Empowering the team using kind affirmations...

This post was actually supposed to be finished right after I did this little creative exercise at our first Team meeting of the year. I took the photos, had what I wanted to share in my head, started it in my new posts, only to let it sit in editing stages for quite some time. However, with the spirit of, everything happens for a reason and timing is everything, here it is. (It must be the right time for someone:)

We have always had team meetings, but they were not as regular as they should have been and they always revolved around dinner. While this is a very nice touch, it's also distracting. At the end of 2010 we decided one goal we would strive for was, monthly meetings. Jen got me right on task to plan them ahead of time, so we were not playing (or shall I say..she was not playing..) 'find a night we are all free, game'...a tricky task, as we are all incredibly busy.

We did it, posted the dates for one year. Perfect! Set guidelines and promised to post agenda's the week before the meeting, keeping them to one hour and taking minutes. Boy, can I say...We should have done this ages ago! The first one is always the hardest, going over the guidelines, philosophy of Bijou, tackling issues, also discussing some new and exciting benefits we were offering to the girls. It went off without a hitch, but I also knew that I wanted to also give them something special too. Somehow I came up with the idea of having each of the girls write something nice about each of their team members. Not knowing the value of this when I came up with the idea, or that my fingers would get glued together. But seeing them all take the time to write something about each person was quite lovely, I was surprised as I read such nice things...and thought, they would have never known their team members thought these wonderful things. I also could tell, it came from their hearts. This set the tone for a great year.

Thinking of my past working experiences and events that happened in those environments, I felt lucky and blessed that each girl had the other girls backs. They genuinely are fond of each other and this I know, as clients tell me this all the time. This is most importantly, what makes Bijou.

We work as a team.