The IMA Teambuilding retreat with the Integrated Agricultural Productivity Project (IAPP) team took place on 9, 10, 11 August 2014. The retreat aimed to build on the first retreat held last May 2013 with the aim of further establishing the IAPP groups coming together as a high performing team, with common values and clear direction to the end of the project and beyond.Our agreed approach, based on dialogue with IAPP members and mid-term review findings was to:
- draw on the  foundation for productive teamwork between the groups established at the last team retreat
- draw findings from mid-term reviews
- explore priority issues identified by the team topics relating to co-ordination and delivery in this stage of the project and
- support the members to prioritise and reach agreement on actions for the next stage of the project

A blended approach of input and responsive facilitation was employed to allow space to learn from experience, particularly through cases of success and challenge.
General Observations:

Participants were participative and fully engaged throughout the 3 days of this retreat at Cox’s Bazar.  The location was perfect and being far from Dhaka meant that participation was high.The retreat took participants through some individual working and analysis (including their preferred team roles), followed by identification, group work and presentations on key issues faced by the PMU working.  The presentations allowed participants from the whole project area (Rangpur, Barisal and Dhaka to explore these issues in a little more depth although inevitably more time and focus would benefit the project still further.
The retreat ran over 3 days, which gave enough time to build on the platform already there for participants to start communicating productively, agree on some actions, establish some ways of working across the units and view themselves as one team. Actually this started the day before the retreat during the day long travel by coach to Cox’s Bazar from the project areas with 33 participants including the facilitators spending this valuable time (15 hours) together.  The location of the retreat at Cox’s Bazar sea beach allowed for considerable bonding of all with beach games, swimming, walking meetings, team challenges and some sightseeing which all helped develop strong bonds between team members.