At Enterprise Rent-A-Car, we always want to hire the brightest and the best students. We have a promote-from-within culture, so our talent strategy has to be all about finding future leaders. Happily, the University of Leicester want to develop employability skills in their students, especially those with leadership experience. They believed that we’re a strong company who could demonstrate what leadership is all about, and we’re keen to advise, support and talk to any potential leaders. So we became partners in this, and the Future Leaders skills award came about.

Last week I spent the day at the University worrying how many of those who were invited to apply for the award would turn up. I needn’t have worried, as at 5pm the room was full and after a questionnaire to find out what type of leader you are, we were already having in-depth discussions about who, past or present, is the greatest leader of all time, and what skills and attributes they demonstrated or possessed.

As the workshop progressed we discussed leadership versus management styles and what qualities a good leader has. It was interesting hearing stories of the students’ own experiences as leaders in their part-time jobs and through committees at university. Throughout the workshop we were discussing various theories on leadership and how Enterprise views leadership. The students were extremely engaged in the workshop and made some valuable insights from their own experiences, and asked thought provoking questions.

We then moved on to discuss situational leadership, and how we would react in certain situations. This created some more good debates and we concluded that great leaders will have to change their leadership styles depending on the situation and the type of team they are leading.

The class ended with the ‘Future Leaders’ being allocated their groups and given an Enterprise real-life project which our business leaders work on all the time. Over the course of the next four months the groups will look at these questions with a business mentor from Enterprise and then come up with ideas and solutions that they’ll present to our management teams.

As importantly, the award will give six students the opportunity of a summer internship with Enterprise.

I am already looking forward to the next workshop where the students will really begin to understand the leadership skills they have and how they can continue to develop them.