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As an engineer – and a self-confessed geek – I’ve always been drawn to how things come together to solve problems. To me, running a business is no different from tackling an engineering challenge. As the SME I work for has grown, I saw an opportunity to build the capabilities needed to help lead its next phase.

The Executive MBA felt like a natural next step: combining rigorous learning with real-world application, all alongside other experienced professionals. Studying at a leading tech university during the AI revolution has given me a front-row seat to change, not as theory, but as something actively reshaping how we lead, innovate and create value.

This intersection of practical leadership development and cutting-edge thinking marked a turning point for me, making it clear that this is the direction I need to take to step into more strategic leadership roles.

The Executive Leadership Journey retreat

The retreat – a weekend away with my cohort – is the culmination of the Executive Leadership Journey module. It brings together everything we’ve learnt and creates space to step back and reflect on how it applies to our development. It also integrates another key module from the programme: Responsible Leadership for Corporate Success. Whilst the corporate responsibility module gave us frameworks for understanding our role in creating sustainable value for modern work environments, the leadership journey helped us understand ourselves as leaders and how we show up in complex, changing environments.

The retreat brought these threads together in a practical, experiential way, structured across two intensive days.

Day one focused on leading and developing the self, including a workshop with former Olympic champion Greg Searle, followed by group coaching and a sporting activity with the cohort.

Day two focused on executive career development, with sessions from executive search professionals and further group coaching.

Throughout the weekend, we also had the opportunity to interact with alumni from the programme and exchange our experiences, which was incredibly valuable.

A personal highlight from the weekend

The highlight for me was Greg Searle’s workshop and his story of moving from Olympic rowing to professional sailing for the America’s Cup. His journey really resonated with me - it mirrored my own transition from aerospace, where I was an expert, to construction and then consultancy, where I had to rebuild my expertise.

Two lessons from his session stood out:

• First, his visual metaphor of rowing versus sailing. In rowing, you face backwards; in sailing, everyone faces forwards. It perfectly captured what I’ve been learning about strategic leadership: the importance of looking ahead, asking the right questions about where we’re going, rather than staying comfortable looking back at what worked before. Leading strategic growth initiatives in a fast-changing environment means keeping my focus forward and on why we do what we do.
  
• Second, his philosophy on balancing belief with a learning mindset. Belief gives you the foundation - the conviction that a goal is possible - but unchallenged, it can turn into rigidity. A learning mindset allows you to stay curious, ask questions, and ‘unlearn’ what no longer works. Coming from someone who had lived it, who had to shed an expert mindset at the peak of success and adapt to entirely new realities, this lesson felt both credible and inspiring.

Lessons on leadership from the retreat

The Executive Leadership Journey retreat reinforced how essential resilience and a growth mindset are, not just for professional success, but for personal fulfilment.

Throughout the Executive MBA, I’ve learned to see volatility and ambiguity as the constant environment we navigate, shifting my focus from control to building adaptive capacity in myself and my teams.

The group coaching sessions were particularly powerful: each person worked on their own development while the rest of us supported them, offering new perspectives and reminding me that leadership growth is both personal and collective.

Experiencing an intense year of coursework alongside senior professionals from diverse backgrounds, supporting each other through transitions and moments of vulnerability, has been a masterclass in the kind of environment I hope to create as a leader.

Applying my learnings to my organisation

The great thing about studying part-time is I can take what I learn at the Executive Leadership Journey retreat straight back to the office. One immediate change I’m introducing is more space in our project reviews and strategy sessions for ‘forward-looking reflection.’

Practically, this means adding a short learning review to our monthly leadership meetings to discuss surprises, what we’ve had to unlearn, and what we’re experimenting with next. The aim is to create psychological safety, so the team feels confident taking calculated risks, challenging old methods, and bringing fresh perspectives. Building this culture of curiosity and adaptive learning will help us navigate the complexity and ambiguity of driving real business transformation.