Hi Landcarer’s

Continuing with regenerative goals, this week I am heading directly to Staff and workplace and/or volunteer wellbeing.

After two days with colleagues at Lake Burrendong Sport and Recreation Centre, I have had a fresh perspective of team building and regeneration. With the Centre having no phone reception (apart from limited spots in the car park where you could stand on one leg and hold your tongue in the right spot and send a text or check emails).

Even though we use ‘sustainability’ as the ‘go to’ word for change, it has over the past few years for me, been surpassed, as a lot of these ‘buzz words’ often do.

With several new people on board across our region, including a new Regional Landcare Facilitator, new Local Landcare Coordinators and also a new Regional Agricultural Landcare Facilitator, working with the Central West Local Land Services, it was timely to have a fresh look at the future for our region and how we can be effectively working together.

I know that many adults have been scared by ‘interesting’ team building techniques in the past to aid in bringing the troops to work together more effectively. Unfortunately, sometimes managers or business owners can have good intentions by bringing in an external facilitator to rally the troops, that has detrimental impacts on the organisation….sometimes we don’t always ‘get on’ with people that we are meant to work with…that is just life, but if we have a strong grip of a bigger picture that we are all working towards, sometimes that can help to bring people together.

Interestingly, the ‘activities’ that we undertook with a millennial leading us (with most of us being 40 plus) were pretty fun from my perspective…and because we like to be as frugal as possible, we held our event in conjunction with Landcare representatives and some Local Land Services staff from the Central Tablelands…which allowed us to work in teams against each other!

Team building activities including archery, catapult construction in teams and other competitive team events did encourage us to work together…but also to appreciate different ways of doing the same thing. Yes…we slept in bunks. We had good facilities. No water in the dam, but a lovely pool.

I would encourage other organisations that have a cross-regional link to give it a go and seek regeneration through the process.

For further information on this article, please go to www.centralwestlachlanlandcare.org, twitter, facebook or Instagram @cwllandcare