Sapna Gurukar

What Off-Roading Teaches You About Teams

Most leadership metaphors are borrowed. Someone read a book about mountaineers or chess grandmasters and decided it applied to the boardroom. I don't use borrowed metaphors. The terrain I'm describing, I've driven on.

In competitive off-road racing, the vehicle is the least interesting variable. What wins or loses a race is the relationship between driver and co-driver — two people who cannot see each other's faces, operating with a completely different set of information, under time pressure, in conditions that change without warning. The co-driver calls the route from a road book that was written before anyone drove the terrain. The driver executes in real time. If the trust between them breaks down, the car stops. Sometimes literally.

I've been on start grids where I was the only woman. Most of them, actually. What that teaches you — quickly — is the difference between teams that have genuinely calibrated their trust and teams that are running on confidence they haven't earned. The latter look fine until the route gets hard. Then everything surfaces at once.

What I watch for in facilitation is the same thing I watch for at the start of a stage: how does this team handle the first moment when the plan stops working? Do they communicate or do they freeze? Do they adjust or do they fight the terrain? Most teams have never had their communication patterns tested under actual pressure. The simulation creates that test. The debrief is where we read what just happened.

The resilience programmes I design are built around the same principle: coping is surviving. Navigation is different. Navigation requires knowing your vehicle — your own reactions under pressure — and being honest about it. The organisations that want their people to just push through stress are training for the wrong outcome. The ones who want people who can read the situation, adjust, and keep moving — those are the conversations worth having.

What Sapna Designs and Facilitates

Resilience & Adaptability (authored and facilitated by Sapna)
A programme built for teams that will face disruption — which is all of them. Not coping strategies. Actual navigation skills for people who can't afford to be flattened by change. See programme →

Remote & Hybrid Leadership (authored and facilitated by Sapna)
Proximity was hiding weak management. Sapna designed this programme specifically for leaders managing distributed teams — the discipline of explicitness, the architecture of trust at distance, and what it takes to lead a team you can't see. See programme →

Virtual Team Building (co-leads with Rupert)
Sapna co-created the T.E.A.M.S virtual engagement suite — digital experiences designed for distributed teams that need more than a quiz night. See virtual team building →

Executive Quest (primary facilitator)
A VR-enabled digital treasure hunt built for conferences and leadership summits. Sapna runs this. Her approach: the game generates the data, the debrief reads it.

Sapna's Take

On the Record

She is a five-time national off-roading champion and one of the first women in off-roading in India.

• DE&I specialist — Holds certification in diversity, equity & inclusion; leadership coach
• Featured in SheThePeople for her perspective on off-roading as a skill challenge and what it means for women in high-pressure environments