Our Facility

Cairn Leadership School is located on 750 acres of land in Baldwin, Maine and is in the process of expanding its trail network to increase recreational opportunities. Land use is encouraged for non-motorized recreational uses. While at the School feel free to walk, run, and on some trails, mountain bike.

Boarding for Cairn Leadership School is located in a contemporary post and beam house. Rooms are split into two rooms that accommodate two guests and two rooms that accommodate three guests. This allows teams of up to ten to come and enjoy the Cairn experience. We chose to house people in a bed and breakfast for two reasons. The first is to give people a comfortable place to relax and sleep after a hard day of team building. The second reason is to allow the team to continue the building process during their down time. Trust and understanding is built through common experiences. Having unstructured time where people are interacting in a casual manner allows people to find out about each other on a personal level. When people know more about each other this helps to foster free flow of communication.

Classes at Cairn are conducted in several places. It is not uncommon to have a quick meeting in the living room before the day starts or when wrapping up. Some trainings are conducted in the Barn. This allows us to have the use of training materials but also allows us to have flexible space where groups can break out and do small group activities or an experiential exercise. Other trainings take advantage of our natural setting. Many experiential activities are conducted outside in our fields and woods. The School’s Challenge Courses are unique and constructed in the woods behind the house to deliver a team experience from the ground up.

Safety
There are two different kinds of safety that we worry about at Cairn Leadership School: emotional and physical.

The emotional safety of attendees is important to address because if people do not feel emotionally supported then it is difficult for them to take risks and say something that could potentially be embarrassing. Likewise, people become intimidated or embarrassed when they start talking about what their Myers Briggs Type Indicator says or that they are concerned about what the team is about to do. To create this safety, the School uses a tool called the Full Value Contract. Simply put, this contract states that people will be allowed to freely express themselves and not be judged by the rest of the team.

Cairn Leadership School also employs the philosophy of Challenge by Choice. Challenge by Choice allows people to determine their own level of participation. This empowers people to make their own choices around what level of risk that they are allowing themselves to take. The beauty of this is when people are empowered to make to make their own choices, they typically push themselves harder then when they do not act on their own.

When we combine the Full Value Contract with Challenge by Choice we have a powerful tool that enables people express themselves. By allowing people choice, you give people an opportunity to think out and discuss what is challenging them, giving them a solid foundation to move through change on their own.