Challenge
How do you forge ties and lasting relationships among rising leaders employed on multiple continents?
Solution
Caring Capital helped a global hospitality company incorporate a purpose-driven team-building event into the company’s annual four-day leadership development retreat. Recognizing the company’s commitment to helping children at risk, we shaped an initiative unlike any the company had experienced. On the evening of the first full day, we introduced a pilot program that:
- Introduced the group to the program director of a local agency that protects battered and abused children and places them in safe settings
- Explained that participants would form teams to build toy boxes for some of the agency’s children
- Guided teams in shaping design plans, building and decorating personalized toy boxes for specific children
- Provided all the supplies, design elements and instructions required to ensure successful production
Results
Because of the pilot’s success, our Toy Box event has now launched the company’s rising leaders’ retreat for six years. Results include:
- When chosen for the retreat, associates asked, “Will we get to build toy boxes?!”
- Participants bonded as they started the problem-solving process. “Do you have a little girl? Does she prefer stars or polka dots?”
- After 2 hours, former strangers embraced and exchanged high-fives as they photographed their toy boxes
- Every year, someone stops the program spontaneously and collects funds for the purchase of new toys to fill the toy boxes. Friendly competition determines how many shoppers buy the toys
- Long after the retreat, team members send birthday and holiday greetings to one another around the world
- Battered, frightened children discover that they are not alone, but that indeed, they have friends who care about them personally
- The nonprofit agency celebrates its corporate partner and the company relays its community ties to prospective hires and proud employees
“The camaraderie and teamwork we saw so early in our week-long program was outstanding. Engaging senior leaders in an activity that so exemplifies one of our core values will result in some of the commitment to that value being pushed down through lower levels of the organization. When everybody in the company is not just able recite our values but live those values, our standing in the community and the industry, as well as our overall success as a business, is sure to be affected in a positive way.”
