It’s hard to believe I started my first GLI camp experience just one week ago. It started with four days of intense training. I admittedly thought we would be spending our days sitting around going over important guidelines and schedules for camp. However, I was pleasantly surprised to begin our first meeting with an emotional check-in and games!

I’m not even going to pretend I was dismayed at the idea of playing games throughout my training days because they were side-splittingly fun and we grew to trust each other as a working team. In the end, we were 10 people from varying backgrounds who (for the most part) had recently met and who had no qualms yelling at the top of our lungs with one another.

Moreover, as we move into day three of camp it has become abundantly clear why it was essential that we spend much of our staff orientation week playing games. What we learned about ourselves through the games and workshops is exactly what we are providing for the campers. As the girls play a rousing game of Whoosh! they are shoring up their confidence and trust in one another as a group. That attitude gets carried into their workshops where they push themselves to think outside the proverbial box about what leadership and girls’ issues mean in their own experiences. I’m beginning to think that some of those Fortune 500 companies could learn a few things from GLI.