Team-building at the UNESCO Chair

Team-building UNESCO Chair

Our multidisciplinary research team is always adding new projects and team members. We bring to the table diverse skill sets in social science, communication, biology, ecology, geography, education, and data science, to name a few.

To coordinate and learn more about our strengths, we meet two times per year in a team-building format. We most recently met in late January. Guided by Hannes Gessoni, organisational developer, we shared our perspectives on the challenges and rewards of being in such a dynamic research group. We reviewed our commitments, goals, and abilities, framing them in a scorecard format to help us track our progress for the coming year.

One major goal of the team-building workshop is to bring efficiency to our daily and weekly routines. This time, we decided to restructure the way that we discuss the progress and roadblocks that we face in our projects. To accommodate our growing project portfolio in the limited time available to us in our weekly Jour Fixe, we divided our team into three groups. Each team pursues a thematic focus in the project work. By setting priorities, interactions in terms of content are to be used even more efficiently.

We are constantly looking for ways to develop synergies amongst ourselves and our projects. Our team-building workshop was an eye-opening and refreshing experience allowing our team members to connect with each other in ways like never before.