Two divisions under the Planning & Program Support Office of Passport Services were looking to improve trust while laying the groundwork for future offsites and further staff development. Our initial team evaluation revealed that team effectiveness, trust, and morale were areas that could use some focus. Moreover, overcoming resource shortages was another factor that the team was trying to solve through better communication.

WIth an understanding that communication and proper feedback are the keys to trust building, we designed a program that emphasized working on these areas. We provided a series of group challenges that helped highlight the value of mutual support and which revealed the importance of leveraging individual strengths.

• Team challenges that focused on the feedback loop
• Discussion of the SBI approach to empathy based feedback
• Cooperative problem solving challenges

• Participants learned the importance of developing processes for reaching agreement.
• Guidelines for communication were formed when it was realized how important they were for effectiveness and clarity of understanding.
• The team began to recognize individuals for their particular strengths, enabling the group to better allocate and utilize their talents for achieving end goals.