Pause’s Amazing Race
The Pause staff prides ourselves in continuous feedback and improvement - for our program, for the people we serve and for ourselves. We think it’s highly important to reflect on where we’ve come in the past year and where we’re going in the upcoming year.
Our staff engages in a staff retreat every December to do just that! We block out intentional time to dive deep into every support, resource and event Pause offers and talk about what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s missing and what’s confusing. Everything we brainstorm is an opportunity to further grow our program to better support our families, kids, volunteers and community.
During our time together, we put ourselves in the shoes of caregivers dropping their kids off at an event and asked ourselves - What do they see? What is missing? What can we do to make their experience better? We walked around on our knees and rode in wheelchairs to simulate what our kiddos might see as they explore our environment. Is the space accessible? Are the rooms too overwhelming? Can we reach the activities in each room? We explored the environment thinking through the lens of volunteers - what signs do they see? What could be confusing? What is missing that would be helpful to set our volunteers up for success? We compiled a list of ideas and will make a plan of execution in the coming year to improve.
Included in our 3 day retreat was professional development to become stronger leaders and also find ways to increase our team communication, cohesion and culture. Our Pause Board Chair, Dan McSwian is a professional life coach for GiANT and walked us through 5 Voices - a workshop discovering the different “voices'' which make up our team. Our end goal was helping us understand each other on a deeper level in order to intentionally tend to our communication styles and needs.
The final day of our retreat was dedicated to fun - the Pause way! Teams participated in an Amazing Race to put values into action, show our community some love and have a little friendly competition along the way. The competitive and team components encouraged staff to practice our values of strategic innovation, adapting to change, efficient workflow, relational communication and sense of humor.
While the Amazing Race supported our team value of fun, it was also rewarding and allowed the staff experiences they will remember throughout the year. They were able to buy breakfast and coffee for strangers, drop off doughnuts at local businesses who serve people with disabilities, mail cards to friends who could use a smile and deliver cupcakes to rockstar Pause partners who support us all year. Even better, some of those recipients paid it forward and were able to love on others in the community creating a chain reaction. Being a part of creating this joy is a good reminder of what we are ultimately trying to help families create for themselves.
“Our program, team and individual values mean a lot to our team because we created them together. We believe in them to our core. Above and beyond creating them, we want to bring intentionality to living them out and practicing them in the work we do everyday. Taking time to celebrate the good work that has been done the previous year is important - and - you can’t get to the celebration without being future focused and looking at opportunities to grow and get better first. I ask my team hard questions and make them reflect on things that could be uncomfortable, but because there is such trust within our team it allows us to truly be open to growth and new opportunities without walking away feeling like we have failed. For every idea that doesn’t work how we planned, there are 10 new ideas that come with excitement, passion and hope. We can’t expect our families to believe the same model is possible for their own lives if we first don’t make it part of the culture of who we are as a team and as a program.”
- Lisa McCoon, Pause Executive Director
What an honor it is to continue to improve ourselves and our program so we can walk alongside the families, kiddos, volunteers and community partners we are so blessed to work with.
This is CAN DO. This is COMMUNITY. This is YOUR SUPPORT.
