How we helped a remote-first climate change organisation become a more connected team

How does a purpose-driven remote team build a stronger rapport so that they can collaborate better?

Location: Woodland, near Brighton
Group size: 16

The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), is a leading non-profit driving news and analysis on energy and climate issues. With a team of 16 who mostly work remotely, they turned to School of the Wild for a team building away day to help them break down silos, strengthen connections, and unlock opportunities for deeper cross-team collaboration.

Who they are 
The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit supports informed debate on energy and climate change issues in the UK. They support journalists and parliamentarians with briefings on key issues, and work with others that have interesting stories to tell.

Their context and challenges
The organisation is fairly non-hierarchical with a flat structure, where each person operates in a different subject area specialism. Team members have different working hours and tend to work in silos, so people don’t always know what each other is doing.

The news cycle is relentless, and the ECIU operates in a very busy sector - which means every team member has to manage several channels of communication, including lots of back-to-back online calls. 

As a very busy remote team, they do not spend much informal time together, nor much time in person, as some live further away, so they don’t have as many opportunities for team building or for building rapport in the team.

Aims and objectives
ECIU wanted to build connections and to do something that fit with their values. People wanted to spend time together in Nature. They approached us to help. 

The outcomes they wanted from a day:

• to get to know each other better
• to feel more connected
• for each person to feel part of the team and the bigger picture
• to come up with some agreed actions so that they can collaborate and work together better

Our solution
Using our Seed team-building framework, we designed a tailored one-day programme set in delightful woods near Brighton. The day combined deliberate activities to foster deeper connections, facilitated exercises to spark meaningful conversations around the fire, and collaborative sessions that led to tangible actions for improving teamwork and collaboration.

The day was framed around this question: How do we become a more connected team?

What happened
It was a rich, productive and fun day, despite the weather being mixed for August.

A white horse wandered past in the lane at one point. 

We gathered the group around the fire under cover, and wove together activities designed to help the team feel closer, integrate their differences and bring out meaningful conversations.

The activities we employed included:

• meaningful icebreakers that revealed interesting differences between personality styles, and a desire for more feedback - a few discovered similar feelings of being lost when they don’t receive any. And there was a nice bit that reflected their actual hierarchy when the team were standing further away and the boss said he wanted to be closer to them. When they moved closer together, all agreed that felt better.
  
  
• a symbols exercise - to represent what it looks like when they are really connected. All their symbols were really different and very creative in an unusual way. “We are an organisation of storytellers so it was reflective of that,” they said.
  
  “If asked to come up with something on paper, it wouldn’t have worked - it worked well to pick things you liked and ascribe meaning to it.”
  
  
• we broke up the more thoughtful parts with fun games
  
  
• after a delicious vegetarian lunch, the group work in the afternoon was about what to start/stop/continue, which led to rich discussion and some key takeaways.

Everyone engaged in the activities and discussions, and there was lots of laughter. The group were warm, open and supportive, and were willing to share and question.

Outcomes and results
Everyone at ECIU is passionate about the organisation's mission, and cares about the purpose. We noticed a high level of psychological safety in the team. They felt collegiate, cohesive and functional - including being able to disagree, ask questions, and check reality.

At one point there was a challenge to the day’s question: why do we need to be more connected and what does connection mean? (Whether functional, relating to the vision, to each other) which was a necessary check on reality, and led to a rich conversation.

In the afternoon they came up with some agreements as a group to help them feel more connected and collaborate better including:

• Introducing checkins at start of meetings
• Hierarchy of sign-offs - stopping the bottlenecks
• Setting up a feedback culture
• Coming into the office more

The reflective space in the woods worked its magic, and over the course of a day, the anxious, quieter people relaxed and opened up. And a couple of people shared honestly about feeling disconnected, which felt important.

People appreciated the time out away from screens and the news cycle, and to spend time together in Nature.

The few people who were cynical about the day at the start - by the end they were saying, “I found this really valuable.”

I learnt that my colleagues value time together, and that when we are together as a group thinking more widely about our organisation and ways of working, we can be much more creative and solution-focussed than when we complain about problems in small groups!"
​Participant

What impact has the day had on the company?
As a non-hierarchical organisation, ECIU has a lot of psychological safety, people are able to speak up, and the boss listens. The challenge is that because everyone is on a similar level, people don't feel able to give each other feedback and this means some people don’t know how they are doing. They need to be more direct with each other. This was a key takeaway and learning.

​After the day, ECIU's Head of People said, "It's a shift for us as an organisation, in the past we have only focused on strategy."

It's a shift for us as an organisation, in the past we have only focused on strategy."

Want something like this for your team?

Our mission at School of the Wild is to help organisations transform their teams and learn to work together better, by inspiring a positive and collaborative workplace culture. We believe that Nature brings out the best in people so we bring leaders and teams outside to help you reconnect and think differently.

Have a look at our outdoor team building away days, company offsites, and leadership team programme and get in touch for more information.