Toby French

For the past three years I have been invited by my former school to work as a team advisor at their Sixth Form ‘Challenge of Management’ Conference.

The conference is designed to provide Year 12 students with an opportunity to work on a project in a business environment. My role as advisor has been to provide guidance throughout the two-day project to a team of approximately ten students.

The Royal Household provides me with additional days leave to undertake this volunteer project and, in much the same way as the students, I gain valuable management experience from the conference. Working in a team environment with a group of young people full of ideas and enthusiasm, makes for an exciting and testing two days.

The projects invariably involve a lot of research and practical application of business and management concepts of which the students may only have limited knowledge. Assisting them in their efforts has certainly proved to be a good learning curve for me.

By the end of the two days the students’ project submissions frequently contain insightful and well-presented ideas. One of my key roles as an advisor is to encourage the students to deconstruct these ideas and critically analyse them so that they can be sure they are relevant to the project. In doing so I learn a lot about my own team-working and leadership skills, which is a valuable lesson for me to take away from the conference.

I look forward to the Royal Household supporting me to take part in the conference again over the coming years.