This year's Elevator Challenge took place from Friday 10th until Sunday 12th June, and participant Jordan Young has joined us again to give us his take on his time in this year's challenge - recounting his experiences, and of course what he took away from the weekend.
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Without giving any spoilers to the potential candidates of The 2017 Elevator Challenge I will try and sum up just what an incredible experience it is. The Challenge lives up to all the expectations set by the Elevator Team who organise it, The Challenge is huge stretch of each member's team-building, problem-solving and idea development skills which pushed us all to communicate and use our initiative to stay driven in a team of new entrepreneurs with varying experience and personality.
Who’s it for?
I would recommend the Challenge to all types of people with a persistent attitude to give their all and be pushed out their comfort zone. Although the weekend is tailored to those working or interested in business and entrepreneurship it is incredibly beneficial to anyone taking part. It teaches valuable skills and lessons about yourself and others such as perseverance even in the face of failure and how to use your specific skill set alongside the skills of your team to think outside the ordinary and achieve tasks that seem impossible rather impossible at first.
You must be prepared to:
- Lose all concept of time as you do a full week's worth of extremely fun and equally challenging activities in two and a half days.
- Give your all, and learn from the most unlikely of places.
- Be eaten alive by what is now considered by myself as man's worst enemy. The Midge.
My experience with the Elevator Challenge:
As the youngest person on the Challenge I got very used sighs and cute looks when I told people my age on the first day, but by that night everyone had forgotten about my lack of real world experience and was happy to work with me as an equal, allowing me to learn from those around me. I think the biggest mistake you can make on the challenge (Aside from wearing shorts beside a midge infested pond) is to stick to a group of people you find familiar or comfortable. Elevator select 30+ young adults with brilliant minds, a variety of backgrounds and a huge range of on the ground experience in extremely different fields, I made it one of my main goals to speak to each of these individual who came along in the small amount of free time we had, weather that be on the bus there and back or at meal times. Through talking to everyone I found that each individual take away from the weekend is different. With some people rediscovering the value in working with a like-minded team and others finding more confidence in themselves it shows that The Challenge allows people to find what they need to learn from it and that people will only get as much as they put in.
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To find out more about the Elevator Challenge, or how you can be involved, please contact Simon Fraser, Project Manager at Simon@ElevatorUK.com.
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