Drones, Not Slides: A Leadership Team-Building Case Study in Tech-Driven Behaviour Change

Senior leaders don't change how they work because someone presented a model of collaboration. They change because they live a moment where their usual way of operating visibly fails — and a better one works. That conviction shaped every minute of this programme.

A leading Hong Kong–based energy company asked us to work with the senior management team of one of its core business divisions. The brief was the kind every large organisation in transition recognises: capable leaders, each strong inside their own function, increasingly required to deliver across functions — and a wave of new technology to absorb without the caution that usually slows senior teams down.

So we didn't run a talk on collaboration. We built a morning around four target behaviours, each engineered into a different activity, with real drones doing the heavy lifting.

1. Growth mindset — the thread that opened and closed the day

We started with a deliberately impossible task: break a wooden chopstick using a single sheet of A4 paper. It looks absurd until someone reframes the problem — the first small proof that "impossible" is usually just "unexamined."

That mindset became the spine of the whole session, and we returned to it at the very end. Using a simple model for effective recognition — specific, timely, and tied to the right effort and decision rather than a vague "good job" — each leader wrote a genuine, effort-based appreciation for a colleague and added it to an Appreciation Tree. Not a sticker exercise. A rehearsal of the feedback habit that keeps a growth-mindset culture alive once everyone is back at their desks.

2. Radical collaboration — when three departments discover they share one airport

Next, leaders were split into departments — A, B and C — and asked to start building a drone landing site. What we didn't announce loudly: all three were building one shared airport. The realisation arrived at different speeds around the room; some worked in isolation for several minutes before the dependency became unavoidable. The debrief question did the real work: when did you discover there was only one airport — and what shifted your team from working alone to working together? That question isn't about drones. It's about the difference between a division that coordinates and one that only thinks it does.

3. Innovation with drones — technology as the equaliser

Then the drones took over. Leaders trained a coach pilot, then everyone took turns flying — landing on colour targets scored live through a web app across two rounds of Hitting the Target. The rules changed between rounds (a smaller target, a stricter return), forcing teams to discuss and adjust strategy rather than repeat what worked once.

This is the quiet point of putting real technology in a leadership session: it collapses the distance between the people who are comfortable with new tools and the people who aren't. Everyone starts at zero. Everyone improves by trying, failing and adjusting. For an organisation that needs its leaders to model adaptability toward new technology rather than caution, that lived experience does more than any briefing.

4. Hi-EQ communication — adapting under pressure in the Amazing Race

The session built to a relay: an Amazing Race drone course where every member had to fly, across two rounds. Mid-race, we introduced a twist — a new member joined the team, with three minutes to integrate and re-plan. Under time pressure, communication stops being a soft skill and becomes the thing that wins or loses the lap. Teams felt directly how clear hand-offs, quick coaching and calm coordination translate into performance — exactly the dynamic they face when priorities shift at work.

What the participants said

We measure reaction at the end of every session. For this group:

• 9.44 / 10 — likelihood to recommend the programme to a colleague

• 6.00 / 6 — overall performance, and trainer's method of presentation

• 5.89 / 6 — met participants' specific aims; trainer's subject knowledge

• 5.78 / 6 — programme achieved its stated aims

More telling than the scores was what they singled out: the reflection built into each game, the learning shared across the team, the growth-mindset framing — and, repeatedly, applying new technology in a team setting. Not "it was fun," but "the design did what it was built to do."

The takeaway for L&D leaders

If your leadership team needs to break silos, adopt new technology without anxiety, and build a culture where people learn out loud, the format matters more than the topic. A talk about collaboration produces nods. A morning where senior leaders pick up drones, discover they share one airport, and learn to give feedback that builds — that produces behaviour people act on.

That's the difference between team building that's enjoyed and team building that's used.