Using extreme experiences as a management development tool

Three SCNetwork members discuss Scott Kress’ presentation on teamwork

 

 

Jan van der Hoop: This was a fitting session to cap a year of great speakers. Scott Kress told his personal story of defeat and triumph on two different mountains, with two very different teams.

I’ve long been a firm believer that how we show up at work is fundamentally no different than how we show up in all our other activities — “who we are” colours how we engage with others to face challenges and shines through, regardless of where we are or the situation in which we find ourselves.

Play and other non-work-related challenges are a great metaphor that sometimes makes understanding the complexities of team dynamics and culture easier.

Hence the popularity of “experiential off-sites.” People lose themselves in the game, but the debrief (if done competently) offers rich learning about the truth of the group’s dynamics, which can translate well back at the office.

I once saw an entire executive team say, “Screw it, let’s go for a drink” instead of engaging in a search-and-rescue for their CEO who was shivering somewhere in the woods — true story. It’s not hard to predict how that shows up in the day-to-day.

Kress did a very nice job of illustrating — with examples of successful and failed expeditions — how communication, shared vision, team respect and cohesiveness, and a laser focus on things you can control, can be the deciding factors, far more important determinants of success than raw talent and experience.

And there was one other factor that he snuck in, almost as an afterthought: Reflection — the willingness to debrief, to regularly discuss what’s going well and explore what we need to learn or do differently.

Most of us engage in it when we have the time or when it’s convenient (or when it’s mandated by HR because it’s performance review season) and it is almost always the first thing to drop when the going gets tough or people feel challenged.

Yet, it can be the difference between success and failure.

Silvia Lulka: I agree, Jan. The leadership lessons in and of themselves were not new, but hearing about their application on Everest was so interesting, inspiring and entertaining. 

I really appreciated hearing about the deliberateness with which Kress stuck to his principles and knowledge in designing his Everest climb. How he structured the team, how they walked with different people every day to purposefully socialize and get to know each other better, how they reflected, how they talked about what was going on — all the things that we know to do, Kress was able to apply. Even with the resistance he had at times, he stuck to it.

One of my favourite parts was when they were faced with what seemed like an insurmountable challenge — they decided to have a party, complete with dressing up and toilet paper decorations.  What a great way to fire off the oxytocin that we release through social interaction, instead of the cortisol of stress.

This clearly paid off for Kress and his team with all the extra challenges and delays they faced in climbing Mount Everest the year of the 2008 Olympic Games. I loved hearing that 80 per cent of the teams that focused on what they could influence reached the summit, in contrast to nine per cent of the teams that focused their energy and attention on the negative concerns that were outside their control. 

The session had all that, plus learning bits of trivia. Who knew that your body uses 1,000 calories per hour at rest state in that altitude? And that you’d die within minutes if you didn’t acclimatize? And that you can see the circumference of the earth from the summit? So interesting.

Paul Pittman: It was a great presentation, but before we get to that... Jan: How did you manage to get out of the forest in such difficult circumstances?

We have all been in that extremely trying work situation. Stress is at a maximum, and we’re physically tired and mentally exhausted but still required to make critical decisions. When it all goes wrong, someone in the group will inevitably pipe up with “Well, no one died.” In Kress’ line of work, that just ain’t true.

I am in awe of people like Kress who manage at the extremes of endurance and push their bodies to the limit — I could listen forever to how he pulled that off and, truth be told, I would love to be that man. However, we must not let that distract us from the learning around critical decision-making, team-building, positivity and collaboration. 

The extreme experience as a management development tool has lost its sheen lately, I suppose because participants remember the thrill rather than the lessons, and because the objective becomes even more obscured when it’s not just available to the business world these days. In our personal lives, we can pretty much experience what we want, even space travel, if we have the inclination… and the money.

This was a fantastic session, but physical endurance is no longer a metaphor for business (anyone remember The Art of War?) and Kress made that point. The workplace is a lot gentler these days and mental health is regarded as key to productivity.

The management lessons, however, continue to be extremely (no pun intended) important, and that was the great takeaway.

We encourage readers of our rants to think about these as they plan their activities for what we hope will be for them a very prosperous 2018.

 

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