The Power of a Retreat to Build a Team

Recently, the Soteria Solutions staff met in person as a team for the first time ever. Since our origination in 2018, Soteria Solutions has grown to 13 staff members located across the country and most of us have only interacted virtually. We decided to bring the team together in Ogunquit, Maine at a beautiful old Inn converted to an Airbnb, about a mile from the ocean.

We waited for the fun to start. 

Some Background

Soteria Solutions is a 501(c)(3) organization, spun out of the University of New Hampshire Prevention Innovations Research Center in 2018. UNH holds the copyright to Know Your Power® and Bringing in the Bystander® (BITB), prevention-based bystander intervention products designed for high school and college students. Soteria Solutions holds the exclusive license to distribute the curriculum. A key component of our BITB curriculum is in-person training. Three part-time staff members and all of our trainers moved over from UNH. We hired our first full-time staff member in February 2020. We signed a lease for our own space, planning to move in April 2020. We purchased furniture and bought a printer.

Do you know what happened next? A global pandemic. 

Working Virtually

We immediately all began working at home, like everyone else. Soteria Solutions offered water cooler virtual events and other community-building activities for our license holders during the early part of the pandemic. About a year in, we pivoted to virtual trainings and rewrote sections of our curriculum. We hired staff to help us with brand-new, highly innovative work in private workplaces and federal agencies.

Onboarding staff virtually is not easy, but we persevered, doing our work remotely. The focus of our Workplace Solutions expanded from prevention to effective workplace communications and hiring. All employer practices were made extra challenging by the pandemic. 

The Importance of Building a Team

About a year ago, we started talking about the necessity of a staff retreat because it can prove difficult to maintain a strong workplace culture and professional connections in a remote working environment. We were busy with multiple contracts during the summer and fall of 2023, which meant lots of deadlines and stress. Staff were stretched thin and working hard. Communication was tough for us as a team in different time zones, as it always is during highly productive times. Additionally, Soteria Solutions has two full-time staff with the rest part-time. It was imperative that we came together and agreed on some shared norms/expectations to successfully communicate and help build those connections. 

Retreat Day 1 was led by an expert in the field of team building – someone to help us grow toward cohesiveness and productivity. Even activities like knowing each other's full and preferred names and work style preferences were challenging. Everyone was a bit shorter than they looked on Zoom. Ground rules became a subject of debate, but we could hash it all out in person with people we liked and respected. 

It was working and it was great. 

Retreat Day 2, we were on our own without an outside facilitator. We used the time to think about larger workplace topics such as our mission and vision. What does Soteria Solutions stand for? What are our non-negotiables as we consider who we choose to partner with as clients? 

Our staff, like many other organizations, consists of leadership roles, administrative/project personnel and subject-matter experts. From the administrative side of managing deadlines, budgets, proposals, payroll and getting deliverables out on time, to the content/development side that works endlessly to create innovative products which improve living and working cultures for our partners; these sides can sometimes be at odds and clash. But, at the end of the day, we recognized the necessity of all roles and appreciated the ways we can unite around a common goal.
We left the retreat with many tasks and strategic goals ahead of us (our office is currently covered with large post-it pad notes we took during our sessions); but we also left feeling more like a team, with the skills and motivation to make the world a better place, together.