On Thursday 20^th November 2014, 100 students from universities across the UK converged to a rural cow barn in Herefordshire to participate in the second annual BUCS-Deloitte Leadership Academy Programme. Attendees ranged from sports officers, to university 1^st team captains, to international level athletes, all in search of an incredible opportunity to refine, evaluate and test their leadership skills. 4 representatives from the Warwick Performance Sport Programme made the unsociably early (05:49am train) journey to Herefordshire for the 2 day course; Chloe Worrall (Archery), Jovan Veljkovic (Men’s Volleyball), Sam Jennings (Men’s Volleyball), and myself. To say we were intrigued by the choice of location for the event and the highly secretive itinerary would be an understatement, we sensed this would be no ordinary couple of days.

Upon arrival, we were greeted by representatives from BUCS and Deloitte and were ushered into the cow barn turned lecture theatre before being directed to our accommodation; wood burning stove equipped yurts. For the apprehensive camping debutant Jovan this was a luxurious introduction into outdoor living. After settling in we returned to the barn for formal introductions from Karen Rothery, CEO of BUCS; Tom Lewthwaite of Deloitte and current BUCS intern Greg Sturge.

Then we moved to the event itself, coordinated by Fieri, a team of individuals coming from military backgrounds who specialise in delivering courses in leadership through military inspired activities. At this point the choice of location became clear. With Herefordshire being the spiritual home of military training in the UK what better place to develop your leadership skills than in the shadows of some of the greatest leaders in our society.

The first session was a theory lecture delivered by Matt Johns on the intricacies of task management. He explained how task management could be broken down into 6 key steps; Planning, Briefing, Controlling, Supporting, Informing and Evaluating. We were then split into syndicate groups to undergo a series of tasks to put the theory into practice, taking it in turns to adopt the roles of team leader and vice team leader. An example task was to transfer the whole syndicate team across a ‘minefield’ containing two barrels using only two planks of wood whilst rescuing some ‘intel’ from the minefield on the way. With each new task it was intriguing how the leadership styles varied between individuals and was impressive how enthused and willing to contribute all team members were having only met each other for a matter of minutes.

After the afternoon’s series of tasks was complete we returned to the barn for further talks. First of all Martin Hewitt, a former member of the British army who was shot twice and had lost an arm during service, delivered a powerful and inspirational presentation on working in a team. Martin is currently pioneering the event, The Adaptive Grand Slam, an attempt to become the first disabled team in history to summit the highest mountain on each of the seven continents, and walk unsupported to the North and South Pole. Using his own personal examples from this challenge he highlighted examples where leadership was tested to the limit in some of the most extreme and dangerous places in earth.

After being treated to an exceptional hog roast we were lucky enough to have a speech from Olympic rowing gold medallist Heather Stanning. Heather comes from a military background also and described how this equipped her with essential transferrable skills enabling her to flourish in the world of high performance sport. As her impressive medal was passed around, we heard of her gruesome training regime building up to the games, gained an insight into her mind-set during the race and the aftermath of becoming an overnight national heroine.

This was followed by a talk from Joff Sharpe, a former SAS captain and now businessman, on how he uses leadership in the workplace. The night concluded with a networking session.

Now you’d think awakening 100 university students would be a non-trivial exercise. Wrong. Explosions, sirens, smoke bombs and gunshots at 5:30am proved very successful in forcing people out of their yurts and down to the cow barn. A news bulletin appeared on the screen explaining that Hereford had been taken over by angry farmers and it our job to protect the land. Staying within our syndicate groups we had some basic training in army communication and movement before undertaking a series of much more physical leadership challenges. There were two paintball challenges; one required the elimination of the enemy and the rescuing of intelligence information, the other was to rescue an injured hostage from a guarded building. Next was a negotiation challenge where one of our teammates was kidnapped and our task was to reason with the kidnapper using negotiation skills we had covered in lectures the previous day. Finally we had a problem solving task whereby we had to rescue a quad bike surrounded by ‘road-side mines’ up a muddy track using limited resources.

After a challenging and demanding morning we had some soft skills sessions from both Deloitte and BUCS where we were informed of internship/graduate opportunities on offer and received advice on interview skills.

Overall, the event was incredibly well run and thoroughly enjoyable. It was fantastic to be able to meet like-minded individuals across the UK with a passion for high performance sport and leadership. As an opportunity to be inspired, improve your leadership skills and begin to expand your professional network I would recommend to anyone to apply for BDLA 2015. You will not regret it. 

Jovan Veljkovic: 'The best part of BDLA at least for me was, listening to very big characters talking about their lifes, the difficulties they faced, and overcame to be where they are today. Overall an amazing and inspiring experience'

Check out some of the photos from the event on Facebook