Promoting Crucial Team Building, Collaboration and Communication Skills in Graduate Students through Interactive Retreats.

Abstract

To promote team building, improve collaborations and enhance communication skills. An offsite yearly retreat was organized for the graduate students in our NIH-funded RISE graduate training program. Retreat themes were addressed through short presentations, case studies, live podcasts, webinars, focus groups, role play, and breakout sessions with various team building exercises to practice communication skills, and identify abilities, knowledge, values, and behaviors. Trainees gave short presentations and served as discussion leaders on topics related to the central theme. Expert guest speakers participated in discussion sessions with the trainees. Trainees evaluated the retreats at the end. A total of 48 trainees, 12 RISE Program faculty and staff, and 26 external speakers from industry, academia, media/journalism, the arts, psychology, and holistic medical fields participated over 9 years. The overall average benefit of the in-person retreats was rated 4.80 on a Likert scale of 1-5 by trainees. Trainees particularly enjoyed the informal interactions with program faculty, staff, and fellow trainees. They appreciated the opportunity to learn soft skills, such as interpersonal communication, conflict resolution and leadership. Two additional retreats conducted virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic were perceived as less beneficial. Off-site interactive retreats are a valuable tool for enhancing soft skills and a sense of team identity in a biomedical sciences graduate program, while covering important issues related to scientific careers.