On February 27th 2014 the employees of the DMC gathered at the beautiful Talaris Conference Center for a one-day retreat. Ms. Lynda Silsbee of Performance Dimension Group was our facilitator.

Everyone was asked to fill out a “Get to Know Me” questionnaire, which asked such things as your ideal weekend, your biggest pet peeve and one surprising or little known fact about you. It was entertaining as people read off their answers and we got a better understanding of the fun side of our co-workers.

We tackled issues such as communication between co-workers and supervisors, making meetings more productive, and where we fit in the big picture that is IRIS. We were all also able to review and comment on the Strategic Action Plan (SAP). We were able to indicate which tasks from the SAP that we would be interested in working on in the future.

Two committees are in the process of being banded that came from the retreat. The first is a team charter. The team charter committee will help define and implement meeting norms to make meetings more productive and help define better methods of communicating. The other committee is the social committee which will be in charge of social activities both here at the DMC and offsite so that co-workers can better get to know each other.

Over all, the day was both fun and productive.