Meeting the TL Team

Last weekend the 20 Trainee Leaders for the British Exploring India and Amazon 2015 expeditions met for our first training session. Despite going on two different expeditions, the two TL groups will be doing all of our training together.

We met up at a scout camp in Lichfield on Friday evening, arriving in dribs and drabs because of major train delays and traffic - I was the first to arrive, so I made the most of the tea and coffee provided and chatted to James and Sam, the two guys taking our training.

We started off the weekend by talking lots about leadership, what it means, what makes a good leader, what our leadership style is at the moment and how we're going to develop over the course of the TL programme. It was interesting to hear about other people's experiences with leadership and their expectations for the programme. We all shared our favourite quotes -

"Leaders are not born or made - they're grown"

"Assumption is the mother of all f**k ups"

"Be the best you can be"

I'm sure lots more quotes will come out of the time we all spend together! (especially if we carry on playing Cards Against Humanity..)

We split into different 'syndicates', groups that we're going to stay in to complete our training (we're working towards a certificate in Basic Expedition Leadership, Expedition First Aid and Offsite Safety Management, as well as doing the expedition to the Himalayas), which was a great way to get to know people better (and learn names!).

We had a look at different tents and tried putting them up, then cooked our lunch on some different stove options. The dehydrated ration packs weren't actually that bad, but a 1,500kcal lunch definitely wasn't necessary!

We then learnt more about what's required to be an expedition leader - lots of risk assessments and planning, as well as the ability to be adaptable and motivational once you're out on the expedition. It's made me even more excited about developing my leadership style and putting it all into practice out in India and afterwards on other expeditions.

Our next training weekend is pretty soon - off to the Lake District in three weeks' time. A blog post will follow :)