Team Building and Leadership Retreats

Contributed by Collyn Wright, National Executive Council Adviser, Texas

When working with your local officer team, it seems to work best to give them clear expectations of the role they will play in planning and implementing FCCLA in action for the school year. We like to begin with a meeting of out going officers to review the last year’s action plan and things that went well and things we can improve upon. Then we meet with prospective officer candidates and go over duties for each office so that they can decide what office they would like to run for. After officer candidate interviews, the fun and work begins!

We plan a joint “retreat” with FFA officers for fun, year planning, and teambuilding. We provide a place to stay, either a lock-in at the school, a hotel, or other lodging and meals for 2 days. Our officers compete with the FFA officers on a ropes course we build, team building games, obstacle courses, minute to win it games, and leadership activities. After all of the fun and silly bonding time, we get down to business and go over expectations and goals for the year. Once we have a clear picture of what we want to accomplish as a chapter, we plan each month including programs and projects, meeting dates, and deadlines for project completions. It is a lot of fun and a lot of work, but our officers meld together during that two days of bonding and competing with FFA and our year is completely planned in the process. What ever avenue you choose to develop a leadership team at your school, just remember to set clear expectations, work hard, and play harder!