As part of our pro bono community development work, we ran a two-day leadership development workshop for a group of 33 sixteen year-old pupils from a high school in Dumbarton in Scotland. Our work formed part of the pupils' preparation for walking the West Highland Way - a challenging seven-day, 95-mile walk.

The school is one of 20 'Schools for Ambition', a Scottish Executive initiative to develop excellent and ambitious schools in Scotland. The idea for the workshop came about when one of our Scotland-based consultants met the school's head teacher at a Vanguard Programme conference, where both were delegates. The Vanguard programme is an initiative involving people from across Scotland and is focused on building a confident, vibrant country. Confidence was a key issue for the pupils taking part in the walk, and with one of our Sheppard Moscow Ireland consultants having experience of similar work with young people, coupled with our knowledge and expertise in developing leaders, we felt that we could make a valuable contribution and offered our services.

Our initial diagnostic work included consulting with school staff and with a number of the pupils who would be delegates on the workshop, as well as becoming familiar with the school and its pupils. We then designed a leadership development workshop that centred on strengths, capabilities and vision. We facilitated the event off the school premises, supported by three of the school's heads of department. The climate was one of informality, mutual respect and support, with everyone dressed casually and on first name basis with each other.

The workshop's key elements included helping pupils to:

Recognise their individual value and signature strengths

Believe in themselves

Change their outlook from 'I can't' to 'I can' by focusing on their strengths rather than weaknesses

Recognise that everyone, including them, is a leader

Define and appreciate their individual leadership capabilities

Develop a personal and ambitious vision for themselves, taking them beyond life at school

This last element was pivotal in the workshop. We got the pupils thinking by asking: "If you bumped into us in the street three years from now, what would you like to be telling us about your life?"

To round off the workshop, the school TV station created a mock Big Brother diary room where each pupil was able to give feedback on their experiences to the camera.

Outcome
The school staff that had co-facilitated with us were particularly pleased with the emotional risks a number of the pupils chose to take by participating in some of the workshop activities. They were also pleased and touched by their positive response to having the opportunity to visualise their lives as they go forward. The general feedback from the pupils themselves was that they had become more confident about developing relationships with people they don't know and about speaking up in groups. One pupil remarked: "I've learned I can be anything I want to be", with another adding: "I've learned that I'm a good friend and can listen, and that's a good thing."

The walk itself was a great success, with pupils contributing their thoughts and ideas from their experience to the school's art department, which is creating a sculpture to be placed as a permanent landmark at the end of the walk. Although it is hard to tell to what extent the leadership event contributed to the walk's success, the teachers felt that the relationships and trust that it fostered provided a great foundation.

For us, the pupils' receptiveness to developing self belief and their positive feedback was especially rewarding and we hope that we will indeed bump into them in three years time and get to hear the ambitious stories they have to tell.

SM Scotland

Back to News