Quiet before the storm: University of Toledo College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences chapter leaders prior to the start of their summer retreat.
By Cameron Perisutti and Nicole Guist
When you begin your term as an officer for your APhA–ASP Chapter, the big question is: where do you start? By beginning with a leadership retreat, you can establish goals, schedules, expectations, accountability, communication, and most importantly, team bonding.
At the University of Toledo College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, we have dedicated the past 2 years on improving, and eventually perfecting, the leadership retreat. We would like to share with you our journey on creating a leadership retreat that took an unexpected turn that resulted in a “flood” of ideas. If you are holding a retreat or a leadership event in the near future, our experiences may come in handy … for several reasons.
Why is having an executive board retreat essential?
Cameron: Executive board retreats set the tone for the academic year. Strategizing ways to keep members engaged and creating a master calendar can take hours. A retreat offers collaboration without distractions, so chapters can stay productive and focused even if a meeting lasts longer than planned.
Nicole: A chapter is not made successful by a single member. A successful chapter is made by a team of individuals that are dedicated, and most importantly, invested in the success of their chapter and its members. Starting the summer with a productive and densely packed retreat is the foundation of all of your chapter’s efforts in the year to come.
What are the key aspects to planning a successful retreat?
Cameron: Creating a unique experience for an executive board garners enthusiasm. Meetings on campus can be less engaging as they have a lecture-like feel to them. Our last retreat was planned hour-by-hour on an island. Everyone literally brought food to the table along with refreshed minds ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work.
Nicole: A leadership retreat is a perfect opportunity to establish what the expectations are for the coming year. This could range from setting a date for every event of the year before the retreat is over, to something as simple as ensuring that every e-mail communication between leaders has a due date a response is expected by.
How did you apply these essentials to your retreat?
Nicole: During my presidential year, I ensured that my retreat was held off campus in a setting where team bonding was very easy to build in. I hosted our retreat at a lake house with a 48-hour schedule. Half of the days were planning, and the other half were team building activities such as boat rides, board games, and family style meals. The biggest factors to success were making the retreat a requirement to run for the executive board in addition to hosting the retreat in a location without distractions.
Cameron: As our chapter’s current president, I required the summer retreat. We couldn’t offer watersports or a boathouse like the previous year; however, I did have a unique idea, and it was to have the retreat on an island. We rode Miller Ferry to Put-In-Bay located on South Bass Island. An Airbnb was reserved—a Victorian mansion equipped with open spaces to conduct meetings. The host upgraded us several times and we had the mansion to ourselves. Eager to explore the island after our strategic planning meetings, we piled in my car and were shocked by what we saw.
The island is split in two by a low-lying area, protected from waves with breakwalls. Due to gusting winds, the waves were crashing over the tops of these walls. I couldn’t drive my car through the 2 feet of water. All ferries leaving the island were canceled due to the conditions. We were stranded. This retreat had just become the “Survivor” leadership experience. Where would we get food? How would we get home? Anxious and worried, we decided to focus on the reason we were there. So instead of exploring an island new to all of us, we spent extra time planning the semester.
We designed a master calendar with every event planned months in advance and set individual goals for officers. We decided to have a chapter preview for the P1 class during which all officers would present on their planning efforts from the summer. This will provide prospective members an outline of everything the chapter does and how they can get involved, but also holds officers accountable. The last 10 minutes of the preview will be for students to join an interest group. Tossing around the idea of committees for patient care, service events and policy, we brainstormed on having interest groups specializing in one of these areas. Interest groups will lay the framework for personally inviting students to our functions.
After the planning session and cleaning out our host’s cereal supply, we called a taxi, which was a bus with enormous tires. As water splashed through the door, the driver carefully navigated through the flooded roads and made it to an island restaurant for dinner. On our return trip after eating, we passed bulldozers attempting to remove the water. The next day, the wind had stopped, the ferries resumed, and we left as soon as we could. The end result was a meticulously planned year for our chapter and a great story!