The Problem
There is a fundamental problem with most leadership development.
The content is good. The frameworks are sound. The facilitators are skilled. But leaders sit through the session, return to their desks, and within weeks are operating exactly as they did before. The learning didn’t stick - because nothing about the experience was real enough to make it stick.
Explore Performance was built to solve that problem.
We believe the most powerful leadership lessons don’t come from slides, case studies, or fictional scenarios. They come from real human beings, in genuinely demanding situations, making decisions that actually matter. That is what our approach is built on. And it is something no other leadership development company in the world can replicate.
The Foundation
Real Expeditions as the Foundation
Every Explore Performance programme is anchored in a real expedition.
Not a metaphor for one. Not a simulation of one. An actual expedition - planned by our team, executed in the field, and filmed over months or years in some of the world’s most demanding environments.
From the summit of Everest to the open waters of the Tasman Sea. From the Bay of Bengal to the coast of Phuket. From high-altitude traverses to open ocean sailing through cyclone systems.
We take that footage - raw, honest, and unreplicable - and we use it as the emotional engine of every leadership experience we deliver.
When a leader watches a crew making decisions at 3am in the middle of a Tasman storm, something shifts. The leadership lesson is no longer abstract. It is felt. It bypasses cynicism. It creates the kind of emotional resonance that makes learning stick - not for days, but for years.
This is the Explore Performance approach. And it is the reason our programmes produce lasting behavioural change when others produce a good day.
This was the best run virtual event we’ve ever had - it created more positive energy than we thought was possible.
- Fredrik Nylander, SVP Services EMEA, Workday
The process
Why Adventure-Based Learning Works
The science behind adventure-based learning is well established. Experiential learning - learning through doing, rather than listening - produces significantly higher retention and behaviour change than traditional instruction. But the quality of the experience matters enormously.
The more real, emotionally engaging, and personally relevant the experience, the deeper and more durable the learning. This is why Explore Performance's approach works where others fall short.
Our expedition footage is not simulated. The decisions our facilitators made on Everest, on the Tasman, and in the Bay of Bengal were not hypothetical. The fear, the exhaustion, the moments of doubt, and the breakthroughs were genuine. When participants engage with that footage - making decisions alongside real explorers in real conditions - they access a level of emotional truth that no classroom exercise can create.
Three things happen as a result:
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The learning is anchored to a vivid, specific memory - not a framework on a slide.
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The emotional engagement creates the psychological conditions for genuine behaviour change.
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The shared experience gives teams a common reference point they carry back to their organisation.
The Curriculum
The Seven Expeditions Behind Our Programmes
Each Explore Performance programme is built on a specific real expedition, mapped to a specific leadership challenge. The expedition is not decoration - it is the content. The decisions made in the field, the moments of failure and breakthrough, the lessons learned under genuine pressure: these are the curriculum.
Team Alignment & Empowerment
Everest: For Those Who Dare
Built on two Everest expeditions, this programme develops the ABCDE of Highly Aligned and Empowered Teams - Aligned, Bold, Collaborative, Decisive, and Empowered. At 8,000 metres, a misaligned team doesn't just underperform. It fails. Everest is the most honest possible context for a conversation about what genuine team alignment looks like under pressure.
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Mindset and Bold Unique Goals
· World Record 2025
Into The Unknown - The Tasman Crossing
In 2025, Explore Performance co-founder Grant 'Axe' Rawlinson and his crew became the fastest team in history to row the Tasman Sea - completing a world first after 11 years and three failed attempts. That journey - every decision, every setback, every moment of recommitment - is the backbone of this programme. When your organisation needs to pursue a goal no one has achieved before, this is the experience that makes belief possible.
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Leading Self & Personal Performance
Human Power - Bay of Bengal
Built around the human-powered crossing of the Bay of Bengal - from Thailand to India - this programme explores what it means to lead yourself before you can lead others. Seven principles for sustaining peak performance under pressure, from purpose and accountability through to energy management and difficult decisions. The programme that resonates most deeply with high performers who feel they have plateaued.
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Essentialism - achieving more with less
Peak 2 Peak - Essentialism
A high-altitude traverse that forces the most uncomfortable question in leadership: what do we stop doing? The expedition is the purest possible context for essentialism - you can only carry what you need, and every extra kilogram costs you. This programme builds the discipline of identifying the vital few things that actually move the needle, and eliminating everything else.
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Communicating & Influencing
Waves of Impact - Swimming Phuket Island
Built around the circumnavigation of Phuket Island by open water swimming, this programme examines how leaders communicate under pressure, adapt their style to different audiences, and create genuine influence rather than simply transmitting information. The ACT framework - Acknowledge, Choices, Tell a Story - emerges from real moments of communication breakdown and breakthrough in the water.
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Purpose & Values
Charting Your Future
A navigation-themed expedition that takes leaders on a journey of purpose and values discovery. Using the metaphor of navigating featureless open water - where the only tools are a compass, a destination, and the people beside you - this programme helps individuals and teams mine, define, and refine their purpose in a way that is genuinely owned rather than handed down. The programme behind Explore Performance's culture work with Trafigura across 8 countries.
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ESG & Systems Thinking
Cyclone Alley - ESG and Systems Thinking
Open ocean sailing through some of the world's most volatile weather systems is the most honest possible context for a conversation about systems thinking. Every decision has second and third-order consequences. Nothing operates in isolation. The cost of ignoring complexity arrives without warning. This programme reframes ESG from a compliance obligation into a genuine leadership lens - and makes the connection between individual decisions and systemic outcomes visceral and real.
