Yeske Buie Retreat: Refining and Aligning

Last week, the Yeske Buie team from both offices gathered for our semi-annual staff retreat in Hume, Virginia. The team spent the retreat not only enjoying our time together, but also working on communication exercises and ensuring total alignment of personal and professional actions with our values and worldviews.

Last Fall, the team focused on solidifying our worldviews and core beliefs which resulted in the formation of what we call, the BIGs. This year, we worked to sow these BIG ‘seeds’ so that they may continue to grow our culture and guide how we approach our work for our Clients. To do this, we engaged in exercises that involved giving each other endearing appreciation, learning about seven atypical characteristics of exquisite communication, embracing our strong alignments and vulnerably sharing our misalignments with regards to our values, and addressing a plan to correct firm-wide misalignments in the areas of inconsistency, communication, and education.

The deliberate work we completed during the day was balanced out by equally essential leisure time. The team took full advantage of our time together by enjoying many meals, fun games, and playful downtime throughout the week. As always, the week ended with our Open House in the Virginia office which featured delicious food from Purple Onion Catering and beautiful live music. We hope you enjoy the following pictures from our week in rural Virginia.

Yeske Buie Worldviews and Core Beliefs

Our home for the week, beautiful Marriott Ranch.	Our altar to honor those in need of thoughts & prayers.
The group discusses the stories behind our worldviews as we look to identify alignments and misalignments.	Jen, Victoria, and Yusuf list our behaviors that are in alignment with two of our worldviews.
Throughout the week, the team fully embraced one of our unofficial values: Eat Big! Here we enjoy one of our delicious daily meals.	We were fortunate to have perfect weather throughout the week and enjoy time together on the ranch porch.
After a full day of training and exercises, the group engages in friendly competition over a game of Blockus.	When the sun set, we took our fun outside playing games, listening to music, and making s’mores around the fire.
The entire Yeske Buie team poses for a photo on the manor staircase.
On the final day of the retreat, we released our thoughts and prayers through a burning ceremony.
Dave and Elissa at our Open House.	Yusuf and Ryan greet our Open House guests.
Lauren G. and Jen at our Open House.	Lauren V., Lauren G., and Camille at our Open House.