Nine Taylor students traveled to Rome, Georgia, for a Winshape Foundation retreat, led by the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE). This retreat took place from Thursday, April 4, to Sunday, April 7, and emphasized the importance of servant-leadership in the lives of believers.
The Winshape Foundation is the non-profit organization of Chick-fil-A. The foundation hosts retreats for different groups at their headquarters in Georgia and provides scholarships for college students. The goal of Winshape is “to glorify God by creating transformational, Christ-centered experiences for people in every stage of life,” their website said.
One of the main ways they do this is by offering a retreat for college students that focuses on team and leader development. Taylor’s mission statement is “To develop servant-leaders marked with a passion to minister Christ's redemptive love and truth to a world in need”. So, the retreat felt like a good fit to Mick Bates, director of innovation and entrepreneurship, who co-led the trip alongside Julie Borkin, assistant professor of communications.
In the summer of 2023, Bates approached the Winshape Foundation while the CIE was looking for ways to bless students. So the Center applied for a grant from the Women’s Giving Circle, and combined money from their budget, enabling the Center to send students on the retreat.
Taylor students and staff spent their days at the Headquarters completing team-building exercises and sessions intended to cultivate servant-leadership. They focused on the acronym SERVE: See the future, Engaging and developing others, best practices for Reinventing continuously, best practices for Valuing results and relationships and embody the values.
Each of the five virtues had three sections that were discussed in sessions.
“So we were exploring really how we as a leader can influence people in positive ways,” Bates said.
The retreat had an impact on those who went, including Joy Heo, a freshman marketing and management major, and freshman Aubrey Till, a social work major.
Heo said her goal is to start her own Bible-based business and influence the world. So when she saw the retreat sign-up in an announcement email, it sounded just right for her.
After the retreat, she left with a lot of knowledge of servant-leadership and what that looks like.
“Leadership is not something that I want to achieve but something that is naturally drawn by the actions or the words that I do because I love others,” Heo said.
Being an international student, the language barriers she faces at Taylor and in America are difficult and have caused some challenges for her. But after this retreat, she learned that people of other cultures are not threatening. She gained confidence in her ability to have conversations in English and connect with her team members, she said.
Till chose to go on the retreat because she is regularly in leadership roles, leading comes naturally to her and she wanted to gain more knowledge and grow in the area of servant-leadership. She wanted to jump on the opportunity to go on a retreat that involved her entrepreneurship minor.
Till appreciated how the team members at Winshape practiced what they preached — they were true servant-leaders.
“[The retreat] definitely made me look deeper into my leadership style,” Till said.
She left the retreat with a better understanding of her strengths and weaknesses in leadership, and it gave her tools to better her abilities in that area, Till said.
On returning from the retreat, the students who attended were asked to find two people they wanted to disciple for four one-hour sessions, discussing what they learned on the retreat and putting it into practice.
“We want to bring what we learned at Winshape to campus,” Bates said.
These events are interdisciplinary, he said. They are for more than just business-related majors; everyone can benefit from them.
Bates said that all Taylor students should keep an eye out for more “innotreks” and consider attending.
