Guiding Teams to New Heights

Leadership, like mountaineering, is not simply about reaching the summit. It is about knowing where you are going, bringing people with you, adapting when conditions change, and seeing the next horizon when you arrive.

It is rarely a straight path. There are steep climbs, unexpected obstacles, difficult decisions and moments when the way forward is unclear. There are also summits: moments of achievement that offer new perspectives and reveal the next challenge ahead.

Guiding Teams to New Heights is a unique Erasmus+ professional development course for leaders in primary, secondary and vocational education. We run it in partnership. Two fully qualified and experienced mountain guides lead the trek itself, alongside an educational leader with more than 20 years of experience in education, who guides the leadership work throughout the week. Participants make a multi-day journey on foot through the Alps, trekking from mountain hut to mountain hut while exploring key principles of educational leadership, change management and sustainable school development.

The mountains become both classroom and metaphor. Each stage of the journey connects physical experiences with leadership challenges: setting direction, making choices, dealing with uncertainty and resistance, building effective teams, maintaining resilience and leading sustainable change.

Short inputs on leadership and management are combined with practical challenges, peer dialogue, reflection, coaching activities and learning from the natural environment. Participants work with real leadership issues from their own organisations and use the journey to reconsider their values, priorities and approach to change.

Sustainability runs through the course on two levels: experiencing our relationship with nature and exploring how leaders can create change that lasts. Rather than focusing only on reaching the next summit, participants consider how to build organisations that remain resilient, adaptive and purposeful over time.