Dauntsey’s Sixth Formers Put Leadership Skills to the Test

Published by Dauntsey's on Thursday 31st of March 2022

A group of Lower Sixth students from Dauntsey’s have taken part in a High Pressure Leadership Day, as part of the school’s Leadership, Sport and Adventure (LSA) programme. The challenge was to design, purchase the materials and construct a boat from scratch, and then race it across a course.

A total of fourteen students were divided into teams and briefed to create a boat able to carry them across a stretch of water to collect a number of items required to complete a task. Each team was given a budget of £50 to buy the necessary equipment at a nearby DIY store.

The afternoon was spent constructing the boats and then getting them onto the water – some more successfully than others!

Sam Moore, Head of Adventure Education at Dauntsey’s, and the master who devised and ran the challenge, explained its rationale;

“The day is all about creating a scenario where the impact of leadership decisions is felt very quickly. The decisions the teams make about the design and construction of the boats dictates whether they – quite literally – sink or swim in the afternoon.

“In many leadership situations, the impact of decisions is assessed over a much longer period of time. The High Pressure Day condenses this into just eight hours. The challenge is less about the effectiveness of the boats but more about the behaviours learnt by each student through the day.”