cracker jokes. We missed a lot of the team – who were committed to working in client teams or travelling – but the sense of rounding of another great year with a great team was only enhanced by the generous gift of time and insights from Sarah and Meg.