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The Methodology
How We Deliver
01
Experience
- making decisions alongside the EP team, under pressure, with genuine consequences within the simulation. The experience is available face-to-face, virtually, and in hybrid format for any audience size, from a single senior leadership team to thousands of participants running concurrently across multiple locations and time zones.
02
Reflect
The debrief is where the expedition becomes the curriculum. Our facilitators - many of whom have completed the expeditions themselves - map the decisions, failures, and breakthroughs from the field to the specific leadership behaviours your organisation needs to develop. The debrief is never generic. It is always calibrated to your context, your challenges, and your people.
03
Apply
Learning that stays in the room has no value. Every Explore Performance programme is designed with application in mind - specific commitments, shared language, and follow-on touchpoints that sustain behaviour change beyond the live experience. Whether through our digital Exploratory Learning Platform, focused 1:1 coaching, or ongoing curriculum delivery, we build the structures that make the learning last.
The Science
Recognised by the World’s Leading L&D Authority
In 2025, Explore Performance won a Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Award Gold for Best Learning and Development Programme, and a Silver for Best Leadership Development Programme. The awards are the most rigorous independent assessment in the global L&D industry.
The winning programme - a cultural integration experience delivered to 20,000 UBS leaders across 5 continents in 8 months - was recognised for three specific factors that distinguish Explore Performance from every other provider in the market:
Design and customisation built on trust
Programmes authentic to client culture, never off-the-shelf.
Operations that deliver without burnout
Complex, large-scale delivery across time zones and regions.
Facilitators who create consistent impact across borders
Local insight combined with world-class content expertise across borders.
They had a strong culture. They just couldn’t explain it.
- How Explore Performance helped Trafigura define its purpose across 8 countries.
Where We Work
The Moments We Partner In
Explore Performance doesn’t work at the edges of your leadership agenda. We partner at the moments that matter most - where the stakes are highest and the margin for an average experience is lowest.
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Aligning leaders at scale - 20,000 UBS leaders aligned in 8 months following a global merger.
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Supporting growth ambitions - AWS Global Financial Services, driving from €500m to €1bn.
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Defining culture - Trafigura, from qualitative interviews across 8 countries to a 17-word purpose statement and global rollout.
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Leading transformation - helping organisations where 5 teams become 1 and the first moment sets everything.
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Coaching sustained behaviour change - the Gojek coaching journey for 40 managers over 4 months.
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Influencing at the highest level - 200 UBS philanthropists at the Zurich Social Impact Forum.
One of a Kind
The Only Approach of Its Kind
There are hundreds of leadership development companies. There is only one that has rowed the Tasman Sea, summited Everest twice, crossed the Bay of Bengal by human power, and used every metre of that journey to build leadership experiences that organisations cannot find anywhere else.
Our approach is not a product. It is a conviction - that real human experience, at genuine scale, in genuinely demanding conditions, is the most powerful teacher leadership has ever had.
If you want your leaders to remember something. To feel something. To carry something back to their organisation that actually changes how they work - this is the approach that makes that possible.
Where to Begin
Talk to us about which programme is right for your organisation.
Explore the seven programmes, see our client work, or get in touch directly. We’re always happy to talk.
Start a Conversation
Download Our Overview
Talk to Our Team
Frequently Asked Questions
What is adventure-based learning and how is it different from other leadership development?
Adventure-based learning uses real expeditions - not simulations of them - as the content of a leadership programme. At Explore Performance, every programme is built on an expedition our team has planned, executed, and filmed ourselves: from summiting Everest to rowing the Tasman Sea to crossing the Bay of Bengal by human power. The footage from those expeditions is the emotional engine of every learning experience we deliver. It creates a level of authenticity and visceral impact that no case study, role play, or fictional scenario can replicate - which is why our programmes produce the kind of behaviour change that most leadership training only promises.
How do you create interaction at large scale - for an audience of hundreds or thousands?
Designing genuinely interactive experiences for large audiences is a craft challenge that EP has spent years solving. We structure interaction at three levels simultaneously: at team level (small groups of 3–5 ensure no one is passive), at room level (live scenario voting and shared outcomes create collective momentum across the whole audience), and at emotional level (the expedition narrative creates a shared experience that lands simultaneously across everyone in the room). We have successfully delivered interactive experiences to audiences of 650+ at a single event, with every participant actively engaged throughout.
How does the debrief work - and how do you connect the expedition to our business context?
The debrief is where the expedition becomes the curriculum. Our facilitators - many of whom have completed the expeditions themselves - map specific decisions, failures, and breakthroughs from the field to the leadership behaviours and strategic priorities your organisation needs to develop. The debrief is never generic: it is always co-designed with you in advance, calibrated to your specific context, and delivered in a way that makes the connection between mountain and meeting room feel immediate and personal rather than abstract.
What happens after the live experience - how do you sustain the learning?
Learning that stays in the room has no value. Every Explore Performance programme is designed with application in mind. Depending on the scope of the engagement, we can support ongoing embedding through digital follow-on modules via our Exploratory Learning Platform, virtual team coaching and momentum sessions, team health assessments, and 1:1 coaching for individual senior leaders. For large-scale programmes, we also offer content licensing and Train-the-Trainer delivery, enabling your own internal facilitators to continue delivering EP content at scale.