When Strangers Become a Team
Eagles Flight at the Hult Business School MBA Physical Retreat
- June 3, 2026
- Author: Andrew Thomas, CEO, Eagles Flight Asia
- 3 Minute Read
Author: Andrew Thomas, CEO, Eagles Flight Asia
June 3 2026 | 3 Minute Read
What does it take to turn forty professionals, meeting each other for the first time, into a cohesive team before a single lecture begins?
This question drove a recent collaboration between Eagles Flight Asia and Hult Business School, as part of Hult’s MBA physical retreat in Singapore on 22 May 2026 at Catapult.
Hult Business School’s MBA programme is built on a practical, experiential philosophy: learning happens most powerfully when people are placed inside situations that mirror real professional challenges. When students from around the world gathered in Singapore for their physical retreat, Eagles Flight was brought in to lead the opening session, a deliberate kickoff designed to do more than break the ice.
Forty MBA students, working professionals representing diverse nationalities and industries, arrived having completed coursework online. Many had not yet shared the same room. The weekend ahead would demand that they collaborate, challenge one another, and engage deeply with faculty. The session needed to create the conditions for that to happen before the first class began.
Experiential Learning in Action
Eagles Flight facilitated a themed learning activity that challenges participants to recreate shapes using only communication and strategy, creating an ‘aha moment’: a safe, memorable way to see that a different, more effective way to think, act, and work is possible.
Within the session, the room surfaced patterns that professionals recognise from their own organisations: assumptions made without confirmation, strategies that diverged without alignment, and the gap between thinking you have communicated clearly and actually being understood.
The experience brought several leadership themes into sharp focus:
- Growth Mindset: Recognising when to course-correct as conditions shift, rather than persisting with an approach that is no longer working
- Collaboration: Building cohesion and consensus, and creating the kind of psychological safety that allows people to contribute fully
- Agility: Deploying tactics quickly when the situation demands it
- Vision Setting: Establishing shared understanding of goals and operating principles before execution begins
These are not abstract concepts. Inside the activity, they become visible behaviours, and visible behaviours can be reflected on, discussed, changed, and then channelled into performance-directed conversations.
Chris Lim, Client Director at Eagles Flight Asia, who facilitated the session, described the transformation:
“What struck me was how quickly the room moved from a group of individuals to something that actually felt like a team. The activity creates the conditions for that, not by telling people what good communication looks like, but by letting them experience the cost of getting it wrong and the reward of getting it right. By the end of the session, participants were not just connecting with each other. They were already thinking together.”
Joe Tofield, Head of Commercial at Eagles Flight Asia, added:
“Seeing the energy in the room was another reminder of how experiential learning brings human skills to life in ways that cannot be replicated in a typical classroom environment. This exercise appears simple, but it quickly surfaces themes in project management, communication, and leadership that participants must genuinely confront, leading to real moments of clarity across the room.”
The partnership with Hult Business School reflected a genuine alignment of philosophy. Both organisations share a conviction that capability development works best when people learn by doing, not by being told.
The session served as a networking kickoff with powerful learnings, complementing Hult Business School’s online MBA programme and launching the weekend of classes with Hult faculty.
For the MBA students, the session was more than a networking exercise. It was a live demonstration of the principles they had come to Singapore to develop: the ability to work effectively with people they do not yet know, under conditions that do not always give them the information they need.
The weekend of classes that followed began with that foundation already in place.