Trust Fall

This week's edition brought to you from sweltering central Ohio.

Like today's temperature, we covered a hot topic last week: how do we become the best team at the Date Center? Under John Proffitt 's leadership, we set out on a team reset. I appreciate the care our first lieutenant took in talking to team members and gathering information about the past and present in hopes of a brighter future.

Part of the reset included an expectations exercise led by our magnolious facilitator, Sarah Gray . We covered our expectations for management, management's expectations for us and our expectations for each other.

Let me back up because you need context. Some of our clients and internal teams are leery of the PMO. The 'dark days' aren't in the distant past and its remnants still cause a side eye when a project comes to us. Several organizational changes later, the ship is slowly turning. Some teams are giving us a chance to show that we're turning the table and recognize we have some damn good PMs on staff. But, the acid reflux is still there for others.

Back to expectations. Having worked in toxic environments, it can be challenging to trust a new leader or a new way of doing things when you don't feel psychologically safe to lean into the unknown. But, we laid on the line what we all need from each other, which took some real courage from dark days survivors and grace from us new world reformers. At the end of the day, I think we all felt a little lighter and could start to envision what we could be with a little support and a lot of commitment. I'm setting myself a reminder to look back on this post in one year and see what progress we've made.