2016
CVQO – ILM 3 Award – Sgt Holliday’s story
During the week of the October half term 2015 I completed a course to achieve an ILM level 3 in leadership and management. The course was held at Quantock Lodge in Somerset. Cadets from all corps all across the country attended making a total of roughly 50 of us.
The week was primarily made up of both leadership theory lessons and leadership exercises. At the beginning of the week we were broken down into multiple little teams which would be our groups for the week. We then spent the afternoon being introduced to the course and starting our theory lessons. We spent the morning of the next day completing some small leadership tasks to practice our skills in command and find out what we needed to work on before our assessments. We then spent the afternoon and evening in lessons and beginning our coursework.
The third day was our practical leadership assessments. We had each been given a one hour long exercise which we would lead. We had planned it the evening before and were now being assessed on how we led the team to complete the exercise. My exercise involved building a raft in order to then go and diffuse as bomb on the other side of the lake. It had two parts which I had to be aware of. First, the raft building itself, I had to make sure my raft was strong enough to make multiple trips across the lake. Second, the bomb, the bomb had 3 parts which had to be moved in a certain sequence in order to not set off the bomb. Once I had built my raft and worked out the sequence I decided to tie a long rope onto the front and back of the raft so that people could stand on each bank and pull the raft, this way it would move faster than being paddled. Using this technique I successfully completed my exercise.
The final day, and the next few weeks after purely involved writing up our essays for our coursework which had to be handed in for assessment in early November.
I have since received my result of a pass and can now say I hold an ILM level 3 in leadership and management. The whole course was a great experience as It gave me the chance to make friends in other corps and other parts of the country, it also gave me a broad knowledge on the subject of leadership which I hope to be able to pass on to the cadets on my squadron.