Lex Sailing – Teamwork and Leadership

Lex is a progressive contract leasing company with over 40 years’ experience of providing vehicle management solutions to corporate and private customers. Its position as the UK’s largest vehicle leasing company is maintained in no small part due to the importance it places on developing the best people.

Mercades

Inspirations has designed Top Gear as a 4 stage development programme which covers all aspects of leadership and personal effectiveness

Inspirations provided a two and a half day sailing event to help consolidate and reinforce the leadership concepts that the candidates had been exposed to during the Top Gear programme.

The initial afternoon was spent undertaking basic instruction on how to sail a boat. During this very new learning experience, the team was able to refer to some of the personality profiling and leadership themes that they covered throughout the Top Gear programme.

The next morning saw the first opportunity for the team to put its new found sailing skills to use in the completion of a Flashlight Challenge™ activity. This is a sailing exercise in which points are scored en-route to a given final destination. We set complex “business” rules, from which the team decides the route to take and success is achieved by simulating the business processes of:

Setting a shared vision
Setting Strategy
Having clear objectives and goals
Having role clarity
Planning well
Managing effectively
Strong Teamwork
Clear Communications
Monitoring progress and success criteria
Adapting tactics (and sometimes strategy) to cater for unplanned events and conditions.

Each candidate was given the opportunity to lead one of the challenges completed during the event. During the challenges, the team was encouraged to observe and experiment with behaviours and leadership concepts that the Top Gear programme had introduced them to.

During the final event review session, the team reflected on how well the experience gave them the opportunity to practice, demonstrate and observe leadership behaviours in a real, challenging and most enjoyable environment.