What Sixty Metres Underground Can Teach a Team
There is a door in the Rold Skov forest that still says "Yderst Hemmeligt" (Top Secret). Sixty metres below it is REGAN Vest, the bunker built to keep Denmark's government running through a nuclear war that never came. For decades, almost no one saw inside it. Now, for one day at a time, teams can.
Authentic Leaders DK has partnered with Nordjyske Museer to build something new around that bunker: a corporate team experience called Hvis Krigen Kommer (If the War Begins).
It starts with a guided tour of the place itself, the Cold War history, the machinery, and what it actually meant to live and work sixty metres underground. Then the team is dropped into a dilemma game built around that same Cold War logic. The scenario unfolds through phone calls, news bulletins and shifting information, and the group has to keep making decisions together, under pressure, without a facilitator telling them what the right answer is.
What happens in that room is not really about the Cold War. It is about how the team actually works.
Someone takes the lead without being asked to. Someone else goes quiet. Some need the group to slow down before they will commit to a decision, others want to move before all the details are settled.
Teams usually know these things about each other in the abstract. They rarely see them play out under time pressure, deep underground, when the decisions they make together actually matter.
That is where the second part of the day matters.
Each participant completes an individual CliftonStrengths assessment, Gallup's tool for identifying what someone does best, with a feedback session before they arrive. After the dilemma play, I facilitate a debrief that connects what happened in the bunker to those results and to how the team works day to day. We can include LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® if you wish to do that.
The useful part is the combination. This is, at its core, an emotional intelligence event, one built to keep giving well after the day itself. People are not only talking about their strengths and working styles. They have just watched themselves and their colleagues make decisions under pressure.
The assessment gives them a language for understanding some of what they have seen.
I keep coming back to one idea from those debriefs: a team that has just seen itself clearly rarely leaves with a tidy conclusion.
More often, people are surprised by their own instincts, and a little more curious about their colleagues than they were that morning. Sometimes they see a strength in someone else that they had not noticed before. Sometimes they leave with a question that needs a little more attention.
I think that is a better outcome than comfort. It tends to last longer.
And the day does not necessarily have to end when you leave the bunker. Most teams drive, take the train or fly into Aalborg, and Authentic Leaders DK can arrange transport from there to Rebild Bakker for a one-day event, or an overnight stay at Comwell, dinner, and a meeting room for the following morning if a team wants to turn the debrief into strategy work while it is still fresh.
The experience is Danish-language only for now, since REGAN Vest does not yet run it in English, although that may well change soon.
Because every team, group size and set of logistics is different, I do not publish a fixed price. If you are curious whether it could be a good fit for your team, the easiest thing is simply to have a conversation. You can reach me at authenticleaders@outlook.dk.
I am genuinely excited about this new offering. Whether your team needs a different way to explore collaboration and decision-making, or simply a memorable day together, I hope you find it intriguing.
Please see the Hvis Krigen Kommer brochure for more information, only in Danish for now.
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