Every time we return from one of our Leadership Experiences I am reinvigorated by the effect the week has on our participants. As I have written before, there is something particularly powerful about taking leaders well away from their everyday environment – something which stretches their development far more than we are able to do in a traditional setting.
Our recent trip to Tetepare, from which we have just returned, left me thinking again about why working in these remote places is so important. It is all about seeing the horizon, both literally and metaphorically.
All the places where we have run our Leadership Experiences, from the South Australian outback to middle of the Pacific Ocean, have one thing in common: an abundance of horizon. Wherever we stand, we can see the curvature of the earth as land or sea dip away from us in the distance. It is so different from being in the city, where most of us think ourselves fortunate if our view stretches further than across the street.
Visiting these places in a leadership development context broadens the awareness of our participants just as the land or seascape opens the sky. As they can see more of the world, they can also see more of themselves and their situation.
What we see are leaders gaining a completely different perspective on themselves and those around them. It’s not a distant perspective – through our time together they remain connected to their ‘real world’ – but a ‘grander’ one.
This broadening of view can have some interesting consequences. Sometimes, participants remember things from the past that they had long forgotten. One leader on the recent trip recalled a style of leadership that he had once used very successfully but had drifted away from over time. This opened up new possibilities for him – either revisiting that previous style or exploring other styles he had not been aware of.
On another level the physical challenge associated with living (and working) in remote places stretches the ‘comfort horizons’ of our participants. There is a degree of chaos and ambiguity in a place like Tetepare that is a long way from the relative stability of a city office block. The reward is a realisation that these unusual and often testing conditions can be dealt with.
Underlying all of this is the more holistic outlook that comes from broadened horizons. For us, it is about balancing the head, heart and instinct centres – ‘whole body’ thinking – which frees the mind and allows people to look inwardly and develop their emotional health.
After our recent trip with a group of leaders from Australia, we were able to spend a few days working with a dozen leaders from the Tetepare Descendants Association. This was truly inspirational as these people, who live with an always-present horizon, revealed their strong focus on conservation, sustainability and, most importantly, the future of their children. Theirs was not a perspective crowded by haste and busyness – it was the wide, forward looking view of surroundings.
Gayle
Global Leadership Foundation, in partnership with The 3BL Group, World Expeditions and the Australian Cancer Research Foundation, will be leading a different outback leadership experience in August this year. This is an opportunity for organisations to reward their leaders for a fundraising effort. Participants will take part in a 7-day walk on the famous Larapinta Track in the Northern Territory. Along the way, Malcolm and I will work with participants on a range of leadership issues, in a similar way to the participant-centred approach we take on Tetepare.
Full details of this opportunity are available on The 3BL Group website, here.
