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Welbeck Leader (March 2011)

Following a compact day of lessons, students from 10 Entry ran to their rooms, collected their pre-packed bags and formed up on the parade square. We hastily boarded the coaches and were soon leaving Welbeck, marking the start of Exercise Welbeck Leader. The journey from Loughborough to Portsmouth was long, so students spent their time wisely either sleeping or attempting to do some last minute Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) work. We are all following a course which will lead to the ILM Level 3 Award in Leadership, and Exercise Welbeck Leader is designed to provide a significant part of the course content and assessment. We arrived at HMS Collingwood later that afternoon, and after being allocated rooms we quickly put our bags down and went to dinner in what seemed to be a newly built Junior Ranks Mess. After the food we unpacked and received a briefing from our various Platoon IC’s on the days ahead and got an early night as we were to be up early the next day.

Day one for 2 Platoon started with our ILM work, and this gave us a vital chance to meet up as a group and finalise what we were doing for our presentations. After a quick change 2 Platoon were then off out to PT for interval training and many people, who were already tired, found this difficult but still we were put through our paces by the QMSI, WO2 Shaun Pyburn because if we didn’t we would be doing the dreaded “Pulse Squats”. Later on that afternoon 2 Platoon headed off to visit the historic Portsmouth dockyard for a visit to HMS Victory, the very ship in which Lord Nelson fell which was a great and very interesting way to spend the rest of the afternoon with many people learning new facts.

The second day was a very important one, so with an early start and a cooked breakfast we set off to the Headquarters of the Royal Naval Leadership Academy to start our pre-planned group presentations. The content of our presentation had been decided prior to the Exercise as each Platoon had been divided into sections and each section assigned to a leader. Our task was to make a ten minute presentation on that leader - summarising who they were, their leadership style and what made them an effective leader. There were many groups to go through and each one was as interesting and informative as the last. In the afternoon we had the both physically and mentally draining “Cliff and Chasm”. We had already been briefed by the Upper Sixth that this was the best part of what they did last year so everyone was very excited. To quickly explain the task we had to get around an assault course both carrying and hoisting lots of heavy equipment as quickly as possible. Each section nervously, yet eagerly, waited at the start line for the QMSI and CSgt Kelly to give us the final word “Go!”. Each section stumbled across difficulties including tangled ropes, stuck obstacles, tiredness of participants and stepping out of our given boundaries however each section gave their best but there was only 3 spaces in the final.

Day 3 for 2 Platoon started off with the 0730 PT session consisting of a 5 mile run with most people deciding to skip the cooked breakfast that morning! Afterwards the Platoon was split into two groups where one spent the morning visiting two museums in Portsmouth - The Royal Marine Museum and the D-Day Museum both of which were very informative and excellent fun. After returning to base we spent the afternoon working on a group planning task where we were given an initial brief and then given a short amount of time to come up with a plan and a solution. The brief we were given was that the fictional country of Dacan had begun to riot and we had to find a political solution on how to prevent this from happening. The second part of the task was to then deliver a press conference where news teams such as ‘Russia Today’ and ‘Welbeck Today’ would ask questions and pick holes in the plan.

The 4th day commenced with 5-a-side football tournament on an indoor 3G Astroturf which was enjoyed by everyone and it enabled people within the sections/teams to build close friendships with the people they had spent the week with. In the afternoon we underwent a series of Command Tasks where we marched to the Royal Naval Leadership Academy and took advantage of the different facilities they had there. Each section started on a different command task and had an appointed section IC who would brief and lead their team throughout the task. After the task had been completed the sections would travel around the tasks which meant that each group could do all of the different command tasks available. There were many different variations of tasks and the ones which most people enjoyed were those involving water as both staff and students enjoyed watching people fall in!

The final day consisted of the Cliff and Chasm Final where the top three times raced against each other to get the best time and to be crowned the ‘Winners of Cliff and Chasm 10e’. We then boarded the coaches and started the long journey back to Welbeck which provided an excellent opportunity to catch up on lost sleep!

Many thanks to all the staff and Upper Sixth who helped to arrange Exercise Welbeck Leader and make it so successful. Congratulations go to Liam Harbour who got the highest marks out of everyone on the Exercise and also to 3 Platoon Alpha Section who won the fastest Cliff and Chasm time. Special thanks go to the Royal Naval Leadership Academy and HMS Collingwood for letting us use their facilities during our stay.

Sam Harding and Adam Brown, Trenchard 10E

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