CASE STUDY
Building Trust and Team Cohesion Ahead of a Strategic Retreat
Industry: Not-for-Profit
Engagement: 2.5-Hour Team Development Session
The Challenge
A newly formed management team at a nonprofit umbrella organization needed to build trust and cohesion before stepping into a strategic plan retreat. Many leaders were new to one another, and the organization was heading into a period of anticipated federal funding cuts expected to affect a significant portion of the organizations it supports. Before the team could take on the harder strategic conversations ahead, it needed a foundation of trust, confidentiality, and open communication, and a shared commitment to operating as one unified leadership group rather than a set of siloed programs.
The Approach
We designed a 2.5-hour team-building session to run ahead of the retreat, deliberately setting the tone before the group moved into strategic planning. The session moved the team through a sequence of experiential exercises: opening icebreakers focused on trust, tone, and two-way communication; a shared exercise illustrating how every leader’s connection to the team affects the whole group; a forward-looking exercise inviting the team to define what strong cohesion looks like in practice; and a closing exercise where each leader made a personal, visible commitment to carry into the team’s ongoing work.
The Impact
- Deeper understanding among team members, with participants describing new insight into how their colleagues work, what they need, and why.
- A stronger sense of shared responsibility, with several leaders noting they were facing similar challenges and committing to individual growth for the benefit of the team.
- Increased trust and psychological safety heading into the retreat, with one participant noting the session “created an atmosphere from the beginning that allowed each of us to trust the process.”
- Strong appetite to repeat the practice, with multiple team members recommending similar sessions twice a year to sustain the trust and connection built.